Cool! Harvard's Library Lab Adds 13 New Projects to Roster
From the Harvard University Library:
A metadata repository for scholarship produced across the University, enhancing the HOLLIS catalog by including the holdings of the Harvard Film Archive, and an “awesome box” program enabling users to share their experiences of particularly helpful—or entertaining—library materials are among the 13 new projects and 5 continuing projects funded by Harvard’s Library Lab on December 1.
According to Sue Kriegsman, the Lab’s program manager, “It is fantastic to have received 35 thoughtful and varied proposals for this third round of funding. With the generous support from the Arcadia Fund, the Lab is able to provide financial and technical support for 13 new projects. This program draws on insight and expertise from across the Harvard community. It is such a great way for individuals to contribute to the changing landscape of teaching and learning at Harvard and then to share their products with other institutions
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The current round of funding responds to collaborative proposals developed by Harvard librarians, archivists, faculty members, and administrators, and, in several cases, colleagues at MIT and Yale. Important initiatives have been proposed by the Berkman Center, the Provost’s Office, and the Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS). Most projects were initiated by Harvard Library staff, including personnel at the Andover-Harvard Theological Library, Frances Loeb Library, Harvard Law School Library, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Library, Harvard University Archives, Lamont Library, Office for Information Systems, and Widener Library.
Here’s a List of the 13 New Projects with Links For More Info
Awesome Box
Interact with an amazing or useful item from the library and return it to the Awesome Box instead of the normal drop box.
Annie Cain, Web Developer, Harvard Law School Library
Matt Phillips, Web Developer, Harvard Law School Library
Connecting the Dots: Using EAC-CPF to Reunite Samuel Johnson and His Circle
A project between Harvard and Yale universities to demonstrate the benefits of using Encoded Archival Context—Corporate bodies, Persons, and Families (EAC-CPF) to describe creators of manuscript collections and encode meaningful semantic links between those creators themselves and the primary sources that document their lives and work.
Susan Pyzynski, Associate Librarian for Technical Services, Houghton Library
Krista Ferrante, Project Archivist, Houghton Library
Melanie Wisner, Accessioning Archivist, Houghton Library
Ellen Doon and Michael Rush, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
DASH for Collection Development
A project to provide DASH with the capability of a library collection development tool by aggregating reference data from the articles deposited in DASH and comparing it within the Harvard library collections.
Tomoko Kurahashi, Library Technician, Wolbach Library
FACADE2
A project of the Frances Loeb Library and the MIT Libraries for further development of a shared production tool, workflows, and a shared repository for the collecting, archiving, access and preservation of electronic architectural files.
Ann Whiteside, Librarian/Assistant Dean for Information Resources, Harvard Graduate School of Design
Deb Morley, Head of Specialized Content and Services, MIT Libraries
Geospatial Mapping of Library Preservation
A project to develop a tool for visualizing, analyzing, and prioritizing preservation needs across Harvard’s 73 libraries using geospatial mapping technology.
Brenda Bernier, Acting Director, Weissman Preservation Center
Harvard Film Archive in HOLLIS
The HFA FileMaker database provides a critical staff tool for accessioning of new materials and service to users; however, most of the HFA holdings are not in HOLLIS. This jewel of a hidden collection at Harvard should be revealed to the world through HOLLIS Catalog records.
Michelle Durocher, Director of HCL Technical Services
Harvard Scholarship Indexing Project
A requirements-gathering and evaluation exercise to explore the feasibility of creating a University-wide bibliographic metadata repository, for management, tagging, and preservation of data about works produced by Harvard scholars.
Amy Brand, Assistant Provost for Faculty Appointments
ILLiad Add-Ons
To enhance Harvard’s interlibrary loan program, the ILLiad Add-On Scripting Project will develop and code a suite of custom search scripts (aka “add-ons”) for the ILLiad system.
Tom Bruno, Head of Resource Sharing, Widener
IRMA: Improved Records Management Administration
A pilot project to develop and implement an open-source records-management tool to enhance user and system access to records retention schedules and assist in the identification, capture, and management of University records in all formats.
Megan Sniffin-Marinoff, University Archivist
David Read, Records Analyst, University Archives
Making Sense of Thousands of E-mail Messages
IQSS will start a two-phase proof-of-concept project that facilitates grouping and organizing large sets of digital documents, helping the user make sense of them through an interactive process. We propose to research an ingest front-end to the tool that will allow the Harvard Library to use this tool to understand, organize and label e-mail archives and similar digital content worth preserving.
Mercè Crosas, Director of Product Development, Institute for Quantitative Social Science
Andrea Goethals, Manager of Digital Preservation and Repository Services, Office for Information Systems
Wendy Gogel, Manager of Digital Content and Projects, Office for Information Systems
Privileges Online Application Management System
A project to develop an online system for patrons to determine their eligibility for Harvard Library access and/or borrowing privileges, documentation requirements, and fees.
Cheryl McGrath, Head of Access Services for Widener and Lamont
Ann-Marie Costa, Assistant Head of Billing and Privileges, Widener Library
Social Tagging for Archival Collections
A project to explore the use of social tagging in archival collections in order to make the information in these collections more easily discoverable.
Frances O’Donnell, Curator of Manuscripts and Archives, Andover-Harvard Theological Library, Harvard Divinity School
Cliff Wunderlich, Head of Access and Research Services, Andover-Harvard Theological Library, Harvard Divinity School
Who Is Using Data and Why?
A tool to track Dataverse Network user information consistent with the needs of data owners and collection administrators as well as compliant with ALA privacy policies.
Mercè Crosas, Director of Product Development, Institute for Quantitative Social Science
Gustavo Durand, Manager of the Dataverse Network, Institute for Quantitative Social Science
Diane Sredl, Data Reference Librarian, Government Information and Data Services, Lamont Library
The following projects received continued funding for additional work:
Enhance Catalog Searching with Geospatial Technology
A project to explore the opportunities that geo-referencing catalog data can provide to enhancing catalog searching.
Dave Siegel, Geospatial Data and Information Software Engineer, Office for Information Systems
Marc McGee, Geospatial Resources Cataloger, Harvard College Library
extraMUROS: Multimedia Library Without Walls
Enable faculty, students, staff and the general public to view, curate, annotate, exhibit and remix Harvard-owned digital multimedia.
Joseph Bergen, Lead Interaction Designer and Developer, metaLAB (at) Harvard
James Burns, Creative Technologist and Relational Knowledge Fellow, metaLAB (at) Harvard
Kara Oehler, Documentary Arts and Media Innovation Fellow, metaLAB (at) Harvard
Gerard Pietrusko, Embodied Informatics Fellow, metaLAB (at) Harvard
Alix Reiskind, Head of Visual Resources, Frances Loeb Library, Harvard Graduate School of Design
Jeffrey Schnapp, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, Faculty of Arts and Sciences; Faculty Director, metaLAB (at) Harvard
Jesse Shapins, Instructor of Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design; Associate Director, metaLAB (at) Harvard
Stewart Smith, Founder, Stewdio; Researcher, metaLAB (at) Harvard
Ann Whiteside, Librarian/Assistant Dean for Information Resources, Frances Loeb Library, Harvard Graduate School of Design
Library Analytics Toolkit
Tools to enable libraries to understand, analyze, and visualize all patterns of library activity.
Kim Dulin, Associate Director for Collection Development and Digitization, Harvard Library Innovation Lab, Harvard Law School Library
Tag Team
A project to build middleware to stand between tagging platforms and readers to harness the power of social tagging for the existing Open Access Tracking Project and for any research topic.
Peter Suber, Visiting Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet and Society
Yana: An Open-Source Template for Scholarly Journals to Develop Mobile Applications
A project to provide a lightweight, modular, open-source template within which publishers can develop their own mobile applications for open-access journals.
Thomas Dodson, Coordinator, Office for Scholarly Communication
Reinhard Engels, Digital Software Engineer, Office for Scholarly Communication
Filed under: Academic Libraries, Archives and Special Collections, Associations and Organizations, Companies (Publishers/Vendors), Data Files, Digital Preservation, Funding, Libraries, Management and Leadership, Open Access, Patrons and Users, Preservation, Resources, School Libraries

About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.