I’ve been using CollectionBuilder a lot these past two weeks for the TDPS archive, so I think it’s appropriate to reflect on that process. I’ve honestly been having a lot of fun using it. There was a bit of a frustrating point starting out when trying to get the right versions and making sure the spreadsheets were set up correctly, but after that it was smooth sailing. I also love that the entire project is open source because I was able to make edits to the template’s source code itself. This gave me so much more freedom to experiment and change parts to feel more like what I think the Kate and Erik wanted from the website. I think in general I like looking into templates like these and figuring out how they work, so this was pretty fun to do. The main obstacle for this and the project as a whole is transferring from the small test site I made into a larger one to hold the archive materials, but that is not a step we can take until those materials are hosted.
Week 8 Reflection 24-25
I think the most important part of writing good documentation is being descriptive in your steps. If someone reading a particular piece of documentation is left confused about where something is or how to access it, then that means there may be something missing from the documentation that should be included.
My project already has some amount of documentation, but so far that has really amounted to detailing the steps we have taken so far in gathering resources for the archive. Now that we have been zoning in on potential solutions, and I’ve been moving to testing websites, I’ve been thinking about what to document. Both Omeka and CollectionBuilder require certain steps with setting up spaces for images, and with the amount of content the theater department has, I have to consider the quickest ways to get the content organized both before it is added to the website and once it is already visible. This would most likely look like creating detailed steps for organizing test spreadsheets and setting up website pages once I figure those things out myself.