The Daisie Miller Helyar Digital Scrapbook is part of the Notable Women of Simmons College collection. It was created by the students in Prof. Candy Schwartz’s Digital Libraries course, which took place from September to December 2009. The class was divided into 12 committees, with many students serving on two committees each, to complete the digital scrapbook.

Committees focused on the following areas:

Project Management: Our Project Manager saw the whole project from start to finish by breaking the project into committees, assigning deadlines for each committee and making sure everything comes together in the end.
Project Manager: Margaret Peachy

Content: The Content committee designed and researched information on all topics pertaining to Helyar: Simmons, GSLIS, Vermont, Boston and other areas of interest. The committee organized and wrote the content for most of the website, including the Teaching Resources.
Committee members: Sarah K. Burke, Elizabeth Knuth, Annie Lange

Database: The Database committee investigated and chose the software, Omeka, uploaded item records and images, installed plugins (like the map function), and identified and corrected back-end issues. The committee also wrote browse pages in php and html, customized the advanced search, linked subject and typed metadata to bring up similar records and worked on the scrapbook viewing page with other committees.
Committee members: Emmalia E. Harrington, Robin Butterhof, Amy Swartz

Descriptive Metadata: The Descriptive Metadata committee evaluated the metadata needs of the scrapbook and conducted a survey of possible options and best practices for the metadata structure. The committee created subject and type controlled vocabularies, metadata forms and instructions and then proceeded to conduct a quality check of the completed forms.
Committee members: Matthew Baker, Katharine Dunn, Otabek Gulyamov, Jennifer Rozmeski

Digitization: The Digitization committee supervised the digitization of the scrapbook. With the input of the Preservation and Database committees, they developed scanning and file naming procedures and guidelines. Additionally, they wrote scanning directions and performed quality checks on each of the scanned images.
Committee members: Marta Crilly, Ghilyana Dordzhieva, Benjamin Mettey, Jennifer Rozmeski

Environmental Scan: The Environmental Scan committee survey and looked at a variety of digital library projects in order to decide what criteria to judge a digital library on. The committee also conducted a satisfaction survey to the digital library class to identify positive and negative features of the representative libraries, and reported back to the class.
Committee members: William Helman, Fran Keenan, Ryan S. Mita, Falah Rashid

Evaluation and Usability: The Evaluation and Usability committee ran week-long surveys and tests, along with 4 face-to-face lab sessions in the GSLIS Usability Lab, with overwhelming participation results. The committee reported the findings to the class and other committees for review and revision.
Committee members: John Brigham, Marta Crilly, Fran Keenan, Falah Rashid

Intellectual Property: The Intellectual Property committee conducted general research on their subject and determined what would be in and out of the public domain in the scrapbook. The committee worked with an intellectual attorney to revise and approve all the rights statements and guidelines that were written.
Committee members: Danny Pucci, Ghilyana Dordzhieva, Katharine Dunn

Marketing: The Marketing committee researched the best practices for a target audience with its communication channels. The committee also settled on a suitable logo, created promotional materials, a press kit, a preview website (complete with countdown) and planned the digital library launch party.
Committee members: Ryan S. Mita, John Brigham, Otabek Gulyamov, William Helman

Preservation: The Preservation committee researched theoretical and technical aspects of digital preservation and then applied these ideas to what was available in the Simmons archive. The committee also created and eventually processed a worksheet for recording the preservation metadata and determined what would be done with this information in the long-term.
Committee members: Elizabeth Knuth, Matthew Baker, Sarah K. Burke, Danny Pucci

Quality Control: The Quality Control committee inspected the near final product of the digital library, which included checking links, correcting grammar and proof reading metadata. The committee made sure that the digital library website appeared altogether cohesive before presentation.
Committee members: Annie Lange, Benjamin Mettey

Web Team: The Web Team committee defined the website features and then created the site map to show structure and organization, wireframes of the layout of the pages and visual designs based on the wireframes. The committee then had to code all the pages and features based on the design and made sure everything worked with the Database committee.
Committee members: Sally Benny, Holly Erickson, Vanessa Venti

Acknowledgements:
The students of the Digital Libraries course would like to thank Prof. Candy Schwartz for her guidance and diligent wiki gardening throughout this project. We would also wish to thank College Archivist Donna Webber and Associate Archivist and Records Manager Jason Wood for assisting us in the archive and with the archival materials in this collection.