Author: Joan Starr
Update on the DataCite Metadata Working Group
It’s about time for a check-in on my experiences with the DataCite Metadata Working Group. I introduced this intrepid band a couple of months ago when we met face-to-face in Hannover, Germany. Since then, of course, we’ve dispersed to our […]
Bug tracking
I’m managing a project that recently launched an early limited release, and one of our next tasks was to select a bug tracking tool. It would help us manage tasks going forward. We had some choices because my organization doesn’t […]
It’s the little things: protecting creative problem-solving
When it comes to creative solutions, often it’s the little things that make a big difference. I was talking with 2 campus colleagues about a project I’ve been working: an executive dashboard. I explained that this is not a classic […]
Business continuity
This last week we had a small lesson in business continuity here at CDL. Our home is in Oakland, California, and our city was disturbed on Thursday by civil unrest (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/09/BAH61EBUBF.DTL). The University of California Office of the President (UCOP) […]
Collaborative and Agile?
At CDL, we like to say we are collaborative and innovative by nature, because we were formed in 1997 out of the UC libraries’ tradition of working together to do things that could not be done by a single library […]
Innovation from the University of Pennsylvania Libraries
Last Wednesday, I had lunch with Delphine Khanna, Digital Projects Librarian at the University of Pennsylvania, in the Information Technology & Digital Development (ITaDD) Department. Delphine filled me in on an innovative approach her library is using to involve library […]
Strength in diversity: notes from the DataCite Conference
In his groundbreaking book Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond argued that Europe’s key advantage over China during the Age of Exploration was the sheer number of European political entities. Christopher Columbus heard “No” from one sovereign and still had […]
Risk Assessment Revisited
The experience of putting together the project management “shot-in-the-arm” I described a couple of posts back gave me a new perspective on risk assessment. I’ve been an advocate of a much fuller brainstorming session than I described to the transformation […]
Looking anew at Service Level Agreements
“Service Level Agreements”–does the phrase bore you or bring you to tears? Make you run looking for a task designee? You are probably in good company. I suspect there are lots of Service Level Agreement (SLA) templates available online for […]
Project management and transformational change
Last week, I had the opportunity to participate in a day-long workshop to orient 3 new task force teams. In this context, a “task force team” is a 6-7 person team of experts drawn from different University of California (UC) campuses and […]