¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 In making the presentation, I’m now having to look back and review some of the accomplishments – as well as goals – that the ZUC project had. The practice presentation showed me how important it is to really distill the major points of the project for maximum effect. I was having issues with actually deciding what I thought would be valuable and accessible to a general audience. Luckily, Lisa and Jojo provided valuable advice on the overall message and what was missing.
¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 Thus, whereas I had originally planned to provide a case for why we used Collective Access, I will not be using my portion of the presentation to talk about how the catalog actually works. This includes the comparison between the map, the metadata, and the site’s UI (something that, admittedly, our group desperately needed in the early weeks of development). I will also hammer the point that this is a catalog that works with multiple institutions – the raison d’etre of ZUC is to make one site for all these records. The role of the maps will be the main sticking point with how such a site can be achieved.
¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 I will also talk about what the mapping meant in terms of limitations on which metadata fields we will use and, in turn, which fields will be available (as of the initial prototype) for users of the site itself. The flow of information will be guided by the initial challenge of one site with the content of multiple disparate sources; it will then lead into the answer, i.e. the ZUC team creating a plan for focusing on using only the essential elements of the metadata; the result will be a simple map that will dictate the structure of how an institution should export their data so that it conforms to our schema. Such a flow provides a goal, a problem, and the proposed solution.
