PeDALS partners meeting: day three

For most of us, the meeting of the PeDALS project partners -- Arizona, Florida, New York, South Carolina and Wisconsin -- ended today at noon. We spent the morning discussing development of a pamphlet and expanded Web site publicizing the project, going over some remaining metadata issues so that our database designer can start working in earnest, and reviewing the project timeline and divvying up responsibility for tasks that need to be finished soon. We also discussed how the partners collaborate -- internally and across state lines -- and started thinking, in a very preliminary way, about what will happen when our grant funding ends.

After we wrapped up, most of the non-technical people (i.e., librarians and archivists) left. However, the IT people at this meeting reconvened this afternoon and will continue working until around noon tomorrow. My colleague Lynne from the New York State Library and I are flying out tomorrow morning, so we sat in on the technical meeting that took place this afternoon.

Until this afternoon, we were meeting at our hotel, but the IT folks traveled to the 1900 Capitol Building, which houses the Arizona Capitol Museum; until a few weeks ago, when Polly Rosenbaum Archives and History Building opened, it was also home to the holdings and staff of the State Library and State Archives.

We met in what was once the courtroom of the Arizona Supreme Court. Miranda v. Arizona was heard in this very room, which has awesome light fixtures. However, we weren't there to discuss constitutional law or interior design: we were busy figuring out how to set up a LOCKSS box and configure Ubuntu operating system software. I was more than a bit out of my depth, but I'm looking forward to learning more.