In my experience archives or library staff working in conjunction with
a representative from the information technology department does
most digital library planning. At ALBA, I was the only staff member
and every decision required consensus of the Web Committee, busy
professionals with jobs and other responsibilities. Every time an issue
arose it could take nearly a week to be resolved. This is a problem that
small museums with very active boards will be familiar with,
particularly when board members have little time, experience or
interest in the digital project at hand.
We quickly ran into a problem of defining the digital library; the
Web Committee believed everything created by ALBA was archival. I
was in favor of a more traditional, primary source, collections-based
digital library with a thesaurus and cataloging guidelines. My idea for
ALBA’s digital library was to create a system that would recall only
primary sources from the war itself. The digital library would be its own entity containing items that are separate from all other files
posted to the website.
After several weeks of negotiations via email and conference calls,
the Web Committee decided the best option would be to include all
online documents in the digital library. The Web Committee charged
the website designers with creating a web-based, simple form-based
recall system as part of their contract.