Week 3

"Imaging Pittsburgh: Creating a shared gateway to digital image collections of the Pittsburgh region"
by Edward A. Galloway, outlines a grant funded program whose mission is to provide a singular outlet for historical Pittsburgh photographs.  At first glance this may seem simplistic in focus, provide a website that can allow access to historic Pittsburgh through visual media.  Upon breakdown there were many more obstacles to hurdle then what was expected.  

Three institutions with multiple views and gains sought to work together to document change - cultural, economic, and structural- in and around Pittsburgh.  The main aim was to host a website containing 7,000 - 10,000 images to allow a "whole picture" aspect to the city.  The website would allow the public to keyword search, browse within several parameters as well as request reproductions.

I think what struck me most about this project was even though these instutions were working towards a common goal they all had different aims in the selection, description and organization of the images.  The challenges to the project seemed to display that though there is one finish line there are many different ways to get there.  The lack of communication, aside from planned meetings, posed a threat to the efficiency and transparency of the project.  How do you avoid inconsistencies that may present themselves as the project moves forward?  With each institution came a different method of how to accomplish a particular step of the project, a different vocabulary to describe, a different level of quality.  As a leader how to you overcome such challenges?  Is it worth the time to build a bridge between all of these methods? 

I think so.  As each one of the challenges presented themselves there seemed to be a sharing of ideas, something I believe benefits each institution involved. Learning not only how to handle the conflicts that arise but also to learn from each other, building upon the base of knowledge they already have.  Through this project they came together to solve the standardization issues and ultimately created a very important visual resource for Pittsburgh.