Project Proposal
Proposition de projet

Submitted to / Présentée à

Industry Canada / Industrie Canada

Canada’s Digital Collections
Collections numérisées du Canada

X

98-06-01
YY/MM/DD
AA/MM/JJ

98-09-14
YY/MM/DD
AA/MM/JJ

The Museum is the contractor, for operational and accountability reasons. But the running of the project, with the exception of payroll, will be turned over to the small youth company Immedia. This includes job posting, interviewing, training, and day to day supervision of one employee. One Immedia principal will be the Project Manager. The Museum has used Immedia for web page design before; this enhanced role means increased responsiblity and broader experience for them.

Should the partnership with Immedia not be possible at time of project start, the Project Manager will be hired from the open youth market.

The team worker (and Project Manager, if not Immedia) will be provided with 3 days of assessment by the Centre for Entrepreneurship Education and Development, a Halifax organization staffed mostly by young people, that helps set youth up in business. The Museum will pay for this training. We have referred youth to this Centre before and are pleased with the reports received. I have also sent my teenage son to their "Open for Business" youth camp, with positive feedback.

The digital product itself is part of community economic development. With the decline of resource industries in Nova Scotia, more people are looking to tourism for business opportunities. Nature tourism is a growth industry globally, and is starting to grow locally. The Museum has strong contacts with the nature tourism industry - we hosted a provincial conference and training session for private sector operators last year, and have been asked by industry to do it again this year. The content we propose to digitize is the base information from which these tourism operators develop the content and stories for their tours. Without accurate, readable, accessible information about the province's natural attractions, the tourism products will be content-weak and unappealing to discerning clients.

In addition, part of the content will be links to nature tourism businesses and directories with a current web presence. We expect the businesses to link to this site as a way of offering clients pre-trip planning information of high quality. The Museum's name suggests the content is authoritative, we want businesses to take advantage of that.

The Provincial Government's fair hiring policy required jobs to be described and posted in CEIC centres, including those at nearby Universities. We would also consult the National Graduate Register. Candidates apply in writing, are screened according to the posted qualifications, and a short list is interviewed. We anticipate close to 100 applications for such a summer position, based on previous experience.

The Project Manager must have substantial hands-on web experience, including navigation and directory planning, page design, scanning and image manipulation. We will also be looking for evidence of ability to plan and manage time, and to coach others.

With a good Project Manager, the team worker can have limited web page experience but must be computer literate and have used several types of software to give them some breadth. We plan to use one of the new Visual Editors, making knowledge of HTML tags less important for the team member. This is a good development opportunity for a young person.

We are also looking for flexibility, imagination, and communication skills or at least open-ness to learn them. Past experience has indicated youth need as much training in this as in technical skills.

Knowledge of the digital content is not required, staff will provide that if needed.

The Department Webmaster, Kelly Campbell (full time) will deal with complex questions related to servers, UNIX, etc.

The Museum Webmaster and project advisor (the Director) will address questions of effective communication and design, and navigation.

Staff in-house graphic designers are available for technical questions about design of buttons, maps, page templates.

Team member:
- assist with decisions about directory structure, navigation, design look and feel, page templates.
- do some of the graphic design, within established templates.
- do most of the scanning, image manipulation, laying in of text.
- create navigation buttons and link them
- search for websites of nature tourism businesses, and link to them
- test and troubleshoot linking problems
- attend entrepreneurship skills assessment program
- participate in weekly progress meetings

Team Member:
- experience working with a large web project, not just a personal site of a dozen pages;
- experience working in a small team, with deadlines and pressure to perform;
- understanding of current state of their skills, and skill development required, for a successful career in a small business; assistance settup up as a business, if desired;
- high volume of hands-on page design, layout, scanning of slides and prints, text conversion;
- experience working with large files, a LAN and uploading to UNIX.

The Director (who is staff advisor for the Contractor) is committed to developing youth, to using available local business and service providers, and to using the Internet to disperse Museum content to all. She has written and spoken on this subject in various Museum forums, and will attend the upcoming international conference on Museums and the Web in Toronto. She also teaches Human Resource Management at Dalhousie University, and has teenage children; both help her relate to youth.

Staff of the Department of Education and Culture support this work and the development of youth, providing in-house tech support, advice from the Department Webmaster, and access to the programs of the Centre for Entreprenership Development.

The Museum will either use its own staff, or hire people at its own expense identify photographs from the Museum collection, so the youth can concentrate on digitization.

One important map must be designed. If help is needed, there are two in-house print/exhibit designers available.

The 300 pages of text, photos and drawings divide the province's land and oceans into 9 regions (such as "Fundy Coast", "Highlands", "Offshore"). Conversion to web product would produce approx. 200 web pages with approx. 100 photos or drawings or maps. Each page deals with the Landscape, Geology, Freshwater, Soils, Plants, Animals, Cultural Environment and Scenic Quality of a smaller region, such as "Bras d'Or Lakes" or "Eastern Shore Beaches". A key map showing all the regions and acting as a visual navigation tool is critical, and must be designed.

All the text and line drawings are done and available in digital form (Pagemaker files). Colour photos must be found to replace and add to the b/w ones in the book. The organization of the book suits a web site, once the crucial map is developed for more visual navigation.

Part One and Part Two of The Natural History are cross-referenced frequently in the text; as part of the project, we will create web links between the two SchoolNet Digital Collections - including updating the 1996 site with links to part Two.

Further important links will take users directly to the websites of ecotourism operators in the province.

A second important audience is nature tourism operators and their customers. People interested in nature for recreational or tourism reasons will find background information to help them plan Nova Scotia outings or travel.

The third major audience is scientists, amateur naturalists and land use planners across the country and beyond, who may find useful information about habitats and human effects on landscape and oceans.

This collection of information and images has no equivalent in Canada. In keeping with the cooperative spirit of the work, the Museum is prepared to offer the entire document for dispersal on the web, through SchoolNet Digital Collections, completing the project begun in 1996.