Calliope, a portal documentation tool

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1. What is your project? [1 sentence]

Calliope is a portable documentation tool that makes acquisition, publishing, archiving and long-term preservation of otherwise ephemeral media assets practical and sustainable. 

2. How will your project use mobile tools and approaches? [2 sentences]

Using the sensors in mobile phones, Calliope combines data such as GPS location, calendar, and orientation with a database of project-specific rules to auto-categorize acquired content. The resulting package of information is transmitted to an internet-accessible archival database for storage, visualization, sharing, publication and/or long-term preservation (for example, in an institutional archive).

3. Who will use it and why? [1 sentence]

Documentary film makers, journalists, historians, ethnographers, archivists, artists, scientists, librarians, regional museums – in fact, anyone or any team systematically creating or collecting data in the field (be it text, images, video or audio) for projects that require careful description, organization, presentation and preservation (including rights management) of ever increasing quantities of media.

4. Please list three ways they would learn about your project.

• Through use of projects developed by our existing CollectiveAccess and MorphoBank user community that employ Calliope.
• By organizing and hosting an interdisciplinary symposium on the evolving opportunities presented by mobile tools to professionals working on location and in the field.
• Via a targeted marketing campaign geared towards users of social media.

5. What connections have you made, or will you make, with others [communities, organizations or networks] about your project? [2 sentences]

We plan to seed Calliope to users of CollectiveAccess, our open-source archives management software, and MorphoBank, our research support application. Users of CollectiveAccess represent a number of communities of interest, including local and oral history, social justice, libraries, museums, and documentary photography and videography; users of MorphoBank include biology, paleontology and biodiversity researchers documenting environmental conditions and specimens found in collections and in the field.

6. What part of the project have you already built? [1-2 sentences, feel free to include links]

CollectiveAccess (http://www.collectiveaccess.org) is well-established open-source (GPL v3 license) software with an international user base that implements all of the “back-end” archival and media processing functionality required by this project; MorphoBank (http://www.morphobank.org) is the related research support application. A simple prototype media capture app has been developed and is currently being evaluated by a limited number of CollectiveAccess users.

7. What does success for your project look like? [1-2 sentences]

We define success as providing project organizers with the intuitive collaborative tools they need to make a lasting impact in their varied communities – by enabling them to readily record, recall and preserve the data that is of particular import to them. Calliope will be a success when at least one project per month in which we had no part blows us away. 

8. What resources do you need to succeed? [1-2 sentences]

We are seeking funding for development, testing and outreach resources. The existing CollectiveAccess development team will work on Calliope; additional staff will be needed to ensure timely success. 

Additional details:

Please list who is on your team:

Sophie Byerley (software developer)

Seth Kaufman (software developer) 

Stefan Keidel (software developer)

Allison LaPlatney (community support)

Catherine Lillie (project manager)

Maria Passarotti (software developer)

Angie Waller (designer) 

Julia Weist (information architect)

Expected number of months to complete project: 18 months
Estimated Project Cost: $350,000
Name: Seth Kaufman
Twitter:
Email address: seth@whirl-i-gig.com
Organization [if applicable]: Whirl-i-Gig, Inc.
City: Brooklyn, NY
Country: USA
How did you learn about the contest? Project Partners at Queens Borough Library