[OPEN-ILS-DOCUMENTATION] DIG roles

[Kathy Lussier]

Hello DIGgers!,

During last week's DIG meeting, I had raised the suggestion that, during 
the conference, we might want revisit the DIG roles and 
responsibilities. However, on further reflection, I think it makes more 
sense to discuss it via e-mail rather than use up our valuable in-person 
meeting time on this topic.

The DIG Roles and Responsibilities are outlined at 
http://evergreen-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=evergreen-docs:digparticipants. 
At this time, we have seven official roles for DIG. However, we rarely 
get that many active participants in the meetings, leading me to believe 
we might have to many roles for the number of volunteers who are 
actively contributing to DIG.

I had some thoughts on the roles and their responsibilities:

The DIG facilitator and Conversion Coordinator are fairly 
straightforward roles. Yamil and Robert are doing great work, and we're 
fortunate to have them volunteering their time for DIG.

The role of the DIG Release Coordinator has been on the DIG agenda for a 
few meetings with the  question of what responsibilities this role 
should have. I didn't have many ideas to contribute to the conversation 
when the question was first raised, but, after having discussions with 
other Evergreen team members at the Doc Sprint on how to keep 
documentation up to date and giving more thought to this question, I 
think a DIG release coordinator can make several valuable 
contributions.  To start, I think the release coordinator could verify 
that release notes are comprehensive and possibly review them to ensure 
they are understandable to the average user who will be depending on 
them to learn what will be coming in a new release.  A good set of 
release notes is the first step to determining what new documentation 
needs to be done. The release coordinator could then use those notes to 
identify gaps in the documentation for the new release and to recruit 
people to create that documentation.

The style coordinator role has always been vacant, but I think it's 
useful to keep that position listed in case anyone shows an interest in 
working on the presentation of our docs.

We also have three content coordinator positions. Until recently, the 
reports coordinator position was vacant, but I see Jim Keenan has 
stepped up to take that role (thanks Jim!) June Rayner and Roni Shwaish 
were previously the Administration/Development Content Coordinator, but 
I talked to June last week, and they won't be able to maintain this 
commitment, even though they hope to continue contributing content to 
DIG. I am the Public OPAC/staff tasks Content Coordinator, but, to be 
perfectly honest, I make a terrible content coordinator. When I do have 
something to report at our meetings, it is usually on something that is 
unrelated to content coordination.

I'm thinking there might be room for consolidation among the content 
coordinator positions. My understanding is the coordinator's 
responsibility is to locate and organize content and to identify any 
content that needs to be documented. A certain amount of volunteer 
recruiting is also required. Since the coordinator is not responsible 
for creating the actual documentation, is there any reason why one 
coordinator couldn't cover both admin and end-user documentation? Or 
perhaps there is a way to fold the reports role into one of the other 
roles, but, knowing that Jim has taken on this role with a set of 
expectations, I don't know if he has the time/energy to expand the role.

I don't know if others have ideas on consolidating these roles. While 
there is a strong need for volunteers to come forward to organize the 
content, I think there is  a greater need for volunteers to create the 
actual documentation.

While we're discussing roles, I also would like to volunteer to work in 
the capacity of DIG release coordinator and leave content coordination 
to somebody else in the community. I've already run this idea by the 
current release coordinators, Yamil and Tim Spindler. I think I can make 
a more positive contribution to DIG in this role since it aligns closely 
with work I'm already doing. If there is any consensus on what we should 
do with the content coordinator roles, I'll be happy to shake the trees 
to try to find volunteers to fill those slots.

I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on this!

Kathy





-- 
Kathy Lussier
Project Coordinator
Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative
(508) 343-0128
klussier at masslnc.org
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kmlussier