About the Curationist Project
An initiative of the MHz Foundation, the Curationist platform aims to become an ecosystem for collecting and sharing cultural materials from the Creative Commons and public domain. It brings together artworks from multiple museums and cultural institutions worldwide that release their collections through an open data policy. Artwork metadata and associated media files are harvested through open APIsApplication Programming Interface, a way for computer programs to talk to each other. and bulk data delivery. Once collected, this data is mapped from the particular information schema used by each source to the Curationist data model, indexed and exposed to a powerful search interface that enables users to create collections and contribute their own metadata, e.g. by suggesting alternate classification terms, translating, correcting errors, etc.
Technical project management
My first role on this project was as Technical Project Manager, where I was responsible for coordinating a distributed team of front-end and back-end developers, software architects, consultants and stakeholders. I worked closely with the product owner to define functional requirements, discussing potential technical solutions with developers and the software architect and following up on development tasks delegated to multiple developers on several time zones.
Metadata consulting and quality assurance
As the project progressed, my role evolved to focus more on metadata harvesting and mapping. This involves evaluating new data sources, navigating technical and licensing conditions for adding them to the Curationist database. Once the metadata schema of a new source is mapped to the Curationist internal format, I work with developers to ensure it is being properly harvested and mapped and provide Quality Assurance for each source.
Collaboration
I collaborate with a number of agencies and independent consultants on this project, in particular
- Sharon Mizota, metadata consultant
- Samuel Lavoie, SEO consultant
- Principal, design studio
- Alteria, software engineering and consulting agency
Agency
My participation in the curationist.org project is through Open Eye Consulting.
