William Morris Exhibit

So last year I was hired to be the project manager for Special Collections @ University of Maryland Libraries 2012-2013 exhibit. I was very excited to get to work on the project because I would love to work on exhibits full time someday after completing my MLS. I also am strongly interested in creating digital exhibits / learning modules from primary source materials (dream job). I was thrilled to get to take part in the exhibit (I also really enjoyed the subject - William Morris).

For me one of the best parts was learning that there would be a digital exhibit. The digital exhibit would be loaded into a template created by a previous graduate assistant, so I wouldn't need to design the whole thing from scratch, but I could modify as necessary. I was especially happy when the template creator got a full time job prior to the exhibit being completed which made authoring the digital exhibit my responsibility. I did have some help from student volunteers whose work I oversaw. But I can take a fair amount of credit for the site and am really proud of how it turned out.

There was some minor drama just prior to uploading the digital exhibit to the server. The libraries are currently updating their website CMS and the exhibit template was not compatible with the new CMS which meant that the exhibit was going to be uploaded onto a different server that I wouldn't actually have access to (as in no ability to edit after the digital exhibit went live). So I did some last minute adjustments which reflect the soon to be static nature of the exhibit. I decided to redraft the news & events page to social media that way we could still update any interested parties in current happenings related to the exhibit. I combed through the code/content looking for any errors I could find (please don't tell me if you find any - I can't correct them and so I don't want to know). And then I sent my baby off to live on a server far, far away. But you (and I) can visit How We Might Live: The Vision of William Morris and check out the social media links to find out what's going on currently with the exhibit.

Have a great day and keep smiling! :)