Our reference project was to develop a reference collection for an Irish Traditional Music library. We had seven team members, all on the MLIS programme.
The project, from my point of view went smoothly overall. We selected our topic quite early on, and arranged meetings each week from week 3 of the course. I felt this worked well because it meant we were all consistently working on the project, and it enabled us to divide work out evenly and effectively. So, our time management and workload distribution was very strong.
However, as we had worked so well early on for this project and so felt we were ‘ahead of the curve’ we did slow down midway through, and our meetings and workflow became more sporadic. I believe this prolonged the project unnecessarily, and the fact that all team members were quite easy-going possibly hampered a speedy finish somewhat. Having said that, I nonetheless feel the project went well; there was a willingness from each team member to get work done and everyone put a good effort in. Everyone seemed interested in the topic and enjoyed working together – we had fun working on this and there were no ostensible clashes of personality.
From my point of view I really enjoyed this project, both due to my other team members, but also because it is a subject I have a background in. Initially I was concerned that having previous knowledge of the subject would inevitably mean I would need to take on more work but that was not the case at all. Each team member, I felt, put in equal work and bought in to the project, so my concerns were unfounded. Conversely it is possibly the case that because I have knowledge on the subject that the project was a little easier for me, so potentially an advantage. Additionally, while knowledge of the subject matter may have some advantage, the fact that we had members of our group with library experience and technical expertise definitely added a lot of value (I would say more value) to the project.
The end result reflects the time and effort that went into the project and I am very happy with the result.
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