UVA/MWC Group Contract

UVA/MWC Group Contract — Alyssa, Laura, Madison, Ryan

Mission Statement

For our project, we want to make the University of Mary Washington’s history more accessible for others to learn about and to have a location to gather all the resources about the University of Mary Washington’s name changes over the years and its time as part of the University of Virginia. 

LibGuides, Accessibility, and Future of the Site

This project will become a part of UMW’s library’s page as it is connected to the history of the school and to what the library and special collections does. We are going to do our project through LibGuides because it is what the library uses. By using LibGuides the library has offered to sustain the project in the future as well as preserve the project. LibGuides also has many built-in accessibility features that we will use to ensure that the website and resources are available to as many people as possible. Because of the fact that our project as a whole is two projects combined into one, on LibGuides the projects will have separate pages while still being accessible under one main page. The name change group plans to have sections about the reasons for the name changes, backlash or support of name change, the legislation for the name changes, and, possibly, the search for a mascot.

Division of Labor

Madison already has several contacts that might have interest in this site once it is complete, therefore she will be handling advertisement.

She will reach out to the following individuals: 

~ Mark Thaden Executive Director of Alumni Relations & Advancement Communications 

~Jeremy Vaughn Development Officer within the Office of Advancement 

~Phillip Duggins Associate Director of Regional Alumni Engagement 

~Jacqueline Wood Director of Advancement Events 

In addition to these individuals, Madison will contact the overarching bodies of the UMW Alumni Association Board of Directors, The Young Alumni Council, and the Student Alumni Ambassadors at both respected universities (University of Mary Washington and UVA). 

Due to the fact that our project as a whole can be considered two separate projects we are splitting into two groups to focus on the different tracks of research. We decided to look over UVA’s Board of Visitors minutes as a whole due to the vast amount of information, after February 10th when the Board of Visitor Minutes is due we then plan to split into the two groups. Madison and Laura will be focusing on the timeline of UMW’s name changes. Ryan and Alyssa will be focusing on UMW’s time at UVA. We will still be working on the website and presentations as a whole and helping lookover each other’s findings and thoughts on how to set up the website. 

Tools

We plan on using LibGuides for our project. Although it causes us to lose a little bit of creative control, we can still choose the general design and layout, and ultimately we decided that the preservation of our project was the most important factor. We will also use Timeline.js to track the name changes of the university and are considering using Storymap.js or Google Maps to track the construction of buildings on campus. In general, we will be using Google Docs to share information and we are using Trello to keep track of our milestones and goals. 

Schedule of Milestones

  • February 10th: Finishing looking over UVA’s Board of Visitors minutes. The UVA group will email the UVA Library & Special Collections about what they have available regarding UMW’s time at UVA.
  • February 12th: Combine all UVA’s Board of Visitors minutes into one Google Doc. 
  • February 15th: The namechange group will contact Peter Catlin or the Library of Virginia to find any state legislation from Virginia’s General Assembly about UMW’s name changes and inquire about digitization. The group will have the basics of the website setup.
  • February 17th: The UVA group will have looked through all of the findings from the UVA minutes and decide on how to organize the information on the website. The namechange group will have searched through books about the history of Mary Washington, namely William Crawley’s 2008 book University of Mary Washington: A Centennial History, 1908-2008.
  • February 22nd: the entire group will finalize plans for the 7-8 minute presentation on February 24th.
  • February 24: The namechange group will have gone through the relevant documents, some of which may be in the University Archives in Simpson Library. The UVA group will have gone through what else is available from UVA and UMW that is not the UVA minutes.
  • March 1st: The UVA group will have the information on the website and then review organization
  • March 10th: The name change group will have searched through the student newspaper archives on Eagle Explorer for insight into any community backlash to name changes.
  • March 17th: The name change group will make a timeline of the name changes. The UVA group will perform an internal review of the name change group’s page on the LibGuides site; the namechange group will also perform an internal review on the UVA group’s page on LibGuides. 
  • March 20th: The group will finalize plans for the March 22nd presentation and review the website.
  • March 22th: The group will share the site to the library and special collections to look over the site and suggest any changes.
  • March 29th: The group will finalize plans for the March 31st 10 minute presentation 
  • April 1st: The website will be finished, but we will do a deep internal review of the entire site and make corrections as needed and based on advice from the library.
  • April 7th: Projects are due 
  • April 12th: The group will finalize plans for the April 14th presentation
  • April 19th: The group will have finalized plans for the April 22nd presentation