Reading about documentation was informative, but I think practical experience was more useful for me. Creating documentation for ADP was a useful exercise in writing explicit instructions for someone unfamiliar with the platform. I found myself thinking carefully about the order of each step, the words I chose, and what might confuse a first-time user. It reminded me of the documentation I wrote earlier for Audacity, where being explicit was my goal. This activity reinforced the value of detailed documentation for digital scholarship.
Working on the ADP task also made me reflect on the kinds of documentation my Vivero project will need. For our podcast-based website, we will need to document all the audio files used, including any sound sourced outside the podcast recordings, such as music. I will need to create/ find metadata for each audio and photo. We should also store copies of podcast scripts and written descriptions of editing decisions so that future Fellows can easily understand and build on the work if necessary.
To make this happen, my project lead and I, and with the podcast committee, need a shared and reliable storage location that we update accordingly. It won’t need regular updates since once the website is made, there won’t be any more necessary changes
Although documenting ADP was different from project documentation, it was still a very valuable practice.
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