Meeting my Project Goals: So now that the semester and winter break are about over I thought I would write a brief wrap-up to summarize what was accomplished and whether or not I met my goals for the semester. 

The goals stated in my project plan for the semester were:

• By mid-October: Create a prototype consisting of two chapters in Spanish and English with audio (I will be working on this).
  
• Create a prototype for the output and distribution procedures (another student, Jared Price, is working on this part).
• By mid-October (and ongoing): Connect with partners who are also interested in working on the project.
• By December: Apply for funding for the project.
• By December: We are thinking about submitting a paper about our experiences for a conference next March.

Overall, I did achieve what I had set out to.  We now have a working prototype of two chapters of the book in XML format (and thanks to Brian Almquist, Bob Arens, and Jared Price we have a search interface and distribution system in the works).  We formed a collaboration with Dr. Yong-Chang Kim of the College of Public Health, and, with prototype in hand, met with the Hesperian Foundation and the Iowa City Free Medical and received letters of support from them.  In January we applied for funding through an NIH grant suggested by Dr. Kim.  Also in January we received word that our paper had been accepted for the Document Academy Conference in Madison, Wisconsin for March 2008.

Nonetheless, the prototype is still a work in progress.  I didn't finish human-read audio for any of the chapters and instead supplemented it with computer-generated audio.  Additionally, I have yet to finish adding metadata to images and audio.  I will continue working on this project next semester and will finish these tasks at some point during the semester.

My major accomplishments for the semester include:

• Learning a complicated XML standard, DocBook and developing a prototype consisiting of ~100 pages of text transformed into XML
  
• Learning about audio and image formats to be combined with digital system
• Working with a programmer to develop a Lucene Index
• Identifying contacts at the College of Public Health and Iowa City Free Medical Clinic 
  
• Working with Professor Srinivasan on the NIH proposal/research grant
• Presenting my work to the Hesperian Foundation
• Getting a paper accepted for presentation at an upcoming conference

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