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Steps: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |   Step One: Understanding the Vision and Promises   In its successful proposal to the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Indiana Humanities Council (IHC) identified Indiana Online as a leading-edge interactive, multimedia resource that will convey traditional history, lore, and knowledge, as well as interactive learning resources and advanced visualizations of data." IHC characterized this resource as central to its strategic plan to build "humanities-rich" communities: it will be "an extensive resource to strengthen Indiana communities and to provide services and information to leaders, educators, and cultural organizations." The encyclopedia also will serve "a general audience interested in the state, those interested in "cultural tourism," researchers, the media, the 90 Indiana community foundations, and corporations and individuals investigating areas for investment and location." The proposal envisioned "three distinct capacities" embedded in the online encyclopedia-multimedia presentation, access to and through the medium via hyperlinks, and connectivity, or the ability to reach other people by means of the encyclopedia’s technology. The technology itself is to advance larger state interests by: modeling a high technology project for the state that harnesses state resources to work together; moving "students, cultural organizations, leaders, and communities" more completely into the information society by putting an advanced technology tool at their disposal; and presenting the state as a leader in the nation in the development of reliable, high-quality online new media. Specifically, the proposal promised three "smart desktop features" to serve the special audiences of leadership, education, and culture. These desktops will provide specialized access to services and data connected with the encyclopedia and with the Council. (Although not noted in the proposal, development of a smart desktop for teachers2 is a separate project of the IHC, so the main issue is its interoperability with Indiana Online. Parallel desktops suited to the needs of leaders and cultural agencies will be developed later.) By the conclusion of the planning phase in May 2002, the proposal promised the following deliverables: needs assessment: including review of potential audiences, especially educators, curriculum use, key information resources, personnel an editorial plan for the content of the encyclopedia: including standards for accuracy, completeness, balance a technology plan and model for the database and user interface of the encyclopedia, including metadata, search engines, coding schemes, open architecture, hardware, software business plan: including goals and objectives, products and services, dissemination, marketing, possibilities for fee structure3 a networking and resource plan for the collaboration of key state agencies and local humanities organizations IHC identified The Polis Center at IUPUI (TPC) as its primary partner in the development of Indiana Online, with TPC managing the planning phase under the governance of IHC. 2The feature will provide Indiana teachers with a web-supported desktop which includes their grade book, class roll, schedule, e-mail and other items. In addition, the ILC portal will have a list of lesson topics specifically designed or selected by teachers for their grade level. The system will allow teachers to click on a topic and open a databank of humanities-based lesson plans across all disciplines that have been developed by master teachers in the state and reviewed by peers and scholars. Each lesson, coded for age-appropriateness and content, will directly reference state curriculum standards. A final box on the desktop will house an inventory of educational and cultural resources available from collaborating content providers (hence, the term "Learning Collaborative") around the state. 3Although sustainability and maintenance are not mentioned as a deliverable under the business plan, they must be part of it. The proposal does imply that IHC was prepared to assume this cost: "Since the Indiana Humanities Council, however, has decided to make the Cultural Network a mainstay of its strategic plan, the effort involved in maintaining the system [i.e., Indiana Online] would become part of the routine work of the Council."