Merge pull request #86 from gwu-libraries/t51-readme

refs #51. Updates README and add project info to docs.

README.md

@@ -17,3 +17,33 @@ sfm-ui provides a Django app which:
 
      cd sfm
     ./manage.py test --settings=sfm.settings.test_settings
+
+# Social Feed Manager
+
+## Objectives
+
+Social Feed Manager (SFM) empowers social media researchers, students, archivists, librarians, and others to define and collect datasets from social media services. To support this work, SFM presents an easy-to-use, web-based user interface that lets users:
+
+* define collections comprising sets of targeted accounts, keywords, and other search strategies appropriate to different platforms.
+* authorize SFM to harvest data from platforms on the user's behalf.
+* view collection information and metadata about harvests.
+* extract, filter, and export the datasets to formats appropriate to the user's work.
+
+Behind the scenes, SFM uses a set of carefully managed processes to harvest and and store this data, recording its actions in detail.
+
+## Components
+
+* [sfm-ui](https://github.com/gwu-libraries/sfm-ui):  User interface and datastore for collection and harvest information.
+* [sfm-flickr-harvester](https://github.com/gwu-libraries/sfm-flickr-harvester):  A harvester for Flickr.
+* [sfm-twitter-harvester](https://github.com/gwu-libraries/sfm-twitter-harvester): A harvester for Twitter.
+* [sfm-utils](https://github.com/gwu-libraries/sfm-utils): Utilities to support SFM.
+* [sfm-docker](https://github.com/gwu-libraries/sfm-docker):  Docker configuration for deploying SFM.
+
+## Getting started
+
+* Documentation:  [sfm.readthedocs.org](http://sfm.readthedocs.org/en/latest/)
+* Discussion:  [sfm-dev](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/sfm-dev)
+* Tickets:  sfm-ui is used for [all ticketing](https://github.com/gwu-libraries/sfm-ui/issues).
+
+Tickets / pull requests / discussion are welcome.
+>>>>>>> refs #51. Updates README and add project info to docs.

docs/index.rst

@@ -3,14 +3,15 @@
    You can adapt this file completely to your liking, but it should at least
    contain the root `toctree` directive.
 
-Welcome to sfm's documentation!
-===============================
+Social Feed Manager (SFM) documentation
+=======================================
 
 Contents:
 
 .. toctree::
    :maxdepth: 2
 
+   project
    install
    development
    harvester

docs/project.rst

@@ -0,0 +1,64 @@
+=================
+ The SFM Project
+=================
+
+------------
+ Objectives
+------------
+
+Social Feed Manager (SFM) empowers social media researchers, students, archivists, librarians,
+and others to define and collect datasets from social media services. To support this work,
+SFM presents an easy-to-use web-based user interface that lets users define collections
+comprising sets of targeted accounts, keywords, and other search strategies appropriate to
+different platforms, and lets users authorize SFM to collect data from those accounts, keywords,
+searches, and related web resources on those users' behalf. Behind the scenes, SFM uses
+a set of carefully managed processes to crawl, collect, and store this data, recording its
+actions in detail. Collected information and metadata about crawls are then available to users,
+who may extract, filter, and export these to formats appropriate to their work.
+
+--------------
+ Requirements
+--------------
+
+SFM is designed around these key requirements:
+
+* Individual users must be able to create and export collections with a minimum of training and
+  staff intervention.
+* Staff must be able to install, maintain, and support SFM based on a concise, clear set of
+  documentation and automated management tools.
+* Developers must be able to add support for additional social media platforms by implementing
+  code that follows a concise, clear set of documented design conventions.
+* Access to and use of social media data is subject to distinct terms of service offered by each
+  platform; SFM will only support methods that fall clearly within these terms of service, such
+  as using only supported API methods and respecting API rate limits.
+
+--------------
+ Out of scope
+--------------
+
+These objectives are not directly supported by SFM:
+
+* SFM is not a primary access, discovery, publishing, dataset hosting/sharing, analysis, or
+  archival platform for collected data. It may provide some baseline statistics, summarization,
+  and browsing of collections in support of users and staff in defining, assessing, and exporting
+  collections, but access, analysis, and long-term storage are complementary to sfm, rather than
+  core functions.
+* SFM is not a general-purpose web crawling and archiving application; although it may support
+  direct capture of web pages and sites, it is complementary to, rather than a substitute for,
+  more established, robust tools like Heritrix.
+* SFM is not a "one-click install" application; although its installation is supported through
+  automation tools, we assume most who deploy SFM will have some unix system administration
+  skills on their team.
+
+-----------------
+ Funding history
+-----------------
+
+* Development of this project has been supported by a grant (#NARDI-14-50017-14) from
+  the `National Historical Publications & Records Commission <http://www.archives.gov/nhprc/>`_
+  to George Washington University Libraries from 2014-2017.
+* Development of the Sina Weibo harvester is supported by a grant from the `Council on East Asian
+  Libraries <http://www.eastasianlib.org/>`_.
+* Prior development of SFM under the `previous repository <https://github.com/gwu-libraries/social-feed-manager>`_
+  was supported by a grant (#LG-46-13-0257-13) from the `Institute of Museum and Library Services <http://www.imls.gov/>`_
+  to George Washington University Libraries from 2013-2014.