Why did we think we could pull this off?

• DAS: For this to work, we would have to do it w/o significant outlay of resources. The challenge for us was to make it just like any other digital project. How did we do it? The Astrophysical Research Consortium (ARC) provided the money for the equipment. We asked the vendor for a turnkey system, to be delivered and configured on site by them. When they "gave us the key", we took it from there (transferring the data and installing the scripts to allow access). This is what we normally do for our digital projects.
• CAS: We had some in-house expertise with the technologies involved; we wanted to learn a bit more about them. Also, the person providing the main technical support has his undergraduate degree in astronomy. He knew the data, and was excited to be a part of this project. He gladly undertook a site visit to Fermilab to find out more about how their installation was configured.
• U of C archivists visited Apache Point to assess some of the analog materials. This is the kind of visit that archivists normally perform as part of their duties, regardless of the types of materials being considered for archiving. This archive consisted of materials associated with the University of Chicago; archiving them is what University of Chicago archivists routinely do for these materials. (A field trip to New Mexico may be a bit unusual, but it is also fun.)
• Help Desk: (1) We ascertained how many queries we might expect in a week. Once it was determined that the volume could easily be absorbed by Science reference staff, (2) a pilot project was initiated to verify this. Once the pilot was judged to be a success, (3) the Help Desk was launched in production.

Bottom line: We absorbed the full scale and scope of this project by leveraging existing expertise and interest. We didn't bite off more than we could chew, even given the scale and scope, and seeming novelty of the enterprise.