Welcome to the August/September bulletin, and the beginning of the Agora
autumn programme...
Agora Release 1
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Agora Release 1 was installed at UEA at the beginning of September, for
initial compliance testing against the catalogue of requirements. However
target and other information had not been configured in the installed
version, so testing could not proceed as planned. Problems were also
experienced this week when data input was attempted, and the system has
not been robust enough to test. FDI will undertake further on-site
configuration at UEA in the first week of October. It is hoped that this
will provide significant improvements in functionality. FDI will also
undertake remote daily backups on behalf of UEA.
A full report on functionality will be made available to the board after
the compliance testing is completed. The report will then be circulated to
associates.
A board meeting is being organised for the beginning November, in London.
Library Associates
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It has been agreed that the library associates will have access to the
first release after compliance testing, subject to the system being
supportable for evaluation. On-site installation and evaluation will
therefore start around the end of October or beginning of November.
An evaluation template for the library associates has been drafted, which
has been sent to CERLIM for comment. This will be completed by the
libraries themselves. Once these results are available, specific plans for
user evaluation will be decided. Since the original timescales have been
compressed, managing user group evaluation within the time available will
be more difficult.
Collection level description
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A further collection level description meeting organised by Agora and
involving interested eLib projects was held on 15 September. The main aim
was to discuss a common subject scheme for describing collections.
Originally Agora and RIDING planned to adopt an existing simple scheme
with broad subject terms (such as the M25 Web Guide list of terms).
However this decision has a wider interoperability significance, both
within and outside eLib, since emerging initiatives such as the
Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER), the Resource Description
Network (RDN) and the Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP) all have
a need to describe and search at collection level. It is therefore an
opportune time to try to agree a common approach.
The meeting agreed that it is highly desirable to adopt a common subject
scheme, although a range of difficulties was acknowledged. A hierarchic
approach will be necessary, to make it widely useful; this would also be
useful from an interface design point of view. It should ideally be based
on a scheme that originally aimed to be universal/standard-like.
As a first step the projects involved will provide a brief overview of
existing subject lists and schemes (eg M25 Web Guide terms, Conspectus,
California Digital Library...) An early followup meeting is being held in
October, given the urgency of reaching consensus before discussing with
wider initiatives.
>From an Agora point of view, since there will now be a longer delay in
deciding the scheme, we will go ahead and ask service providers to
complete the collection description template using uncontrolled subject
terms. The library associates have already completed templates describing
their own collections on this basis.
Institutional Web Management Workshop exhibition
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Agora was represented at the exhibition which accompanied the
Institutional Web Management Workshop on 7-9 September. The workshop was
organised by UKOLN and held at Goldsmiths College, University of London.
Agora had a stand together with other eLib phase 3 projects.
Rosemary Russell, UKOLN
24 September 1999
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Rosemary Russell, MODELS Project Manager & AGORA Communications
Coordinator, UKOLN (UK Office for Library & Information
Networking), c/o ULCC, 20 Guilford St, London WC1N 1DZ
Email: r.russell@ukoln.ac.uk <URL:http://www.ukoln.ac.uk>
Tel: +44 (0)171 692 1302 Fax: +44 (0)171 692 1234
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UKOLN, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, UK
Tel: +44 (0)1225 826580; Fax: +44 (0)1225 826838
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