Hi

For those of you who haven’t already departed for the Christmas break, news of the last action-packed month…

Work continued apace in the world of the library associates in December with the major event being the meeting on 16 December at which the associates considered the functional specification. Associates agreed the User Framework Diagram that arose out of the team meeting in November and began their consideration of the User Requirements Catalogue. We were joined in our deliberations by Geoff Butters (CERLIM), Rosemary Russell (UKOLN), and David Kay (Fretwell-Downing). Their attendance not only provided additional valuable input to discussions, but also gave the opportunity for library associates to meet, in some cases for the first time, some of the key personnel within the Agora project.

Much useful discussion ensued, so much, in fact, that another meeting was scheduled for 6 January to continue discussions and finish the review of the Requirements Catalogue. The outcome of these discussions will form the basis of the meeting between the Senior Supplier (David Kay, FDI) and the Senior User (Michael Breaks, Heriot-Watt University), on 13 January.

The User Requirements Catalogue, User Framework Diagram, User Framework Requirements, and the User Comments from the meeting are on the Agora BSCW workspace at <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/bscw/bscw.cgi/0/9527>.

David Palmer also had the opportunity on 17 December to meet with Michael Breaks in his new capacity of Senior Supplier. David brought Michael up to speed on library associates’ progress to date, what we envisage for the next six months, and reviewed the functional specification. The meeting was valuable in providing a common frame of reference for the continuing work of the library associates within the project. Both Michael and David look forward to working with the associates as the project moves forward.

All the current service providers (History Data Service, BLDSC, SOSIG/Biz/Ed (ILRT), EDINA, COPAC, University of Hull Archive, LSE Archive, IBSS, Silverplatter) have been invited to register as BSCW users, and to comment on the draft User Requirements Catalogue.

A meeting to seek views on the technical specification from developers is now being planned for January instead, since a number of people were not available in December.

We mentioned in the October bulletin that UKOLN was evaluating several web groupware products and a trial was conducted of the front-runner, BSCW (Basic Support for Cooperative Work). This product appears to meet most of our needs, so we will be rolling out its implementation gradually, to allow people to get used to using the facilities. We have started with the ‘Functional and technical specification’ workspace (David Palmer lists its current contents above). Benefits can already be seen – we avoid distributing documents as huge email attachments to lots of people, and comments are collected in the same place (when people start sending them :-) Once you get used to the slightly strange language in places, it’s actually OK :-)

A not unimpressive list of Agora dissemination activities undertaken by team members in the last month:-)

• New Review of Academic Librarianship - Agora article by Rosemary Russell and Greg Newton-Ingham submitted (based on presentation at the Leeds hybrid libraries workshop in October)
• VINE – an article on the evaluation of web groupware packages is being prepared by Tracy Gardner and Rosemary Russell
• MSc lecture at University of Bristol, 24 November – Rosemary Russell included an Agora demonstration
• Aslib hybrid library workshop, 25 November - Neil Smith gave a presentation on Agora development
• National Electronic Library for Health: London Symposium, 2 December - Rosemary Russell presented an Agora overview
• Agora presentation for UKOLN staff, 10 December - Rosemary Russell included an Agora demonstration
• eLib phase 3 conference, 15-16 December (organised by the HyLiFe project) – Rosemary Russell gave a presentation on Agora and information landscapes, and chaired a further session.

Please don’t forget to let me know if you include discussion of Agora at any other meetings or workshops.

And finally, if you’re still around – happy holidays and see you in 1999!

Rosemary

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Rosemary Russell, MODELS Project Manager & AGORA Communications

Coordinator, UKOLN (UK Office for Library & Information

Networking), ULCC, 20 Guilford St, London WC1N 1DZ

Email: r.russell@ukoln.ac.uk

Tel: +44 (0)171 692 1302; Fax: +44 (0)171 692 1234

<URL: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/~lisrr/>

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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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