Welcome to the July/August bulletin, for those of you who aren’t on holiday - we seem to be fairly thin on the ground at the moment…

Delivery of the Agora software to UEA is still expected at the beginning of September (delayed from the original date in July).

FDI has been continuing to test access to the Z39.50 services we plan to use in Agora Release 1. Inevitably some access problems have been discovered, some of which have been easily resolved, but others aren’t quite so simple. One specific example is the bug found in the Ameritech Horizon Z39.50 version 3 target which means that Agora cannot interoperate with library catalogues such as University of Strathclyde, which use this Ameritech system. Several university libraries using Horizon are contacting Ameritech, but since we are dependent on them to fix the problem, it’s difficult to know when this will happen.

We also found that the current version of OCLC’s FirstSearch only allows one database to be searched at a time, which means it cannot be used in Agora. However, with good timing, a new version of FirstSearch is being launched this month, which will allow cross database searching. We will be allocated passwords for the new FirstSearch production service when the Agora evaluation phase starts (since we have a limited trial period for FirstSearch).

A scheme for describing and accessing collections was agreed at the July meeting of eLib projects using the FDI VDX software (Agora, Music Libraries Online and RIDING). It is now available at the RIDING web site:

<URL:http://www.shef.ac.uk/~riding/cld/cldsche1.htm>

The Agora library associates were sent a scheme template, guidelines for completion, and supporting documentation earlier this month. Several have already returned the completed templates describing their collection(s). This has been a useful first exercise to see where any issues lie. The libraries have so far managed pretty well, although the descriptions would benefit from a bit more detail in places! We will now be asking the other service providers to fill in the same template.

Previous bulletins have reported on the initiative to develop an international Z39.50 profile, to support improved interoperability between services. An international meeting organised by UKOLN was held in Bath on 15-17 August. It included those involved in developing earlier profiles (eg MODELS, ONE, vCuc) and resulted in a draft international interoperability profile which is being called the Bath Profile. It includes cross-domain searching, so is likely to be significant for the Agora project. The aim is to release it for wide consultation in the latter half of September, with a view to submitting it to ISO as an international profile early in 2000.

A separate meeting was held afterwards with Carrol Lunau of the National Library of Canada to discuss Agora and issues of common concern.

JISC has issued a call for proposals restricted to JISC Services only, which seeks applications ‘to enhance their infrastructure to take part in the Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER)’. This essentially means development of Z39.50 services so that current systems will be capable of interoperating within the proposed DNER. The Bath Profile will be important here. It also covers the development of the use of Athens to support the DNER. A concertation day was held in July to discuss Z39.50, the international profile and timescales (which are short). The resulting work will clearly be very useful for Agora, since it promises improved Z39.50 access to JISC Services.

An early version of the MIA requirements analysis study was presented at a consultation meeting at the end of July where a number of service providers and potential service providers discussed MIA and provided feedback and input. A revised version of the study will be presented at the MODELS workshop in the autumn, after which it will be released for wider review.