Bridget Robinson - b.r.robinson@ukoln.ac.uk
Welcome to the Agora news bulletin for March.
The major ‘theme’ for the last month has been dissemination, with workshops taking place in both Manchester reported on in last month’news bulletin) and in Edinburgh.
ELib Workshops
The third and final Hybrid Library workshop took place on 27th February in a very snowy Edinburgh. The event was well attended despite travel disruption
however the weather grounded two of the speakers - Peter Brophy and Stephen Pinfield.
The morning ‘gap’ was filled with an extended and very lively discussion period and the cancellation of the last slot of the afternoon, allowed for an earlier than
planned finish which under the circumstances was welcomed.
I would like to extend grateful thanks to Michael Breaks for chairing the event under trying circumstances and to Shireen Craig who lent able assistance throughout the day to both organizers and presenters.
The opinions from the returned evaluation forms for Edinburgh have been very positive. These will be amalgamated with the other sets of forms from the British Library and Manchester events to produce a final report.
On the whole, the general feeling amongst delegates and participants was that both events were interesting, valuable, and educational. For the eLib projects themselves, the opportunity to ‘expose’ their work to a larger audience provided valuable feedback, throwing new light on existing issues and questions,and raising some new ones as well.
Stakeholder reports
Now that the events have been completed the major dissemination effort will focus on the Stakeholder Briefing Report. This will involve input from a number of project members. A first draft of the report will be available in April, with a final version due in May. This will be a key deliverable in the final months of the project.
Case Studies
Work continues behind the scenes in preparation for the case studies with efforts focussing on ensuring that the technical infrastructure to support each case study is in place, and on establishing the evaluation groups within each case study.
David Palmer had a productive meeting with staff at the University of Edinburgh supporting the SELLIC case study whilst at Edinburgh for the eLib workshop. Issues surrounding the installation of the Agora system and it’s configuration for use in the SELLIC case study were the primary topic of conversation. It is anticipated that close contact and liaison between the Agora team and SELLIC will be maintained during the preparation and execution of the SELLIC case study.