Bridget Robinson - b.r.robinson@ukoln.ac.uk
Welcome to the Agora news bulletin for November
The project is now entering a consolidation phase during which time dissemination will play a major role. It will be important to demonstrate Agora Release 2 to a wide audience and to generate as much interest and feedback as possible. This feedback is crucial to the continuing development of the hybrid library concept.
Board Meeting
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The board meeting scheduled for 9th November was cancelled due to rail problems. The next meeting will be on 9th January 2001
Library Associates - Case Studies contribution by David Palmer
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In the past month, the last of the Library Associate case studies have been drafted and received by the Agora Team for presentation to the Board and subsequent dissemination. Valuable work has been done that will guide future research and inform the development of the HLMS in a commercial setting. The work of some of the Library Associates is virtually complete at this stage, having contributed to both the design, and the evaluation of the Agora HLMS. Some others may choose to continue working with Agora in the New Year, exploring new issues in another set of case studies. However, all have contributed significantly to the Project and the development of the hybrid library both as a concept and as a functional system.
Release 2
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A meeting was held on 16th October at BUFVC in London entitled "Release 2 and the future hybrid library system." The purpose of the Meeting was to get feedback on Agora Release 2 and on the development of the hybrid library in general. One of main themes to emerge from the discussion was the diversity of audience and the inconsistency of the user experience. It is hoped that these areas can be looked at in further case study work due to take place in 2001.
David Palmer and Bridget Robinson attended two days training at Fretwell Downings offices in Sheffield. This provided valuable information about the Admin Client software of Agora Release 2. Compliance testing on Agora Release 2 has now been completed and the draft report submitted to the Board.
Dissemination
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The Service Provider project briefing took place on 20th October at BUFVC. The meeting offered a project update, a demonstration of Agora Release 2 and a chance for Providers/Suppliers to feedback their own experiences and comments both with regard to Agora and other connected research work. The overall aim was to provide a better understanding of the implementation of the hybrid library concept.
The meeting was well attended with representatives from the Subject Gateways and Commercial Providers as well as the Agora team. Feedback from the meeting will be used in the Strategic Briefing papers which are currently under discussion.
The overall view was that the meeting was useful and would be worth repeating sometime next year.
The second major dissemination event entitled: "The Future if Hybrid - libraries in the 21st Century" was held on 1st November at the British Library.
Despite severe rail disruption the event was very well attended. All the 5 Hybrid Library Projects gave a presentation in the morning, and all except HyLiFe offered workshop options in the afternoon. The presentations will be made available as part of the elib web site. The morning presentations and the afternoon session on the DNER from Stephen Pinfield will be written up and submitted to Ariadne for inclusion in the December issue. Chris Rushbridge will be contributing an overview of the Hybrid Library Projects. After discussions with Stephen Pinfield it has been agreed that the workshop. Should be stages in Manchester and Edinburgh in January/February 2001. Agora will be taking primary responsibility for moving these events forward.
Agora will also be writing a separate article for Ariadne summarising the case study results.