Welcome to the September/October bulletin - not quite so much Agora news
to report from the last few weeks.
Release 1
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Configuration of the Agora Release 1 system at UEA has continued over the
last month. Suzanne Ward from FDI has spent several days on site at UEA to
train David Palmer in some of the areas not covered in the current
documentation and also to help with the configuration process. Much of the
basic target information has now been entered and some simple end-to-end
(discovery through to request) transactions have been carried out
successfully. It is hoped that compliance testing will be able to go ahead
shortly.
The version of VDX installed at UEA has also been upgraded from version
2.2.0.1 to version 2.2.1, in order to improve performance. This upgrade
seems to have gone well, increasing the stability and apparent
functionality.
OCLC have kindly issued a temporary authorisation and password for the
recently-launched 'New' FirstSearch test server. This will enable a subset
of FirstSearch databases to be used in compliance testing, which will be
very useful. We agreed to wait for 'full' authorisation until
installations are complete, so that library associates can take full
advantage of using the FirstSearch production databases for the three
month trial period.
Installation at the library associate sites is still scheduled to go ahead
around early November.
Board meeting
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An Agora board meeting is being held in London on 4 November. The meeting
will start with a demonstration of the Agora/VDX software by Fretwell
Downing. Given the delays to Release 1, much of the meeting will focus on
replanning issues.
The Bath Profile
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A draft of the Bath Profile: an International Z39.50 Specification for
Library Applications and Resource Discovery, has just been made available
at:
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/interop-focus/activities/z3950/int_profile/bath/draft
Comments are being sought between now and 12 November. They will then be
incorporated for presentation to the Z39.50 Implementor's Group (ZIG)
meeting in Texas in January.
There has already been some discussion of the record syntax requirements,
since services wishing to claim compliance with the Profile have to
support SUTRS plus either UNIMARC or MARC21. However since the Profile has
been perceived as a baseline Profile, to which other requirements can be
added, it is possible to specify eg UK MARC in addition. It is likely that
new versions of existing profiles will be produced which conform to the
Bath Profile requirements, but then add specific detail to support
national/discipline/subject etc needs.
MODELS workshops
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The ninth MODELS workshop, addressing the MODELS Information Architecture
for hybrid information environments, was held in Warwick last week.
Participants were supportive of continued development of MIA. MODELS 10 on
rights management is being held at the beginning of November and involves
a range of education and commercial backgrounds.
And finally...
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On a personal note - those of you who I haven't seen for a while may not
be aware that I'm about to depart on maternity leave (baby is due 9
Nov)... My replacement at UKOLN has not yet been appointed, but will be in
touch before long I hope. I look forward to catching up with Agora's
progress on my return next year!
Rosemary Russell, UKOLN
20 October 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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