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Contents The Project has passed its major milestone of commencing, on the scheduled start date of 1 January 1998. No further major milestones were either scheduled or achieved within the period covered by this report. Establishment
of Management Arrangements & Bodies
The Project Steering Committee has met once, at LSE in May 1998. The formal meeting was followed by an informal meeting, to which all staff involved in the Project were invited. As some Steering Committee members were not able to attend this meeting (despite protracted prior negotiation of dates), one or more informal opportunities will be provided for Steering Committee members to meet members of the Project Team, and be briefed on the objectives and progress of the Project. Project management documentation comprising the: has been completed, approved by the Project Board and submitted for approval to the eLib Programme Office by the deadlines agreed between the Project Manager and the eLib Programme Director; Formal approval of and/or detailed responses to these documents are currently awaited. Staff have now been recruited or seconded to fill the three posts approved in the Project Proposal, although the Project Officer (based at LSE) was not in post until mid-April 1998. A detailed Technical Workplan for Phase 1 of the project has been prepared as a working document, and is currently being used to agree allocation of Tasks and work calendars amongst individual staff involved in the project. An Outline of the Phase 1 Workpackage/Task structure defined in the Technical Workplan is appended to this report. In accordance with the Project Communications Plan, a number of opportunities have been taken to publicise the project. In particular, the project has made available an interim 'flyer' (pending availability of the revised eLib Programme publicity pack) and distributed this to a number of relevant conferences. A Web-based 'slideshow' presentation has also been prepared to be usable by any member of the project team to explain the project to various types of 'audience'; This has been used to date with library staff at LSE, members of the project Steering Committee and external visitors interested in the project. A database log is maintained of forthcoming and completed dissemination 'events', and a summary report from this is appended to this report. Assessment of Library Resources In anticipation of tasks to be formally specified in the Technical Workplan, a significant amount of work has already been undertaken on the identification, classification and prioritisation of library resources, spanning the current holdings (either physical or accessible) of all three partner institutions and a variety of media. Assessment of other Relevant Projects and Technologies Similarly, significant progress has also been made in reviewing available
information from other relevant sources and projects (within and outside
the UK eLib Programme) to identify data models, techniques, standards and
software tools that may be usable or adaptable to meet the objectives of
HeadLine.
Learning from the process of implementation No significant unanticipated difficulties have been encountered to date in starting up and managing the project, although the prescriptive format (and resulting staff time commitments) for project management documentation was not entirely clear to the prospective partners at the proposal/approval stage (i.e. prior to the project start date) and complying with these requirements has caused some delay in the finalisation of a detailed workplan, and therefore in the commencement of substantive work according to that plan. Some benefit has been gained from liaison and collaboration with other eLib Phase 3 Hybrid Libraries projects, particularly in the coordination of planned dissemination activities. No changes have been made to the Project Plan since its submission to
the eLib Programme Office in March 1998. However, formal approval of the
Project Plan (together with the associated Communications Plan and Evaluation
Plan) has not yet been received from the eLib Programme Office, and therefore
it is possible that these will be revised in the light of feedback received.
Due to the early stage in the timetable of the project at which this
report is being made, it is not appropriate to report interim evaluation
results.
It is anticipated that project Tasks as outlined in the Phase 1 Technical
Workplan will be undertaken, towards the general goals for Phase 1 of the
project which are described in the Project Plan.
Outline of Phase 1 Workpackage/Task structure
Calendar of Dissemination Activities
- as at 1st July 1998
The submitted Project Proposal that was accepted by JISC cast projected expenditure under the four recurrent and two capital headings listed, over the three (January - December) calendar years for which the project will run. JISC funding was approved on the basis of recasting this unequally into the four (August - July) JISC financial years over which the project spans, under just two aggregated budget heads for recurrent and capital funding, but totaling the same as the Proposal over the three-year period. This results in the project appearing to be over-funded in the early stages, but correspondingly under-funded in its' second and third years; it is therefore more prudent and informative to monitor actual expenditure against the Proposal profile than the funding profile used by JISC. "Anticipated" expenditure in the table above has been calculated for the seven month period covered by this Annual Report as 7/12 pro-rata of the amounts under each budget head in the Project Proposal. "Variation" in the table above is between Actual and Anticipated expenditure, and shows aggregated underspends of both recurrent and capital funding. The apparent underspend of capital funding is planned, so that technical decisions can be taken in the light of findings of the initial research Phase of the project. The outstanding balance is likely to be fully committed by the end of Phase 1 of the project. The net underspend of recurrent funding is unplanned, and is largely due to delays in recruitment of suitable candidates to both of the Project Officer posts (at LSE and LBS). It is proposed that the outstanding available balance be carried forward, and used to fund some additional temporary staff time during the coding/testing stages of Tasks that have now been planned, which will be undertaken during the period November 1998 to June 1999. This will enable us to ameliorate knock-on effects of the delayed recruitment to the project. For paper copies of these documents or any more information about the project please email. |
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