Project Summary 

• Introduction and Aims
• Consortium Structure and Partnership Roles
• Scope of the Project
• Project Plan - Milestones and Deliverables
• Project Management and Reporting
• Evaluation and Dissemination
• Commercial Partners
• Conclusion
• Appendix A - Description of the Model
• Appendix B - Details of Project Plan
• Appendix C - Personnel Details and Institutional Contributions

Introduction and Aims

Project HEADLINE - Hybrid Electronic Access and Delivery in the Library Networked Environment is being undertaken jointly by the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), London Business School (LBS) and the University of Hertfordshire (UH) as one of the Hybrid Libraries projects funded mainly by JISC through the elib Phase 3 programme. 

The aims of the project are: 

• To define the next stage in the development of the end-user library environment, going beyond resource discovery to resource access
• To establish a working model for consistent access for library materials regardless of physical form, which is transferable across broad subject disciplines
• To implement the model in a real-life environment, using tools and technologies which will be widely available to the academic library community

Consortium Structure and Partnership Roles

The consortium consists of three institutions located within London and the home counties, spanning a wide range of teaching and research missions. All are members of the M25 consortium of higher education libraries in Greater London. 

LSE and LBS are both full colleges of the University of London, specialising in social sciences and management education respectively. Both are compact institutions each with a single library serving the whole site. The libraries are oriented mainly towards advanced study including research; the British Library for Political and Economic Science (BLPES) at LSE is one of the country's major research libraries for the social sciences, though BLPES also serves the needs of LSE's undergraduate population of over 3,000 students. UH on the other hand is a large multi-faculty, multi-campus university with very extensive programmes and significant populations of part-time as well as full-time students. Library/LRC provision is distributed across multiple sites, and a frequent operational problem is that a student may require access from one campus to resources which happen to be physically sited at another. The project thus aims to address a good cross-section of the teaching, learning and research situations to be found in UK higher education. 

The initial test-bed for development will be based around economics, finance and business information which are of interest to all consortium partners. The commercial value of much of the data in these subject areas has meant that suppliers have found it worthwhile to make substantial investments in making the data available electronically using a variety of access media and delivery methods, which range from proprietary Windows interfaces to Web-based products. Moreover, such data sources inherently comprise numeric, graphical, bibliographic and full-text formats, with an emergent trend towards multimedia (video feeds, audio clips etc.). This both creates opportunity in terms of the potential richness of the resource base and poses a number of difficult problems in terms of copyright, licensing and charging. The design will be validated against the requirements of other subject areas and the practical extension of the model to other subject areas may be introduced in the later stages of the project. 

All three institutions will play a full part in drawing up the user requirements and designing the resource base for the trial implementation. They will also all participate in testing software components as these are developed. Active development of project software will mainly take place at LSE and LBS, building on existing prototypes. LSE will act as lead site for the project and the project manager will be based there. 

Scope of the Project

The model proposed for the hybrid library is user-centred, with the user interface based on the near-universal Web paradigm. The fundamental design concept is that the user operates within a user-dependent managed environment. The system has access (via the login process) to the user's administrative details - status, subject area, registered courses etc. - and uses this information to provide a tailored and supportive environment. For example, subject resources are selected for presentation and ordered so as to match the user's interests as closely as possible, while still allowing the user to explore further as his or her needs develop. The system also retains feedback from the user's actions, providing a mechanism for the user profile to develop with time. Thus the environment is capable both of responding to deliberate choices on the part of the user, and of offering new resources (based on subject-linked metadata) as the user extends his/her explorations. The model furthermore acknowledges that today's user is highly mobile, and thus includes provision for such localisation of resource views as may be necessary when a user is working at a specific site or at home. The latter considerations are of course especially relevant to part-time students and distance learners. 

The aim is to integrate a wide range of resources related to Social Sciences and Business Studies, from academic (including a number of eLib projects) and commercial sources. The relationship of the resources to each other and their contribution to the goal of "seamless" delivery of content to the user is integral to the model. Examples of resources to be included are as follows: 

• Local course-related material (reading lists, course summaries, on-line teaching materials, discussion forum etc.)
• Catalogues (local consortium catalogues, M25/LAMDA, clumps via Z39.50, COPAC etc.)
• Primary sources (electronic journals, DECOMATE, BLPES digitised pamphlets, potentially JSTOR etc.)
• Secondary sources (ECONLit, ABI Inform, BIDS, IBSS, Internet gateways (SOSIG, Biz/Ed), working papers (WoPEc, Warwick compendium) etc.)
• Current awareness/publishers (Journals Online, Uncover Reveal etc.)
• Commercial intermediaries (subscription agents (Swets, Blackwells), hosts (Knight-Ridder, FT Profile etc.))
• Financial datasets (Extel, Fame, Amadeus (on CD); Datastream etc. (on line))
• Government information
• Real time data services (e.g. newswires, financial markets data)
From the management perspective the use of database techniques provides a flexible managed environment, easily maintainable, that aims to store as much relevant information as centrally as possible, thus streamlining both administrative processes and access methods. The database enables the automatic creation of the user environment, managing individual resource access control data such as user ID and password. It supports the dynamic creation of HTML pages incorporating Dublin Core meta tags. 

Key enabling protocols for the model include the network protocols TCP/IP and HTTP, complemented by the search protocol Z39.50. The project also investigates the use of Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) as an aid to document retrieval. 

An outline of the design for a model of this kind is given in Appendix A, which also contains diagrams illustrative of the approach adopted. 

Project Plan - Milestones and Deliverables

An outline of the project plan is shown in Appendix B. In essence the plan is that initially the individual components of the hybrid library will be developed in parallel, within the overall project structure. The goal is to ensure that all elements of the hybrid library are addressed and that dependencies are minimised. 

As the components are developed and tested independently, their integration to form the model as a whole will be carried out in stages, with the opportunity of evaluation and feedback at each stage. This modular approach speeds up delivery, allows stage by stage evaluation and facilitates modifications to the project, which may be necessary in a time of rapid technological change. 

The project plan falls into three main phases, roughly correlating to the three years of the project. 

Year 1: Analysis and prototyping

• Definition of requirements
• Parallel development of prototype components of the hybrid library
• Establishment of User Panel and other evaluation mechanisms
• Project review and detailed plan for Year 2

Year 2: Consolidation of the hybrid library model

• Integration of the components developed in phase 1; further development of the prototype components building on the experience of the integration activity
• Testing the integrated model at the institutional sites
• Development of more advanced features, e.g. the feedback mechanism and enhancements to the service environment
• Formative evaluation, project review and detailed plan for Year 3

Year 3: Refining and testing the model

• Implementation of feedback mechanisms and service environment enhancements
• Refinement of the hybrid library model
• Summative evaluation
• Dissemination of project results
The first set of milestones will thus be passed at the end of the first year, with component software demonstrable. Deployment of the first stages of the integrated environment is planned to take place early in the second year and to be available for testing in consortium libraries as the second year proceeds. Added sophistication in the shape of the feedback mechanism and further development of the service environment for item delivery will follow in the third year, when evaluation and dissemination activities will also be major elements of the project. 

Project Management and Reporting

Overall progress of the project will be overseen by a Steering Committee containing representatives from the consortium institutions and from outside bodies, including eLib/CEI. This would meet as necessary, but once per year at minimum. Closer and more regular monitoring will be the responsibility of a Project Board representing senior staff from the participating institutions. The formal reporting structure will be based on quarterly reports by the Project Manager to the Project Board, which will in turn report progress and adherence or variations to the project plan and budget to the Steering Committee and the eLib Programme Office quarterly. A consolidated annual report will also be provided to eLib at the end of each project year, and the Steering Committee would be expected to use this as the basis for a detailed review of interim progress by eLib and external peers. 

Because an investigative/research phase is planned in year 1, a deliverable from this will include timetabled technical objectives for project years 2 and 3, i.e. a much more detailed project plan against which progress of development can be monitored. This will enable variations to plan to be easily identified and reported, and action taken to recover them. It is anticipated that informal contact between project staff and Project Board members will also occur alongside these formal structures, with several Board members having practical involvement in the project as part of institutional contributions. 

The Project Manager will have operational responsibility for project staff regardless of their base site, and will also co-ordinate and monitor agreed institutional contributions of time from other staff of the consortium partners. 

Evaluation and Dissemination

Evaluation will be based closely on the Tavistock Institute guidelines document for eLib projects. The main technique to be used is capture of user feedback, initially from the participating institutions and potentially in the later stages (Year 3) from a wider audience. User feedback will be of particular importance when integration of components begins in Year 2 of the project. 

A Year 1 objective is the identification of a representative User Panel from the consortium partners, and the establishment of mechanisms (such as email lists) to enable simple and cost-effective consultation of the Panel on decision issues for the project. End-user feedback will also be collected via on-line questionnaires, and samples will be followed up in detail by individual contact and interviews. User consultation will focus mainly on two areas: usability of the system, and value of the content available through it. However, because initial effort will be spent on establishing an efficient infrastructure for consultation and large-scale feedback, this can subsequently be used to define new questions and topics for consultation. 

As development tasks will be largely undertaken by LSE and LBS, the role of UH as consortium partner will include that of peer review of not only the "visible" user interface, but also the underlying techniques and technologies used. 

Continuous dissemination of results and progress will be via a dedicated project Web site. As prototype components of the system become available for on-line testing, "guest" access will be provided wherever possible subject to any restrictions imposed by content copyright holders. 

Budget has been allowed for an end-of-project seminar/workshop, and also a controlled amount of printed publicity and dissemination of results. Members of the project team and Project Board will also of course seek opportunities to publicise progress and results via appropriate conferences and other events for the wider library and information systems communities. 

Outcomes of the dissemination strategy may be summarised as follows: 

• Project Web site (including discussion forum for interested parties)
• Project documentation (including working papers, technical implementation notes etc.)
• Guest login to developing prototype systems
• Final project report
• Seminar(s) and technical briefings for interested parties
• Software developed freely available under suitable licence

Commercial Partners

Discussions have been held with a number of commercial suppliers in different sectors of the information supply industry. SIRSI (library system supplier to LSE and LBS), Swets and Silver Platter have expressed firm interest in supporting the project. Our belief is that other commercial suppliers may well wish to be associated with a successful project bid and as HEADLINE progresses we expect to pursue other potential partners. 

Conclusion

• Our concept of the hybrid library is firmly focused on user requirements and on guiding the user through both resource discovery and the delivery of the target material. At the same time it offers a strong management framework and tangible deliverables which will have value outside the participating institutions. 

 
Appendix A - Details of the Model 
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