On Tue, 11 Mar 1997, John Kirriemuir wrote:
> This eLib dissemination debate rumbles on (but like you, most comments I'm
> getting are verbal or email - wish more people would post ideas to the
> list).
Well OK then, seeing as you asked (:-) ) here's my sixpenneth:
* Whilst I realise that lots of people like schmoozing at workshops and
there's probably a lot to be said for having a single eLib multiday
workshop, I think we should definately _not_ concentrate all of our
efforts just on that. Workshops are just too transisent to make a lasting
impact; they might make have an affect on influential people who turn up
but people who don't make it/come to the subject in years to come could
easily miss out on the words of wisdom that failed to make it to a
published workshop report or proceedings. So I think a workshop should
just be one small part of eLib dissemination.
* If the workshop does go ahead, this might be a splendid chance to make
use of networked AV and to multicast it or at least record some of it for
later delivery over the web. I know at least one person has a swish video
camera that he's been using to plague eLib project with that could record
the sessions and then put them online somewhere. If nothing else people
with web opacs some multimedia content to point at to show off to their
VCs! :-)
* I'm somewhat surprised that the issue of dissemination has come up this
late in the day; I would have thought it is something that most projects
have been doing for ages. We've been disseminating our ideas, code,
reports and whatnots on the web for most of the life of ROADS, and I think
most of the project team have made at least one presentation somewhere
about ROADS or ROADS related matters. I know that the other ANR services
also do lots of dissemination (newsletters, workshops, etc) and I'd guess
that most other eLib areas are similar. UKOLN's eLib pages
(<URL:http://ukoln.ac.uk/elib/>) and Ariadne
<URL:http://ukoln.ac.uk/ariadne/>) are also a great ways of letting people
know what eLib projects are planning/doing/done (which is after all why
JISC funded Ariadne's web version accoring to the copyright page - see
<URL:http://ukoln.ac.uk/ariadne/about/copyright.html>).
* The value of project mailing list archives shouldn't be underestimated.
From practically day one we've had project mailing list archives (see
<URL:http://www.roads.lut.ac.uk/lists/open-roads/> and
<URL:http://www.roads.lut.ac.uk/lists/roads-liaison/> for example) which
allow you to dip back in time and find out why certain decisions were
made; to my mind that sort of dissemination is vital because people can
learn from our mistakes by seeing where we've gone wrong (and right) both
technically and project management wise. Much as I love us to be cockup
free, we haven't been and IMHO its important to let people building
production services from the eLib foundations to see that.
* I noticed that the eLib working papers and reports at
<URL:http://ukoln.ac.uk/elib/wk_papers/> were a bit thin on the ground;
maybe we should all write a technical report or two to describe some
element of our projects and whether we think that we did was the right way
to do it, what we'd do if we were starting again now, etc, etc. Or maybe
these should go in Ariadne?
* Another good way of disseminating results is getting people using your
tools and/or models for their own services. Of course this has to be
weighed against nasty exit strategies (there, I've said that favourite "e
phrase" :-) ) that some project might have that assume commercial
exploitation of results/software/whatever after eLib. If you can
give your code/model/results/whatever away, then that's likely to
encourage libraries and computer centres to use them (we all know how cash
strapped most institutions are after all).
Anyway, there's a braindump for you.
Tatty bye,
Jim'll
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Jon "Jim'll" Knight, Researcher, Sysop and General Dogsbody, Dept. Computer
Studies, Loughborough University of Technology, Leics., ENGLAND. LE11 3TU.
* I've found I now dream in Perl. More worryingly, I enjoy those dreams. *
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