From peter.robinson@english.oxford.ac.uk Fri Jan 30 19:12:41 1998

Date: Mon, 26 Jan 1998 15:39:02 GMT

From: peter.robinson@english.oxford.ac.uk

To: pjelliot@winvmd.vnet.ibm.com, mjd@coco.ihi.ku.dk, adolf.knoll@nkp.cz,

    piazzoni@librs6k.vatlib.it, lou.burnard@computing-services.oxford.ac.uk,

    uschi@VNET.IBM.COM, brandt@pc0959.literatur-und-kunst.Uni-Marburg.DE,

    bove@pc0959.literatur-und-kunst.Uni-Marburg.DE,

    r.gambacciani@mail.regione.toscana.it,

    heusinger@pc0959.literatur-und-kunst.Uni-Marburg.DE,

    anne.korteweg@konbib.nl, Hans.Jansen@konbib.nl, lalou@msh-paris.fr,

    u35395@uicvm.earn, sgoddard@dmu.ac.uk, cfaulhab@library.berkeley.edu,

    mproffit@library.berkeley.edu, cwd3@columbia.edu,

    Patricia.MANSON@LUX.DG13.cec.be

Subject: MASTER at Luxembourg: the new plan





The Luxembourg meeting



I am sending this account of the Luxembourg negotiation meeting last week

to ALL members of the MASTER consortium.  These now comprise:

1.  EU funded partners (the 'full EU partners'): De Montfort Uni (DMU),

Oxford Uni (OU), IRHT Paris (IRHT), Marburg Bild Archiv (BFM) , Czech

National Library (NLP), Arnamagnaean Institute (AMI), Royal Library of the

Netherlands (KB)

2.  'EU Sponsoring partners': EU bodies contributing and participating but

not receiving EU funds: British Library (BL); Bodleian Library, Oxford

(Bodl); Wellcome Institute London (WI); Arnamagnaean Institute Reykyavik

(SAM)

3.  'Non EU Sponsoring Partners': Non-EU agencies contributing and

participating but not receiving EU funds: EAMSS project and related

Mellon-funded project.

There are two other partners whose status is unsure: the Vatican Library

(VL), which may now be in category (3), and IBM UK, which may now be in

category 2.



Representatives of the above were in Luxembourg as follows:

Full EU partners: DMU (me, Sophia Goddard); OU (Lou Burnard); BFM (Jens

Bove); AMI (Matthew Driscoll); KB (Hans Jansen).  IRHT (Elisabeth Lalou,

Patricia Stirneymann) could not come because of the train strike on the

Tuesday.

Others present: IBM (Uschi Reber); EAMSS (Consuelo Dutschke)



1.  The Meeting: reaction to the submitted proposal.

The EU assessors' reaction to the project was positive, overall, and hence

their decision to place it top of the 'reserve list' of projects.  Broadly,

they liked the project.  With the release of budget monies, this made it

possible for us to be funded.  However, some things the assessors did not

like, as follows :

'Resources are over-estimated in general and should be scaled down

(especially on software development and management). In addition the effort

spent on the specification and testing of the first level records needs to

be reduced.  The relationship and relevance in connection with EAMSS needs

to be clarified.  The work on the Canterbury Tales is not central to the

objectives of the project and should be removed.  Other relevant issues for

this type of implementation (such as character sets) should be adequately

addressed.  A medium and long term business plan (exploitation plan) is

essential for the credible launch of such a service'.

These points were elaborated by the EU project officer, Pat Manson.  In

essence: they wanted us to scale the project from around 140 person-months

of effort to around 96: a cut of about one third.

Further, the EU advised that one of the major partners in the proposal, the

Vatican Library, could NOT be funded under EU rules.  We would have to

redraw the proposal so that they were not a partner.



2.  Remaking the project plan...

We spent much of Tuesday hearing the EU's reaction and this raised a

considerable doubt in our mind: could we go ahead with the project with

this cut?

After a bracing, and excellent, Moroccan dinner on Tuesday night myself,

Lou Burnard, Matthew Driscoll and Hans Jansen stayed up late to hammer our

way through this.  We were not going to bed until we had got this done.

And so we came up a Piece of Paper with the new work plan on it.  To make

this, we decided to go right back to first principles.  The EU was offering

us 96 months of money to do something with manuscripts descriptions.  We

had the partners in the current group to do this with.  What would we do?



3.  The revised work plan

We divided the work to be done into the following phases:

1.  Definition

2.  Implementation

3.  Demonstrator

4.  Dissemination/Validation

5.  Project Management

To this, the next day (at the suggestion of Pat Manson, and following

further discussion) we added two more phases:

6.  Business Plan

7.  Concertation

That night and the next day, with all the partners, we talked over this

model.  We decided that it did indeed include EVERYTHING we wanted to do.

So then, we set out to define this plan more thoroughly, and divide it up

into effort over the partners.



Here is what we arrived at.  Bracketed time allocations are for nonfunded

partners. Starred names represent partners primarily responsible for a work

package. This differs slightly from what we presented at the Luxembourg

meeting as I have been refining exactly who does what on what:

Work Package One: Standards

Leader: OU

Time allocation: 15 months

This will proceed through three phases:

a.  Preliminary Definition, at the start of the project

b.  Revision, on the base of partner experience at project midpoint

c.  Final statement of standards at the end of the project

Subpackages, with time allocations:

Formal Standards Definition

DMU 1 OU* 6 AMI 1  (EAMSS 1)  total 8

Partner Assessment

DMU 1 OU* 0 AMI 0.5 KB 0.5 BFM 0.5 IRHT 0.5 NLP 0.5 (EAMSS 0.5) total 3.5

Expert Assessment

DMU* 0.5 (EAMSS 0.5)  total 1.5

Formal Statement

DMU 0.5 OU* 1 (EAMSS 0.5)  total 1.5



The final SGML-based standard is expected to be submitted to the TEI for

ratification.  Members of MASTER will take part in the TEI workgroup.



Overall Time allocation by partner this package:

DMU 3 OU 8 AMI 1.5 KB 0.5 BFM 0.5 IRHT 0.5  NLP 0.5  (EAMSS 1) total 14.5



Work Package Two: Implementation

Leader: AMI

Time allocation: 48 months

Subpackages, with time allocations:

Record making, according to the recommended standard

AMI* 6 KB 6 BFM 6 IRHT 6  NLP 6 (EAMSS 6) total 30

Supervision and liaison

AMI* 3  total 3

Software support specification for creation of records

DMU* 1 total 1

Software support: for creation of records; help desk; integration of

external data

DMU* 5 IBM 1 total 6

Server specification (note: servers will be implemented at both DMU and OU)

DMU* 1 OU 1 IBM 0.5 (EAMSS 0) total 2.5

Server implementation at both DMU and OU

DMU* 2 OU 2 IBM 1.5 total 5.5





Work Package Three: Demonstrator

Demonstration of full access to all records, open to all through a Web

interface on the Internet.  Including records contributed by non-funded

project participants (EAMSS, Vatican? etc)

Leader: DMU

Time Allocation: 6 months

DMU* 2 OU 2 IBM 2



Work Package Four:

Dissemination

Each active library partner (and OU) will mount a work shop for other

libraries, etc, with manuscripts for which they wish to make electronic

records.  This will take place in the final phase of the project.

Leader: not yet known

Time Allocation: 9 months

DMU 1 OU 1 AMI 1 KB 1 BFM 1 IRHT 1 NLP 1 (EAMSS 1)

plus: additional two months for WP leader, who will have to prepare

materials etc for all workshops



Work Package Five:

Project management

This will involve coordination of all project activities, including running

a web page and a discussions list, etc, over the whole length of the

project

DMU 15 months



Work Package Six

Business Plan

Towards the end of the project: this will be a survey of what would be

required for continuation of MASTER as a stand-alone service: offering

support for the standard, help with software and implementation, and

running the on-line catalogue.

Leader: not yet known

Time Allocation: 2 months



Work Package Seven

Concertation

This task, running throughout the project, will monitor events elsewhere in

the manuscript world, and seek active links between MASTER and these.  This

will involve building on links already current (eg with EAMSS) and building

relationships with new projects (eg MALVINE).

Leader: not yet known

Time allocation: three months



Total: 98 months allocated.



Overall, the redraft has shifted resources from the centre (DMU), which is

now getting significantly less funding.  However, most library partners are

to receive close to the funding originally planned.





4.  What next??

I have committed us to submitting the first draft of the revised project

plan to the EU by the week beginning 23 February.  To hit this, the

partners will need to see a first draft by 6th February.  I would like to

base this on what I outline in (3) above, with your comments, suggestions,

corrections, etc.  So: let me know what you think of the above!!!

I am particularly interested in hearing from partners who would be prepared

to head one of the work packages.  I think DMU AMI OU are fully committed

on this plan already.  We need leaders for work packages 4 6 7....you would

(of course) get some extra money for this.



I will write to the individual funded partners in the next few days about

exactly what we require from them...

best

Peter





***NOTE NEW EMAILS: peter.robinson@english.oxford.ac.uk *********

*****************OR: peter.robinson@dmu.ac.uk********************



The Canterbury Tales Project

Centre for Socio-legal Studies, Wolfson College

Linton Road, Oxford OX2 6UD

Phone +44 (0)1865 284245, fax 284221



Project Manager

The IBM/De Montfort Digital Library Project

International Institute for Electronic Library Research

De Montfort University, The Gateway, Leicester LE1 5XY, UK

Phone +44 (0)116 250 6349, fax 257 7170



Canterbury Tales Project Website: http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/projects/ctp/

Digital library webite: http://www.dlib.dmu.ac.uk