Activities and Progress

• Main Activities & Outputs
  • Project Planning
  • Service Specification
    • Cataloguing Strategy
    • Quality Assurance Procedures
    • Technical Specifications
  • Web Site
  • Prototype Service Implementation
  • Resource Discovery & Cataloguing
  • Dissemination and Training Programme
    • ADAM Presentations
    • ADAM Training Workshops
    • Published Articles
    • Other Dissemination & Training Outputs
  • Volunteer Network
  • Consultation Phase II (evaluation)
  • Collaboration
  • Other Activities
• Changes to project plan
  • Resource Description Record Target
  • Launch of Full Service
  • Consultation & Evaluation
  • Exit Strategy
• Achievement of project objectives to date
• Notable achievements
  • ADAM System Procurement
  • Visual Arts Data Service
  • Classification & Browsing
  • Web Site
  • Dissemination & Training
  • Collaboration

Main Activities & Outputs

Project Planning

The Project Leader, in consultation with the Project Director, has produced a Project Plan which has undergone two significant revisions in the current reporting period. A copy of the plan (to revision 4) has been provided in Annex I.

Service Specification

The determination of the specifications for the service continued from year 1, with many of the draft reports from the previous reporting period being accepted by the Steering Group and finalised. A number of new reports were also produced, such as the ADAM Collections Policy and the extensive documentation produced as part of the new system procurement.

Cataloguing Strategy

The cataloguing strategy covers a number of key aspects of the record creation process; the collections policy, guidelines for resource selection, the use of controlled terminology resources, the adoption of a classification system, and any cataloguing rules used. Many of the draft reports produced during the first reporting period were evaluated, revised and finalised in consultation with the Steering Group; in addition, a number of new reports were produced and evaluated, such as the Classification Strategy, which benefited from close liaison between ADAM Resource Officers and cataloguing staff at the National Art Library at the V&A, and the Collections Policy, inspired by the identified need to more clearly identify what type of resources to locate. During the next reporting period, the various components of the cataloguing strategy will be combined to form an integrated cataloguing 'supermanual'.

Quality Assurance Procedures

The Quality Assurance Procedures were developed in order to minimise the risk of errors in the ADAM database. Essentially this entailed the implementation of an additional 'private' database, into which all new catalogue records are entered and checked by another Resource Officer before being transferred to the public database, and a formal procedure for checking the links to resources in the database

Although resource-intensive, this procedure helps to ensure that the records in the ADAM database are of the highest possible quality.

Technical Specifications

As with any information technology project, there are a number of technical issues, such as database management, information retrieval, thesaurus linking, interface design and interoperability, that need to be addressed in order to successfully implement the ADAM Service.

This aspect of the Service specification was particularly crucial in year II, as an additional £30,000 of eLib/CEI funding was awarded in response to a bid to purchase a more advanced database system.

The software procurement conducted according to the Medium Complexity route outlined in the CCTA TAP Systems Guide: Procurement resulted in a detailed technical specification for the Service, plus a number of documents used in the evaluation of proposals received in response, and detailed contracts for the supply of the software and related support services.

Web Site

The ADAM web site (http://adam.ac.uk/) underwent a thorough revision during the reporting period, incorporating the professionally-designed ADAM logo, comprehensive public and private archives of project documentation and embedded Dublin Core metadata within the HTML; to the best of the author's knowledge, ADAM was the first eLib project to deploy Dublin Core metadata in this way. This first major overhaul of the ADAM web site was launched on 29 November 1996. At the time of writing, another thorough web site design review is underway, in consultation with a graphic designer from the Marketing & Planning Department of the Surrey Institute.

Prototype Service Implementation

The maintenance and development of the ROADS-based alpha prototype service has been primarily the responsibility of the Project's Technical Officer, who liaises extensively with the other members of the Project Team. The ROADS installation has been upgraded a number of times, and has been supplemented by a number of additional applications and utilities produced by the Technical Officer. The ROADS software has also required a significant level of ad hoc maintenance, at times by members of the ROADS team, in order to maintain a usable service; the Project Development Officer has been actively involved in bug reporting to ROADS-Liaison.

A prototype browsing interface has also been developed; this uses a mapping file to map Dewey Decimal Classification numbers in the records to a more user-friendly subject tree.

Resource Discovery & Cataloguing

Resource discovery and cataloguing has been carried out by the Development Officer (0.4 FTE), the two Resource Officers (a total of 0.6 FTE) and the full-time voluntary ADAM Assistant (1.0 FTE). The database currently contains 388 detailed records, indexed with controlled terminology from the Art & Architecture Thesaurus and the Union List of Artist's Names, and classified using Dewey Decimal System edition 21. This represents an increase of 208 records since the last annual report, and is significantly below the target of 750 records from the Project Plan; during the last reporting period the cataloguing staff have been spending the majority of their time re-indexing the existing records to agreed standards, and establishing procedures for the use of the Dewey Decimal Classification Scheme.

With a few exceptions, most records are now stored using the IAFA SERVICE template structure; records previously stored in DOCUMENT format were converted.

Dissemination and Training Programme

The Dissemination and Training Programme aims to raise users' awareness of the ADAM service, promote its use and the use of the on-line resources it catalogues, and promote the Electronic Libraries Programme in general. This is being achieved by publishing papers about the service and related issues in professional journals, contributing to electronic discussion lists giving presentations at specialist meetings and conferences, running training workshops and producing user documentation and training materials.

ADAM Presentations

ADAM Training Workshops

Published Articles

A significant number of articles about the project were published during the reporting period, both by members of the Project Team and by external authors.

References to the ADAM service were also made in a number of other publications and articles.

Other Dissemination & Training Outputs

Volunteer Network

The 'Friends of ADAM' volunteer network was launched at the 1997 ARLIS Conference, and has attracted a very favourable response so far. Members of the visual arts community are encouraged to volunteer for either resource nomnation/evaluation duties, cataloguing duties, or both, and in return for their efforts will be offered free training in the use of ADAM standards and procedures and certification when they reach agreed levels of proficiency.

An on-line registration form has been set up and linked to a database, a Mailbase list set up and a web-based training course is currently nearing completion.

Consultation Phase II (evaluation)

The second phase of the Consultation and Evaluation Process constituted focus groups, interviews, steering group meetings, the automated collection of web server and query logs and both structured and unstructured feedback collected manually at dissemination events, and automatically via a form on the web server. The methodologies employed, and the evaluation findings themselves, are detailed in Section.

Collaboration

Collaboration with other key initiatives is seen as vital to ensure that the ADAM service best meets the needs of the stakeholder community and evolves in line with developing standards and methodologies; some examples of collaborations between members of the project team and other initiatives are detailed below.

• ADAM is one of the founder members of the Pavilion Group, an informal collective of projects and initiatives whose broad aims are to support and enhance teaching and learning in art and design in higher education through the application of information technology. http://www.lgu.ac.uk/iem/pavilion.html for more details.
• Membership of ECSTASY steering group, 17 Oct '96
• Nomination to the Committee of Computers & the History of Art (CHArt), attended 2 CHArt Committee Meetings at Birkbeck, 30 Jan '97, 1 May '97, 12 Jun '97
• Peer-reviewed DESIRE metadata survey
• Contact with MDA, BFI, ITC and Sheffield Hallamam University regarding the classification of media resources
• Participation in Knowledge Gallery planning meetings 22 Jan '97, 14 Mar '97, 11 Apr '97, 16-17 Jun '97; member of Knowledge Gallery Working Group; submitted metadata recommendations for JISC CEI/Knowledge Gallery to Anne Mumford
• Discussions with CIMI re: CHIO interoperability
• Meeting with ROADS Liaison team, 24 Jan '97
• Meeting with Seymour Stokes of Surrey Institute re: art & design research centres
• Discussions with University of Westminster regarding possible participation in EU-funded Historiae project, 14 Apr '97
• Meeting with Technical Advisory Service for Images (TASI), 1 May '97; later appointed to the Steering Group
• Attendance at a Classification and AAT meeting at the V&A 15.5.97
• E-mail discussion with Katharine Martinez of Research Libraries Group about the REACH museum core element set proposal.
• Negotiated free licenses to use the Getty AAT & ULAN vocabularies
• Helped plan and attended ANR Exit Strategy meeting at University of Warwick, 9-10 Jun '97
• Accepted invitation to join organising committee for 5^th Dublin Core workshop; sent comments to OCLC on current proposals.
• Accepted invitation from John Perkins of CIMI to participate in 'Accessing Collections Information Online' session at Museum Computer Network '97 conference, representing eLib ANR/AHDS; travel sponsored by Getty Information Institute
• Meeting at ARLIS with Rob Popper and Pat Batley re: collaboration with DIAD, 4 Jul '97
• Meeting with Linda Brassington (Surrey Institute), Frances Lord (South East Arts), and Alan Haydon (Crafts Council) re: a crafts fellowship at the Surrey Institute, 7 Jul '97

Other Activities

A number of other duties are routinely carried out by members of the Project Team, such as administrative duties in support of the Steering Group, attendance at Team Meetings, financial planning, participation in e-mail discussions, investigation of tools to support collaboration between distributed teams, training and personal development, activities relating to the employing institution, and attendance at appropriate conferences and workshops. Some of the events and courses attended by members of the Project Team are listed below:

• 'Spinning the Web' workshop, exhibition and Z39.50 seminar at LibTech International '96, 4 Sep '96
• MDA Terminology Workshop, Oxford, 12-13 Sep 96
• CNI/OCLC Image and Imagebase Metadata Workshop, Dublin, Ohio USA, 24-25 Sep '96
• Resource-Based Learning Workshop, Surrey Institute, 4 Oct '96
• ROADS Templates Workshop, London, Oct '96
• ROADS Technical Workshop, London, 9 Oct '96
• Museum Computer Group meeting, Edinburgh, 10-11 Oct '96
• JISC briefing, 21 Oct '96
• ROADS v2 Requirements meeting, October '96
• Interviewing Skills 1 & 2 courses, Surrey Institute, 21 Nov '96
• UKOLN MODELS Workshop, Warwick, 16-17 Dec '96
• MODELS 4 Technical Follow-up Meeting, London, 4 Feb '97
• Disabil-IT conference, Birmingham, Feb '97
• 5^th Dublin Core workshop, National Library of Australia, 3-5 Mar '97
• Australian National Metadata Seminar, National Library of Australia, 6 Mar '97
• eLib phase 3 (clumps) meeting, 25 Mar '97
• Visual Arts, Museums & Cultural Heritage Metadata Workshop, Edinburgh, 26-27 Mar '97
• Netskills' 'The Internet for HE Teaching', Newcastle, Apr '97
• MDA Open Day, Cambridge, 23 Apr '97
• Museum Computer Group meeting, London, 7-8 May '97
• Continuous Development Review training, Surrey Institute, 16 May '97
• eLib Business Planning training workshop, London, 28 May '97
• 'Managing People' training course, Surrey Institute, 5 Jun '97
• 'Managing Effective Teams' course, Institute of Management, London, 23-24 Jul '97

Changes to project plan

The main changes to the Project Plan between the second revision and the fourth revision are as follows:

Resource Description Record Target

The targets for the number of resource description records for the ADAM database was revised during the reporting period, to take into account the extensive reallocation of Resource Officers' time to standards development work, such as the classification scheme, and the additional overheads that more rigorous standards demand, such as the quality assurance procedures.

The following table shows the revisions made to the targets between the 2^nd and 4^th iterations of the Project Plan:

At the time of writing (26 August 1997), the public ADAM database contained 384 records, with a further 23 records awaiting quality assurance checking in the private database; a total of 407, significantly less than the target of 750 by the 1 August.

This has been caused primarily by underestimating the complexity of deploying the Dewey Decimal Classification system for classifying networked resources.

The 'Friends of ADAM' volunteer scheme will hopefully redress this shortfall during the third reporting period, by providing additional resource discovery, evaluation and cataloguing capabilities.

Launch of Full Service

The projected date for the launch of the full service was moved back one year, from 26 September 1997 to 29 September 1998. This was necessitated by the additional time required for the procurement, development and testing of the new ADAM System, which was not allowed for in revision 2 of the Project Plan; at that time, it was still envisaged that the service would be built solely around the ROADS software toolkit.

The software procurement is currently on schedule.

Consultation & Evaluation

The contract to develop, supply and support the new ADAM System was awarded to System Simulation Ltd on 1 August 1997; System acceptance is scheduled to take place between 3 March 1998 and 1 June 1998, after which the final summative evaluation phase will commence.

Exit Strategy

The economic and political climate surrounding JISC-funded initiatives resulted in the development of an exit strategy for ADAM significantly ahead of the schedule outlined in the 2^nd revision of the Project Plan; a more detailed discussion is given in section.

Achievement of project objectives to date

The following table details the milestones to date in the Project Plan, their due date and the progress that has been made towards accomplishing them:

All of the Project Objectives as outlined in Section , and the majority of the Deliverables in Section , have been met.

Notable achievements

There have been a number of notable achievements since the last Annual Report:

ADAM System Procurement

Following a bid to the Electronic Libraries programme directorate, ADAM was awarded an additional £30,000 of funding to specify and procure a database management system to support the core service. The procurement has been carried out successfully to date according to CCTA guidelines, as described in the TAP Systems Guide: Procurement[3], and many of the methods and deliverables have been used as a reference model for the AHDS system procurement.

Visual Arts Data Service

Following a bid to the Arts & Humanities Data Service, the VADS Partnership was awarded funding to provide the Visual Arts Data Service. The VADS Partnership is a consortium of institutions comprising a subset of the ADAM Consortium members, led by the Surrey Institute of Art & Design.

Classification & Browsing

After an extensive period of consultation, a classification strategy based upon Dewey Decimal Classification system edition 21 was developed and approved by the Steering Group, and the records in the database classified. This has allowed development to commence on a browse interface to the Service, a user requirement that has been clearly identified during evaluation activities.

Web Site

The ADAM web site (http://adam.ac.uk/) underwent a thorough revision during the reporting period, incorporating the professionally-designed ADAM logo, comprehensive public and private archives of project documentation and embedded Dublin Core metadata within the HTML--possibly the first eLib project to deploy DC metadata in this way.

Dissemination & Training

The dissemination programme was considerably expanded during the second reporting period, resulting in the delivery of 22 conference presentations/demonstrations, 5 training workshops, and 13 publications by members of the Project Team.

Collaboration

A number of partnerships of key strategic significance were formed during the reporting period, notably integration with the AHDS through involvement with VADS, the formation of the Pavilion Group, continued participation in the Dublin Core initiative, membership on the committees of CHArt, ECSTASY and TASI, and participation in the Knowledge Gallery initiative.

[2] eLib: Format for 2^nd Year Project Annual Reporting (August 1997), Tavistock Institute 1997
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/services/elib/papers/other/annual97/

[3] CCTA, TAP Systems Guide: Procurement, HMSO 1995

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