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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


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