2 Learning from the process of implementation
This section of the report is concerned with differences between what was planned and what actually occurred, and the reasons for any such changes to plan. It documents difficulties encountered as well as unexpected opportunities that arose. All forms of change are reported including 'learning from failure'.
2.1 Any difficulties encountered in managing the project and carrying out activities
In common with many other eLib projects, SCOPE has suffered from staffing problems which result from short-term contracts. The post of SCOPE Liaison Officer was occupied for only 4 months in 1996 and was vacant for more than 3 months at the beginning of 1997. Other team members attempted to cover the work of the Liaison Officer. Nevertheless, it was necessary to curb the planned expansion of SCOPE activities in Year 2 of the Project and to identify priorities so that key elements in the plan would not be compromized. One activity that was abandoned was publication of a general SCOPE newsletter. Instead team members have kept stakeholder groups informed about progress in an ad hoc manner and through reporting procedures specific in our Project Management Documentation. Development of the Cactus system also was delayed beyond the date when it could usefully have been piloted during the spring semester. Cactus will be piloted instead during the autumn semester of 1997/98.
2.2 The influence of other projects, the programme as a whole, and the programme office on SCOPE
2.2.1 General
The benefit of eLib concertation days and of online discussion is difficult to quantify but has undoubtedly helped the SCOPE team to identify relevant issues and generate solutions. In one specific respect, a concertation day was useful to SCOPE as a project officer from the On-Demand Publishing in the Humanities Project was able to suggest an appropriate package for development of the SCOPE authorization/database package which did fulfil our requirements. Workshops held as part of the eLib Supporting Study of the Impact of OD/ER Projects on Teaching, Students and Libraries, were also beneficial in bringing together groups of Project Officers and in facilitating sharing of experience. Modelling work undertaken at these workshops helped the SCOPE team to gain a greater understanding of the processes involved in developing an on-demand publishing service and in operating a 'live' system.
SCOPE expects to benefit from the work undertaken by a number of JISC/PA working parties in areas of particular importance to eLib projects. For example, a model licence developed by one working party should be broadly acceptable to both publishers and libraries. On advice from the Programme Office, SCOPE has also adopted Dublin Core Metadata which are incorporated into the Cactus database.
2.2.2 Copyright
The number of eLib (and other) projects approaching publishers with different types of requests and proposals has had a positive and a negative effect. Publishers reported, in 1996, that the number of requests similar to that made by SCOPE had increased to an unmanageable level and that any permissions request would be delayed. One publisher reported a 3-year backlog. The positive effect of this trend was that it forced the hand of publishers that otherwise may not have engaged in-house in discussion about on-demand publishing. Issues now have been raised and discussed at length by publishers; this should benefit any future electronic libraries project.
2.2.3 Evaluation
The Phoenix On-Demand Publishing Roadshows in 1996 were useful to SCOPE for generating user feedback, particularly the roadshow held at Stirling University in October 1996. Members of the SCOPE team attending these roadshows were made more aware that academics and librarians are overworked and have little time to invest in innovative projects without any guarantee that these projects will deliver more efficiently or effectively teaching and learning materials. The team is more aware now of the need to 'sell' the ODP concept to enthusiastic and proactive academics who may be prepared to invest a significant amount of time and effort in developing alternative means of delivering resources and encouraging uptake of these systems.
2.3 Changes made to the plan (aims, objectives, staffing, activities, etc.) in the light of experience and 2.4 Reasons for these changes
2.3.1 Links to OPACs
The SCOPE team considers it necessary to prioritize activities in Year 3 so that each activity undertaken is completed and resulting products and services are of high quality. When the Project began we planned to link CMI OPACs to SCOPE resources. As our evaluation activities suggest that only a small minority of first-year students use the Web whereas a majority use the OPAC, links from OPACs would appear to be desirable. However, having investigated the feasibility of linking to SCOPE resources from OPACs, the Project team has concluded that at present, it is infeasible. OPACs at CMIs tend to be dumb terminals which cannot link to the Web. SCOPE cannot require that CMIs mount their OPACs on the Web and, after consideration, would question the wisdom of linking from OPACs to full-text resources; many libraries have dedicated terminals for OPAC use and would not encourage students to monopolize these machines by linking to reading materials. CMI libraries will be expected to incorporate the SCOPE URL into bibliographic records to alert students that resources are available on-demand and SCOPE will keep abreast of developments that make links from OPACs more feasible/desirable.
2.3.2. Payment for SCOPE resources
At the outset of the Project, SCOPE envisaged that just as students would purchase course packs, so they would pay royalty fees for texts delivered online. CMIs currently have very mixed views on the latter. Generally, libraries are nervous of accusations about passing costs on to students. In some cases there is a feeling that since university libraries have a responsibility to support teaching and learning, texts made available in the library should be delivered without charge (excepting possibly a charge for printing but excluding a copyright fee). In theory, however, it appears likely that other institutions favour passing on payments - just as at present many charge students for inter-library loan requests. There are also practical difficulties. While the SCOPE system will provide invoices with detailed reports on usage so that CMIs can recover charges from academic departments or individuals if required, at present, none has any automatic way of charging individuals and although some CMIs have 'credit card' type payment systems for printing, these cannot process differential rates. Where libraries opt to pay for SCOPE resources themselves they are likely to insist on site-license arrangements to facilitate budget preparation. The SCOPE team currently is engaged in discussion about payment mechanisms with CMI library representatives, publishers and booksellers, and hopes to implement a variety of different models during the 1997/98 academic year.
2.3.3. Extending the period for which SCOPE will deliver resources
The SCOPE team also considers it necessary to offer a service until the end of the 1997/98 academic year, that is until the end of July 1998. The Project is funded until mid-May 1998 but we are aware now that resources supplied only for the beginning of the spring semester are of little use to students or academics. SCOPE will budget to employ the Technical Manager and possibly other SCOPE employees beyond the Project end-date.
2.3.4. A publisher representative on the SCOPE Copyright Advisory Panel
SCOPE has added to the membership of its Copyright Advisory Panel. Initially, Jacqueline Fitzgerald of the Site License Initiative sought a publisher representative on behalf of SCOPE; publishers involved in this initiative suggested that the Publishers Association nominate a representative. Mark Bide, Publishing Consultant was nominated by the PA and joined the CAP in November 1996.
2.5 Unanticipated outcomes or unexpected opportunities thrown up by the Project and how the team has taken account of these
The SCOPE Project has been offered a collection of 24 best-selling MBA texts in electronic form directly from the publisher. SCOPE resources have been largely reading-list based until now but we intend to take advantage of this opportunity and have offered these titles for use at SCOPE CMIs. This material may give SCOPE a vehicle to expand into several more institutions during Year 3 of the Project which in turn will allow us to test all aspects of delivery at institutions with different levels of infrastructure. The Project team has also initiated discussion at CMIs on the merits and suitability of a variety of different payment models.
The SCOPE team was aware from the outset of the potential applicability of electronic media to the requirements of distance learning students. However, during Year 2 of the Project we became increasingly aware of the economic importance to HEIs, the scale of distance learning activities and that academics perceive delivery of distance learning materials to be a primary function of electronic media. The team has explored the feasibility of delivering SCOPE resources to distance learning students and has identified two specific obstacles that must be overcome before this is possible. First, SCOPE contracts with publishers cover only Scottish HEIs. Lecturers approaching SCOPE regarding delivery of distance learning materials tend to teach courses that are offered throughout the world. They do not wish to offer a two-tiered course whereby those students based in the UK have access to a wider range of materials, so unless available throughout their target area, they will not adopt SCOPE resources. As negotiation on contracts takes a great deal of time and SCOPE is eager to increase the number of publishers licensing material to it, we do not wish to renegotiate contracts that have already been agreed until that is necessary. (We hope to extend the licences until the end of the 1997/8 academic year and hope to renegotiate when we have established the status of SCOPE beyond then.) Furthermore, we are aware that many publishers may not be authorized to grant the type of licence required to deliver resources throughout the world as publishing territories are divided and rights in a work may be controlled by one publisher in Europe and by another publisher elsewhere.
Second, the SCOPE online delivery system, Cactus, restricts access to specific IP addresses (at present only the SCOPE CMIs). Dial-in access could be accommodated as long as the IP address of an authorized user were logged in advance in the SCOPE database. Unfortunately, computer users with dial-in access tend to have non-static IP addresses making it impossible to register the address in advance. SCOPE has discussed the acceptability of abandoning this level of security and relying instead on the four other security features of the system, but publishers have made it clear that they consider IP-address restrictions to be very important especially when delivering materials overseas. The SCOPE team will keep abreast of developments in this area but does not expect to overcome during Year 3 the problem presented by non-static IP addresses whilst retaining this level of security.
2.6 Lessons from SCOPE's experiences of innovation and development
The impact of on-demand publishing is likely to vary depending on whether or not CMI libraries pass copyright charges to students. Originally, the SCOPE team assumed that the cost of materials delivered on demand (in course packs or online), would be passed to students thus freeing multiple-copy funds to develop in depth the library collection. If the library absorbs the copyright fee for materials delivered on-demand, the viability of on-demand publishing may hinge on added value for academics and students. This is an important consideration for the team in preparing our migration plan.
We are also more aware now that it may take time to bring to fruition the benefits of innovative alternative means of delivering teaching and learning materials and that the transition period must be subsidized. Project funding must be secured for a further period if the value of the work undertaken by SCOPE is to be fully realized.
From the outset, SCOPE team members were aware of publisher concerns about ODP with reference to, for example, security, moral rights, and financial viability. We have attempted to respond to those concerns when developing a model contract and our online delivery system. Considerable progress had been made over the last 2 years and we would revise some of our decisions in the present climate.
First, our proposal to pay publishers for use of copyright materials on a per-page-per-print basis seems less appropriate now. We proposed payment on that basis to accommodate both transaction-based pricing within CMIs (see 2.3 and 2.4 above) and publishers' desire to relate payment to usage. We are now aware that transaction-based payment suits neither publishers nor libraries. It is likely to be prohibitively expensive for publishers to administer and libraries cannot rely on forecast usage when allocating their budgets.
Second, the SCOPE team would revise its decision to disable printing of extracts smaller than the items for which rights have been cleared. When SCOPE began a few publishers expressed concerns about authors' right of integrity. SCOPE would continue to be careful with regard to moral rights. However, we may grant students the facility to print extracts of any size from a single page upward as opinion generally among stakeholder groups is that moral rights are not infringed when material is used in this way. Furthermore, when compared to traditional provision, the relative utility of ODP as a means of delivery is decreased rather than increased when restrictions of this type are imposed.
Third, the SCOPE online delivery system, Cactus, is very secure. We believe that this level of security is necessary at this early stage in the development of an ODP service such as SCOPE which transmits text across the Internet for delivery online throughout the Scottish HE community. However, we expect publisher requirements to be relaxed as services mature and publishers' worst fears fail to materialize.
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