Actually, one partner in the project has fallen. Our original partners from Edinburgh University have left the project. That was their choice. It would be glib to say these things happen, but this has not happened on any other project I have managed, so I am sorry it happened here.

After some sensitive discussions with Balviar Notay, our programme manager at JISC, I am pleased to report that we will be taking the work due to be done by Edinburgh forward, and we have recruited a leading expert to help with that. There will be a short extension to the project, to the end of September, to allow this part of the work to be completed. In other words, nothing will be lost from the original project plan as a result of this local problem.

It has to be said that Balviar’s approach throughout these difficulties has been to enable all the project work to be completed positively, and she has shown great goodwill and flexibility to facilitate this.

We have a full project meeting scheduled for next week to assess the ramifications of these developments for the whole project team, and to assure that we have covered all angles in our revised project plan. It would be premature to blog more details ahead of that meeting,

Beyond the project management issues, there has been progress on the technical front. We have been running preliminary tests on two deposit tools: a pop-up interface for Word 2010 to enable direct deposit in a selected repository for the work being prepared in the application; and a more general Dropbox-like drag-and-drop tool that works with desktop file management systems such as Windows Explorer or Mac Finder. The conclusion of those tests is that we can move on to more formal and substantial user tests.

Again, it might be premature to reveal too much about these tools ahead of the tests, so that all users are starting from the same point, of no prior experience. (Not that our target users, all recommended by our repository and disciplinary content partners, are likely to be reading this blog.)

Perhaps a bigger problem is how to present these tools here. At a recent JISC Repository Deposit programme meeting (Birmingham, 1 March, see this report on the meeting) my presentation consisted of a live demonstration of one tool, a short video of the other (had time permitted), all held together loosely by a few slides. Before we overload this post, I’ll promise we will give these tools plenty of coverage in future posts, trying all reasonable representations, so that more people can understand and get to try for themselves.

Evaluation

The project will employ a number of quantitative and qualitative evaluation metrics to ensure that we can judge the outcomes of the project:

i. Downloads and deployment of Office add‐ins.
ii. Number of deposits in repositories at Southampton University and Edinburgh University
iii. Number of deskside coaching sessions held.
iv. Downloads/views of virtual deskside coaching kits.
v. Pre‐ and post‐ DepositMO project interviews. In‐depth qualitative analysis of project impact amongst focus discipline researchers.
vi. Embedding of training in Graduate School (post‐Roberts funding), number of participants.
vii. DepositMO workshop for all stakeholders – participants and workshop feedback.

Sustainability will be supported through building developer community around the open source software outputs to this project. Microsoft Research has committed to working with us to ensure that the Office components continue to be disseminated through their channels. Server‐side functionality will be rolled into EPrints and DSpace as standard functionality. Deskside coaching will be embedded within our library service, and training material delivered through our Graduate School as part of compulsory courses. By working with key researcher communities directly we aim to drive culture change so that widespread usage will drive forwards further development and deployment.

Expansion: It is anticipated that a successful project should see an update similar to that of SWORD with a similar community wanting to get involved. All specifications with accompanying examples for the protocol developed will be published in an easy-to-read form such that others (both producers and consumers) can adopt the emerging technologies. Many relationships with others in a similar area (such as Peter Sefton), are already in place for the consideration and implementation of appropriate technologies from the start of the project to allow interested parties an easier implementation route from day one.