Project meeting

Alun and Mustie met at OUCS on 16th Nov 2006

Work packages

We agreed that we had made a slow start, because of illnesses and other project commitments. The work packages now look more like this.

IB

ACTION: Mustie will contact Matthew Mascord to arrange a meeting to discover what IB existing data is available and to find out contact details for users to approach to interview. (Anticipate meeting to take place by end of November).

BVREH

Interview Classics user

Ruth (BVREH) recommended that Mustie should meet with Charles, Classics - (XXXX tbc: Dr Charles V. Crowther (Contact details and subject interests listed here http://www.classics.ox.ac.uk/faculty/directory/buscard.asp?IDno=282)).

13th Nov 2006 Mustie had a long conversation with Charles. Mustie reports: "Unlike our initial hypothesis, people in Classics are very much motivated to try new technologies and are not afraid of it! They are also very much used to distributed computing although they are NOT very keen on command line interactions. He showed me (lab) paper "scans" of stone scriptures and thought 3-D electronic copies could be very useful in his area of research. Laser scanners may be objectionable but camera incorporating images/scans from multiple angles to put a model of the stones or scriptures could be very useful The reason I bring this up is because the process could use Grid computing for capture and subsequent visualisation of the sone scriptures. It also requires large sets of data. Electronic copies that can be manipulated in various axis like paper would be beneficial in cross-region collaborations. Another application is in fieldwork to capture to electronic copy engravings from stones (in situ, i.e. anywhere in the world). He also mentioned Elaine Matthews in the same building. I waited around for her for as long as I could but left a card for her at the end as I had another appointment. She works on Lexicons of Greek Personal names if I recall correctly."

Mustie knows that he will have to make contact again with Elaine - not expecting her to contact him. Mustie has lengthy notes in long-hand from the meeting with Charles.

ACTION: Done Mustie will visit Elaine 4th December.

ACTION: Mustie to follow up interview with question for Charles, so we can see something of their work online, for our reference and for the final report. e.g. Is it the work of Alan Bowman and Mike Brady?

Sample of Mustie's email:

ACTION: Ally to confirm with Mustie, Charles' details.

Other BVREH feedback

After speaking with Ruth, Mustie is not convinced that there is any usability feedback to be gleaned from the BVREH project. Alun and Mustie agreed that Alun will contact Ruth separately, in case a second approach manages to un-earth this usability feedback.

Ruth's reply (Dec 2006): "I've been trying to think about how our findings might help in determining our interviewees' attitude to their own technical ability. Largely in our interviews we asked individuals how they carry out their everyday research and how technology is currently a part of that day to day process. Occasionally a respondent might offer a comment on their attitude in general, but it wasn't really something we asked. The scenarios included in the draft report were our perspective on the range of researchers that we interviewed and were not directly related to interviewees own admission of technical ability. Would it be useful to get together at some point to discuss this further? I think (though I can't remember exactly) that I gave Mustie some contacts whom we'd previously interviewed, but I could perhaps find some more and let you have the few write-ups which do include comments on attitudes to technical ability. I hope this is at least a little bit helpful! Best wishes, Ruth"

ACTION: Ally to chat with Mark to understand what was anticipated when the project was prepared, and then to contact Ruth.

BRIDGES

ACTION: DONE - await response Alun to contact Richard Sinnott, following lack of response to Mustie's message. Looking for regular BRIDGES users to contact, also possibility of "breaking BRIDGES" briefly during the usability test. (This obviously requires agreement and/or support from Richard's team. We want to be able to observe 2 BRIDGES users - during this failure... or offer them a dodgy script so failure happens for that reason.

Sample message from Mustie:

BRIDGES Users "I work with Mark Norman on the ESP-Grid follow-on project. We would like to talk to some of the researchers/users of the BRIDGES. We would like to find out about the work practices of BioInformaticians and if and how the Grid can be beneficial in their research. Part of our goal is to get a feel of the level of Grid expertise required of such users. Would it be possible for me in touch with existing or potential BRIDGES users? Thanks. Regards,"

ACTION: DONE - await response Alun to arrange for username etc. that allows Mustie and Alun to view the Bridges portal again. This might still be the username etc. from Richard during phase one, but just need to check. Also to get some sample questions to query the portal with. "You can connect to the portal containing the BRIDGES and DyVOSE portlets at:" http://pioneer.nesc.gla.ac.uk/gridsphere

ACTION: DONE - await response Alun to check that the BRIDGES documents which have broken links on the NeSC pages can be published again - e.g. Singapore paper, for Mustie to read up on the project.

ACTION: plan for visit to Glasgow in December to meet BRIDGES users

ACTION: DONE - await response of Richard to understand if David still best contact. Alun to contact David Leader (cc Mustie), to see if he can help again?

Richard's response December 2006: "Alas our Bridges BLAST resource is off-line right now. We are upgrading it due to UK e-Science CA cert upgrades which need to be installed. I will ping you as soon as it is on-line again." Report from Singapore to be sent separately when Richard back in office. Richard anticpates BLAST portal going online again in January.

Interviews

ACTION: Alun to source incentives, probably the Incentives budget divided by e.g. 7. Vouchers to be purchased to be offered as a carrot if we have to draft in graduate users, or more likely to offer our gratitude to interviewees after their help.

Looking at other sources of data

ACTION: Mustie to consider what might be used, whilst attending meeting in Denmark next week re. CyberSEM.

Mustie has also contacted the DIAMM (music manuscripts) project. No response.

ACTION: DONE - await response Alun to approach DIAMM direct.

Julia Craig-McFeely of the DIAMM project (http://www.diamm.ac.uk/index.html website by CCH) responded 4th December:

• I can't imagine why you've had so much trouble contacting me, as all the contact addresses on our website currently come to me!
• I think from the point of view of data protection I could not give you access to our list of users. I could probably however send out a message asking anyone who would be prepared to help you to respond either to me or you. Sadly I imagine you won't get a huge response: I had a miserable time trying to get a focus group together earlier this year! However, if they don't have to travel to speak to you, then you may have some luck. Let me know what you'd like me to do about this.
• We're in the process of implementing a major distributed database which will involve 5 projects from 4 countries, all using one master database for their data, and each project accessing it to create their own work-sets and datasets. In a way this is a virtual research environment, but in reverse: my understanding of the BVREH project is that they hope to create a portal, through which a researcher can view a wide variety of disparate projects and web resources, with tools etc that enable him to create his own links and annotations within a private workspace.
• The DIAMM distributed database reverses that concept to promote collaboration which we feel is essential in most fields: recently a researcher was given a large grant to create a database of chanson texts, which those of us in the field know is *already in existence* in at least three other projects in different forms. Our intention is to bring 5 'pilot' projects which dovetail with each other and overlap to a small extent, into one, while allowing each to retain its identity. The master database is going to be agreed and constructed in January and Feb next year, and will be populated with the data we all have already accumulated. From that point we will only be entering data in the master system.
• One of the first benefits is that we have been asked by a number of projects about metadata standards for manuscript description, and this should enable us to answer that particular question. The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich is poised to become one of the second-wave collaborators, with their online cataloguing system.
• The second benefit is that all the projects are grant funded, and by sharing our expertise and the hours we have paid for work, we should each be able to create larger and more detailed datasets than we would be able to do on our own.
• All best, Julia [Additional: You can certainly speak to me; and let me know if you want some users to visit - I don't think there are any in Oxford, oddly enough! Julia]

What about researchers interviewed as part of the Intute Support for Researchers work by James Wilson?

ACTION: Ally to talk to James about these users?

ACTION: Done. Mustie to follow up link to the usability project task force in Nottingham. Temporary link is http://192.168.17.78/~oercperson/ but does not work. Mustie has again followed this up.