[290] in magellan
3rdBarton Bi-Weekly Report
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Carl Jones)
Thu Oct 7 14:39:16 1999
Message-Id: <199910071838.OAA00685@torill.mit.edu>
To: magellan@MIT.EDU
Cc: stc-lib@MIT.EDU, 3rdbc@MIT.EDU, 3rdbarton@MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 14:38:38 -0400
From: Carl Jones <carlj@MIT.EDU>
Reply-To: carlj@MIT.EDU
Project Name: Third Barton Project (Project to find a replacement for
the MIT LIbrary Management System)
Project Management Team: Nina Davis-Millis, Joan Kolias, Carl Jones
Report Date: October 7, 1999
URL: http:/macfadden.mit.edu:9500/c3/3dbarton
Accomplishments Past Period:
- We have now completed three of the five scheduled demos. SIRSI
(which I reported on earlier), Endeavor, and Innovative Interfaces, have
presented their systems so far. The presentations have been a unique
experience with the expected apparent plusses and minuses for each system. We
have been grateful to have had, at one time or another, the attendance of Susan
Minai-Azary, Ray Cheng, Jeff Schiller, and Tim McGovern. Each
has made helpful comments and asked searching questions during the
technical sessions. None of the vendors have a kerberos or certificate
based authentication mechanism in place, but so far all have expressed
a willingness to implement a kerberos-based solution (to greater or
lesser degrees), as well as work towards a solution which encrypts the
communication stream between the clients and server.
- Our Meeting with Thomas Egan and Anthony Flanagan of the Procurement
Office finally happened and was very informative. Tom gave us some
hand-outs which included samples from other MIT RFP's. We can also ask
him for more samples, which might be helpful (at this point we need
all the examples we can get!). They're also willing to read whatever
draft we come up of the RFP before we send it to the vendors.
Goals for the Coming Period:
- Complete demo's (Ex-Libris and DRA are next). Finish Gathering initial
staff feedback on vendors. A little further down the road, we'll probably
think in terms of having some kind of Town Meeting or other similar
format (perhaps meeting with departments separately), where we can gather more
feedback from staff in a relatively informal setting.
- Go through vendor evaluation forms from the demos and tally up the
"ratings" for what staff thought of each of the modules. We're
starting to wonder if tallying up the numeric ratings will yield much
information given that staff have not been consistent in filling out
the forms. However, we do intend to keep track of their written comments (most
likely in a database format). We're also forwarding any
additional questions from staff onto the vendors.
- Setup meeting with Vijay, Greg, Eric, and 3rd Barton Project
Management Team to give them an update discuss the next stages of the
project. This is still pending. I've fallen behind in the
scheduling of this meeting.
- Begin making contacts with other academic institutions regarding
possible site visits to evaluate customer feedback on each of the
systems under review.
Key Learnings:
- Meeting with Tom Egan re-inforced what we already knew: clearly
documentating the evaluation process and the reasons why we're elminating
certain vendors will be essential.
Team Dynamics: - None
Issues:
- Staff have not been turning in their vendor evaluation forms (see above).
