Thursday 21 October 2010

The best laid plans of mice and men ....

The original timetable for this project looked like this:

March 2010 – Initial “go live” of public beta service

June 2010 – completion of feedback-gathering exercise from beta testing

August 2010 – launch of full, live service

Septemebr 2010 – project review

October 2010 – Options for sustainability of the service beyond the SWWHEP project funding period and handover plan

It didn’t quite work out that way!

There was an embryonic version of the beta service available by the end of March, but there was still too much work to be done on it before it could be properly publicized or used. The reasons for this were various, but included dependencies on outside sources for the development of addition Jangle features, and problems getting permission for access to one of the institution’s LMS’s in order to enable and develop its VuFind connector.

As a result, the service wasn’t fully in beta until the summer, when feedback (mainly from staff) started rolling in. “Live beta”, launching the service as a main catalogue, occurred in September, with students being training on its use and providing feedback. We continue to act on feedback, and will go on rolling out enhancements on a monthly basis for the time being.

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