QA Focus: Providing A Quality Assurance Framework And Free Support Materials!

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QA Focus Providing A Quality Assurance
Framework And Free Support Materials!

• Background
• UKOLN, a national centre of expertise in digital
  information management, has developed, in
  conjunction with the AHDS (the Arts And
  Humanities Data Service), a quality assurance
  (QA) framework.
• The QA framework can help ensure that the
  deliverables produced by digital library
  development projects are functional, widely
  accessible and interoperable.
• The work was funded by the JISC to support JISCs
  development programmes.
• Wider Relevance
• The methodology and support materials, can also
  be used to support those involved in the
  provision of Web services.

• Why Is This Relevant To Me?
• This work will be of interest to you if
• You need to keep up to date with developments,
  but do not have the time.
• You wish to provide advice to members of your
  community.
• You wish to make best use of resources developed
  with JISC funding.

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The QA Focus Framework

• QA Focus
• The QA Focus project was funded to develop a
  quality assurance (QA) framework which would can
  help ensure that digital library project
  deliverables were functional, widely accessible
  and interoperable.
• The project successfully developed a lightweight
  QA framework together with a range of support
  materials.

• QA Framework
• The QA Focus framework has a layered approach
• Projects develop technical policies
• Systematic procedures deployed to ensure
  compliance with policies
• Funders can select the compliance regime (e.g.
  self-assessment, penalty clauses, etc.)
• The framework has been described in several
  papers. To maximise its use support materials are
  available under a Creative Commons licence.

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The QA Focus Briefing Papers

• QA Focus
• The QA Focus project has published over 80
  briefing papers. The briefing papers address
  several issues

• Relevance of standards and technologies.
• Ways in which such technologies can be deployed
  and summaries of the strengths and weaknesses of
  the technologies.
• Approaches to ensure that the technologies are
  used appropriately.

Example of a briefing document
The briefing documents are available in both
XHTML and Microsoft Word formats. Two forms of
the MS Word documents are available as A5
flyers and in A4 format.
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QA Focus Briefing Papers Available Under A
Creative Commons Licence

• Maximising The Impact Of This Work
• In order to maximise the impact of the QA Focus
  work UKOLN and AHDS have decided to make the QA
  Focus briefing documents available under a
  Creative Commons licence. This licence allows
  you
• To download, edit and distribute the documents
  for non-commercial purposes provided that
  acknowledgements are given and that the documents
  also include a Creative Commons licence.
• Exploit These Resources!
• We hope that the availability of these resources
  will be of benef to others. Rather than having to
  reinvent the wheel and produce similar documents,
  making use of these resources will allow you to
  engage in other work. And if you enhance the
  documents this will help sustain the quality of
  the resources.

Further Information QA Focus briefing documents
are available at lthttp//www.ukoln.ac.uk/qa-focu
s/documents/briefings/gt Note that an RSS news
feed is available which can be used to provide
notification of new documents.