QA Focus Final Report

The aim of the QA Focus project was to develop a quality assurance (QA) methodology which would help to ensure that projects funded by JISC digital library programmes were functional, widely accessible and interoperable; to provide support materials to accompany the QA framework and to help to embed the QA methodology in projects’ working practices. The approach taken was initially to liaise with selected projects in order to gain an understanding of the broad areas in which difficulties in ensuring project deliverables would be interoperable and to solicit feedback on solutions based on a quality assurance approach. These focus groups were supported by a number of automated surveys of project Web sites which sought to gain an understanding of problem areas related to the provision of project Web sites. We learnt that the provision of technical support and advice would be appreciated by projects, but there was a concern over the development of too bureaucratic and time-consuming QA methodology.