Open Letter...

Dear Colleagues

We are seeking suitably qualified people to take part in the evaluation process for this JISC Collections project.

The Digital Images for Education Project comprises three separate tenders to supply still and moving images for the long-term use by the UK education community (schools, Further Education, and Higher Education).

The three tenders are:

1. Still images from commercial agencies (funding of up to £0.75m)
2. Moving images from commercial agencies (funding of up to £1m)
3. Still and moving images from institutions (the academic sector and publicly-funded institutions with a goal of life-long learning) (funding of up to £?)

The criteria for selection of images are slightly different between calls (1) and (2), and call (3).

We are seeking suitably qualified assessors to carry out the first and second evaluation stages. Evaluators should have good knowledge and experience of multimedia use in the following sectors:

• UK secondary schools
• UK Further Education
• UK Higher Education

Evaluators will receive expenses from JISC Collections for travel to the workshop.

First evaluation
The first evaluation session will be done remotely, without a face-to-face meeting. Evaluators will be emailed bids, and we anticipate that you should spend around 20 minutes per tender submitted. We anticipate receiving up to 130 bids, which would take up to 45 hours, so we expect most evaluators will only read a small proportion of the total bids.
Following your check, there will be a conference meeting on March 2 between 2pm and 5pm where any issues can be discussed and resolved.

The first evaluation stage is intended to remove all bids that do not comply with the project terms. Each evaluator will be expected to follow a checklist for compliance that we will provide; for example:

• Are the images offered on a perpetual or long-term (>25 years) licence?
• Have major changes been introduced to the model licence?

Any bid that does not comply with these terms will be eliminated at the first evaluation.

We would also like you to comment on the quality of content received. The goal of this session is to eliminate the non-compliers, and to provide a simple comparison tool for the second evaluation stage. The second stage takes place in a single day, and no provision has been made for extending the second evaluation session beyond a day, so all the competing tenders must be ready for comparison on that day.
To this end, we will provide a scoring system.
The overall scoring system is as follows:

25% compliance with the JISC Collections Licence
25% value for money
25% quality of content, encodings and metadata
25% relevance of the digital film and images to the education community

Nearer the time we will provide more detailed criteria that enable these figures to be assessed more precisely.

Second evaluation
The second evaluation stage will be done on 13 March. All bids that remain will be discussed in a face-to-face meeting, to be held in London for the entire day (10:30 - 4:30). A sandwich lunch will be provided.

Third evaluation
The JISC Collections team will review the results of the two evaluation sessions and will carry out any resolution required, for example if there is a disputed selection. No external evaluators will be involved in this stage.

Please let me know if you are interested in participating in the evaluation process for the first or the second evaluation.

Best wishes

Michael Upshall
Project Manager, Digital Images for Education
http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/projects_and_reports/digi_ed
ConsultMU Ltd
Phone 01865 453410