The third International Summer School on the Digital Library was a success, but there was also (constructive) criticism. 81% of the participants indicated they would recommend the summer school to colleagues in the field. 84% said the summer school was worth its money. These results, however, are not as good as those of the last years.
- "It was very interesting, very inspiring!"
- "My head (and notes) are full of ideas [...]. I probably survive the coming three years with this. [...] Thanks to all of you!"
- "I liked the organisation of the programme. We were taken care of all day long. The time schedule was followed in a satisfactory way and the opinion of the class was taken into consideration [...]. Congratulations, for the overall organisation. Keep on [...]!"
- "I was very impressed about the good quality organisation of day to day events of the summer school."
- "Thank you!"
- "The organisation was excellent!"
- "The atmosphere was great."
People could discover the structure in the programme. Compared to 1998, in the 1999 summer school we decreased the number of lectures by 33% and increased the number of workshops with 33%. In spite of that, half of the participants 'completely agreed' or 'agreed' on the statement that the programme was overfull, and 65% indicated that the programme should give more opportunity for discussion. Suggestions focused mainly on decreasing the length of the lectures and giving participants more opportunity to present their own cases. General remarks were made about limiting the summer school to a smaller number of topics, covering more management issues, and less focus on academic libraries. We will certainly look into that next year!
In the evaluation, participants could rate a program item 'extremely good', 'good', 'neutral', 'bad' or 'extremely bad'. For privacy reasons, the lecturers are indicated by numbers, which correspond with the numbers in the syllabus, given to all participants and lecturers.
The following lectures were rated as the best:
| Syllabus number | Score | Comments |
| 12 | 4.7 | enthusiastic, good presentation, perfect combination of theory and practice, excellent, interesting |
| 15 | 4.7 | good, one of the best, give her more time next year |
| 22 | 4.7 | great, he is an example for us, very inspiring, challenging ideas |
| 5 | 4.6 | just great, extremely inspiring, provoking, charisma and charm |
| 6 | 4.6 | excellent ideas, next time we want a demo |
| 26 | 4.5 | a delight, very good discussion, please pay attention to this subject in the first week, realistic |
The following lectures were rated as the worst:
| Syllabus number | Score | Comments |
| 19 | 2.7 | too much marketing, not about future plans, not very inspiring, left too early |
| 7 | 2.9 | subject differed from what was expected (about accountancy instead of digital libraries, although the subject did interest participants), lecture was read out |
| 17 | 3.0 | good topic but bad performance, not very wise about copyright |
It is clear that people like these interactive sessions. It helps them to reflect on what they've learnt so far and to process the information. Although we increased the number of sessions by 33% compared to 1998, participants thought we should have even more of these sessions, and also more room for discussion after lectures. Very often, after lectures there was no time left for questions or discussions.
The following workshops were rated as the best:
| Date and subject | Score | Comments |
| 25/8, user study | 4.6 | many practical ideas |
| 26/8, human resource management | 4.6 | first time we had enough time to discuss, everybody could take part in discussion, important to talk all together instead of in groups, good discussion |
| 19/8, cd-roms in a network | 4.3 | no specific comments |
| 17/8, strategic visioning | 4.2 | good workshop, provoking creativity |
| 25/8, cooperation and integration | 4.2 | many practical ideas |
The following workshops were rated as the worst:
| Date and subject | Score | Comments |
| 19/8 traditional library systems | 1.1 | was about a different subject (journals), couldn't comment to our issues |
| 23/8, self-publishing | 3.0 | was no hands-on but information was good, not very well prepared |
| 24/8, discussion with publishers | 3.0 | key-speaker left early, participants were reluctant to lively discussion, different preparation might help |
The results of the evaluation are not a reason to change our promotion. All 'distribution channels' for information on the summer school worked satisfactory. Almost half of the participants who filled out the evaluation form indicated that they first learnt about the summer school because a colleague attended the course one of the previous years. Communication between Ticer and the participants was considered 'very good' to 'good' and the combination of e-mail and Ticer's web site to keep participants informed was considered 'very adequate' to 'adequate'.
Almost all participants read their mail daily or almost daily. More than half of them agreed that they had plenty of opportunity to read their mail in the library, 5 participants had no opinion and 6 wanted more time. More than half of the participants found the computer facilities at the university excellent, 3 had no opinion and 6 didn't think the facilities were excellent.
The quality of dinners was considered good; the opinions on the lunches varied. People liked the length of the coffee and lunch breaks. The social programme fulfilled participants' expectations.
Of the 33 people who filled out the questionnaire, 12 stayed in the hotel and 14 in the student apartments. The other 6 stayed somewhere else.
After increasing complaints about the noise in the hotel in the city centre we used previous years, this year Ticer used a new hotel in the woods, very close to the university. Participants were very pleased with this hotel. The price quality ratio was considered good, the hotel was quiet, and no one even considered staying in a hotel in the city centre next time.
The price quality ratio of the student apartments was considered good (with 3 neutral responses), but 1 student apartment resident found the apartments not clean. Ten of them indicated that a next time, they would stay there again; four would rather stay in a hotel.
Suggestions for the lecture room mainly focused on better chairs. Although some people didn't like the arrangement of the chairs ('horseshoe'), most of them found this set-up better for discussion and interaction.
