Page 280 - DLIS402_INFORMATION_ANALYSIS_AND_REPACKAGING

Unit 13: Abstract and Abstracting

Guidelines in preparing abstracts Notes
This set of guidelines is aimed coordinators and managers for working with their staff or clients. The
writing of work plans is not specifically unique, however, and the advice contained herein is useful
for all planners, managers, and implementors, of governmental ministries, NGOs and private sector
organizations.
If you involve staff in generating or designing a plan, then this document can be given to them to
assist them in learning things needed to make management a participatory process. The plan is the
guide for the organization, and when staff participate in preparing it, they are more likely to “own”
it and use it during implementation.

Work Plans

From the beginning, it is important to get rid of two assumptions about work plans: (a) that a work
plan consists only of a budget, and (b) that a work plan consists only of a schedule. Many managers
are disappointed when their work plans are rejected when they have made these incorrect assumptions.
Many funding agencies and many executing agencies require a work plan in order to justify the
release of funds for the period in question. Because of this, many managers incorrectly assume that
the budget is the centre (or only) element of the work plan. Far from it. The budget is necessary, or
course, but every item on the budget needs to be justified. That justification is the text of the work
plan itself (while the budget is best included as an appendix to the work plan) which is the subject
of this document.
The second incorrect assumption is that a schedule is a work plan. A coordinator may struggle to
prepare a schedule, listing the tasks to be done, day by day, for the period in question. While a
schedule is useful, of course, it is not a work plan (ie it does not state what objectives and outputs
are to be achieved, or how, or why).
Furthermore, although a schedule can be a desired list of day by day activities, in the real world
such precise lists can not be followed. Other urgent tasks come up, unexpected visitors (e.g. donors
or distant VIPs) may show up, planned meetings may have to be rescheduled as the other parties
may have unexpected tasks or visitors, and on and on. Rather than a rigid schedule, this document
recommends that each of the outputs or objectives have a time period within which the completion
date may be expected, which is an organic and flexible approach rather than the mechanical approach
to preparing a schedule.
In order to provide the conference attendees with a compact and user-friendly set of printed abstracts
for each of the formal papers, presentations and poster displays at the World Congress/ISSS meeting,
written abstracts must be prepared and submitted separately from the full paper, in accordance
with the following guidelines:

Prepare a Work Plan
The purposes of a work plan are several. The main purpose, however, is often forgotten; it is a planning
and management instrument (tool) which provides a framework for planning the work, and is a
guide during the period in question for carrying out that work. It is also used by funding agencies
and executing agencies as a document for justifying the release of money (and this is why the first
purpose can easily be forgotten; some managers see it as a necessary inconvenience, rather than a
useful tool for their own work). It is also a useful document contributing to transparency, as copies of
the work plan can be given to those persons or organizations who have a need or a right to know
what you are doing, and why, during the current period.
In some ways a work plan is very similar to a proposal. The difference is that a work plan is based
upon a project already approved, and identifies a specific time segment within that project or
programme. It identifies (as goals) the problems to be solved, makes them finite, precise and verifiable

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