Abstract: This document details a work plan to guide the planning and execution of a new phase of the Z39.50 Interoperability Testbed Project. In this phase, the project team will use a set of special, diagnostic MARC records to identify interoperability problems between a Z39.50 client and a Z39.50 server providing access to a database of bibliographic records supporting the search and retrieval functions of an online library catalog. The project team refers to these special, diagnostic records as radioactive MARC records. The project includes a number of separate but related activities. The structure of the work plan groups these activities into work areas, each of which describes the major activities, tasks, deliverables, timeliness, and responsibilities. The work areas are: creating MARC documentation database, developing radioactive MARC records, identifying test searches, enhancing indexing guidelines for searching, creating testing procedures and processes, validating radioactive MARC record approach for interoperability testing, and conducting interoperability testing. A number of these work areas will proceed in parallel, and there are interactions between the work areas.
