Subject Gateways

The National Library of Australia has a keen interest in the development of subject gateways. It hosts the (now archival only) Australian Subject Gateway Forum, a group of Australian subject gateway owners collaborating on issues common to gateway projects. The Library also operates the following subject gateways:

  • Australia Dancing
    The Australia Dancing portal provides users with access to both current and historical information about dance in Australia.
  • MusicAustralia
    A web-based music service, still in prototype, that will provide integrated access to Australian music resources and information.
  • PADI: Preserving Access to Digital Information
    An initiative of the National Library of Australia, PADI provides high quality information about issues and tools for preserving digital resources, both digitised and 'born digital'.
  • PictureAustralia
    A web service based on a metadata index held at the National Library of Australia which links to pictorial images held on the web sites of participating cultural agencies around Australia.

Of these subject gateways the three top ones are hybrid library services, listing resources in physical as well as digital formats. The Library also maintains two traditional indexing and abstracting services which can be classified as subject gateways in the broadest sense; they increasingly provide access to born digital resources:

  • APAIS: Australian Public Affairs Information Service
    An index to Australian current affairs, economics, humanities, law, literature, politics and social sciences first published in 1945, available online from 1978, with full text articles (APAFT) from 1996.
  • AMI: Australasian Medical Index
    An index to Australian and New Zealand health and medical literature which is not included in Medline first published in 1968, available online form from 1978 with full text articles (Meditext) from 1996.

Through PANDORA: Australia's Web Archive, the Library aims to assist subject gateway owners to ensure the preservation of electronic resources that they index for future access.

Information on the Library's earlier work on the development of subject gateways in Australia and associated issues can be found in Staff Presentations and Papers (enter 'subject gateways' in the search box).

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