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Best Practice Checklist for Australian Subject Gateways
This best practice checklist for Australian subject gateways has been
derived after close consultation with the gateway projects collaborating in the
Australian Subject Gateways Forum, and with Commonwealth government information
gateways under the auspices of the
Australian
Government Locator Service (AGLS) initiative. Each Australian gateway
project has sought to emulate the best practices established by previous
projects.
The National Library has developed this core set of content, business,
and functional characteristics to stimulate further debate on the coherent
development of gateways, and to provide Australian gateways with a common
framework for participating in the cooperative development of both national and
overseas gateways. This document was revised in consultation with the
Australian Subject Gateways Forum in February 2001.
Definitions for Web-Based
Services may also be of interest.
Comments are welcome - please send them to the Library's Coordination
Support Branch at: csb@nla.gov.au.
- The gateway may describe both print and electronic resources. It
should be noted that gateways currently carry with them an expectation of
access to content in real time.
- The gateway may include professionally produced descriptions of the
resources. Such descriptions may pertain to the content of the resource, in a
form ranging from a short annotation to a review. Metadata will be applied to
facilitate the description of other attributes of the resource, such as its
title, author, format or location.
- The resource types included may describe people, places, events,
services or works.
- Works may be described at collection, whole item, part item or
analytical level.
- Resources should be indexed according to a recognised subject
classification scheme in order to enable subject browsing. Controlled
vocabulary systems such as subject heading lists and thesauri should be used in
this process.
- The resources described in the gateway may be uniquely Australian,
or of high use value within Australia.
- The resources linked from the gateway must go through a selection
process conducted by the jurisdiction responsible for the gateway, to ensure a
high level of quality and relevance to the subject matter. There should be a
written policy listing selection criteria to facilitate this process.
- The resources must have their currency maintained. This may be
managed by sub-jurisdictional partners through human intervention, or by an
automated process, or by a combination of both strategies. There should be a
written policy detailing collection maintenance issues and procedures.
- The metadata describing the resources in the gateway must meet a
recognised standard for resource discovery such as the
Dublin Core, the
Australian and New Zealand
Land Information Council (ANZLIC) metadata schema, the
Australian
Government Locator Service (AGLS),
EdNA Metadata
Standard or MARC Standards.
- Extensions to the above-listed metadata may be created, but must be
managed through cooperative, responsible and secure processes, to ensure
Australian best practice in standards application.
- The copyright of resources linked from the gateway may be managed
by the sub-jurisdictional partners or by the host partner.

- The gateway should be hosted in Australia, although it may be
mirrored internationally.
- The gateway host should have recognised jurisdictional carriage of
the subject area, either through a statutory or other clear obligation.
- Contributions to the gateway are typically made by a range of
partnered organisations and institutions, not a single business entity.
- The gateway should be promoted through more than one Australian
entry point.
- The gateway may provide links to other Australian, and overseas,
gateways.
- The gateway must ensure the long-term sustainability of its
service, which may be addressed by a strategic plan covering business and
marketing issues.
- The gateway should address the responsibility of long-term access
to content by taking on a management and preservation role for the Australian
resources within its purview, or by supporting national initiatives which aim
to do so, such as PANDORA (see also
the paper: Subject
Gateways and the National Library of Australia PANDORA Archive) and the
work on persistent identification (as
summarised in PADI).

- The gateway must support both browse and search access through the
use of a metadata-enabled search engine and other value-added features.
- The selection criteria used to identify resources, and the metadata
schema used to describe them, should be made publicly accessible.
- The Web access component of the gateway must support a link to the
actual content of a resource or its digital surrogate.
- The gateway may provide links to related free or paid services, but
without a mandatory requirement to provide e-commerce support for them. It
should be noted that gateways currently carry with them an expectation of free
access.
- Access to each type of resource may be exploited by alternative
entry points within the same gateway.
- The gateway should meet accessibility criteria as outlined by the
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative, in their
Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines. The content should be accessible to everyone, including users
with disabilities and users of text-only browsers.
- The gateway should make provision to support a standard form of
cross-gateway-searching, such as Z39.50 or HTTP.

Other Best Practice Documents
DESIRE Information Gateways
Handbook - designed and written with the specific aim of highlighting best
practice and the latest technologies behind information gateways.
Renardus:
Gateways Defined - provides a set of quality-controlled subject gateways'
quality measures which support systematic resource discovery.

Document History
Initial Draft: May 1999 by Debbie
Campbell, NLA
Addition to Draft: October 2000 by
Barbara Rozmus, NLA
Revision: February 2001 by Nicole
Van Kempen, Louise Arkles and Barbara Rozmus
Update: February 2003 by
Barbara Rozmus
Date last verified: 14 January 2004