Australian Subject Gateways Forum
Minutes of the 14 November 2003 Meeting
held at University of Melbourne
The meeting was opened by Dr Angela Bridgland, Acting Vice Principal (Information), University of Melbourne.
Attendees
Debbie Campbell, Sten Christensen, Nicole Clark, Sue Clarke, Jillian Dellit, Jane Ellen, Joh Hartog, Gavan McCarthy, Jenny Millea, Barbara Rozmus (minutes), Barbara Thorsen, Jan Whitaker (chair), Jenny White, Eve Young
Guest speakers: Graham Greenleaf (AustLII , WorldLII), and Liddy Nevile (DC-ANZ)
Apologies
Marie-Louise Ayres, Toby Burrows, Basil Dewhurst, Kerry Kilner, Jon Mason, Michelle Potter
Gateways represented
Agrigate, ATUA, AusStage, AustLII, Australian e-Humanities Gateway, Australian Science at Work, AVEL, Bright Sparcs, EdNA Online, Weblaw, WorldLII.
Welcome
Dr Angela Bridgland, Acting Vice Principal (Information), welcomed the participants and acknowledged the role subject gateways initiatives play in the information infrastructure in Australia.
New business
Presentation by Graham Greenleaf, Co-Director of AustLII and WorldLII
Graham Greenleaf spoke about the development of AustLII (Australasian Legal Information Institute) and WorldLII (World Legal Information Institute), which he stressed are not gateways but rather research platforms. All key software has been written in-house. The AustLII collection contains full-text databases of most Australian decisions and legislation. Graham demonstrated the searching capabilities of AustLII and discussed its funding, sustainability and partnerships. AustLII operates with small staff as it is mostly based on automated processes. WorldLII is coordinated by AustLII and currently is supported by six Legal Information Institutes around the world, with plans for further extension.
Progress reports
The participants provided additional comments on their gateways developments in the last 6 months, complementing the progress reports submitted prior to the meeting.
Agrigate - Jan Whitaker noted the change in the management of Agrigate with Tony Arthur retiring and Sue Clarke assuming his role. The total number of Agrigate records currently stands at 467. Some aspects of the website had to be redeveloped to enable cataloguing LOTE materials with language information.
ATUA - Jane Ellen reported that the gateway currently has 2,000 records and receives around 30,000 hits a week. A number of these are false hits. A buffer page redirecting users to other appropriate websites has been introduced to correct this. No major updating has been done to the gateway since its launch in March 2003, except for upgrades to the OHRM (Online Heritage Resource Manager) software.
AusStage - John Hartog and Jenny White reported that the redeveloped site was deployed a few days ago but they found that a few issues had to be resolved before it can be made publicly accessible. The homepage, redesigned to make it more efficient and faster to load, includes a new search facility. They are working on other ways of searching the data, e.g. by ID number of an event. At the moment requests for querying the SQL interface by the administrator are accepted from users with a report sent back to them as a comma delimited file. Another ARC grant application is being prepared involving live events as a category in its own right, with AusStage playing a central role in the resource discovery process.
Australian e-Humanities Gateway - Sten Christensen reported that the back end of the gateway was redeveloped. It is now based on a relational database. Despite a very active promotion of the service, the growth of data is proceeding slowly. The selection criteria are available on the website. The focus is on identifying current research practices and projects useful to the Humanities.
Australian Science at Work and Bright Sparcs - Gavan McCarthy reported that version 4 of the OHRM software is now available and the planning for version 5 has commenced. Gavan is involved in the work on the Australian Dictionary of Biography Online (2003 ARC LIEF grant), which will use the OHRM software. It will have a full text search (in 2004), and a GIS and mapping capability (in 2005). Gavan is using the ASGF website to support a course he currently teaches at University of Melbourne Fact, Fiction and Fraud in the Digital Age. The second edition of ISAAR (CPF) (International Standard Archival Authority Record (Corporate Bodies, Persons and Families) is now available as an exposure draft at http://www.hmc.gov.uk/icacds/eng/standardsISAAR2.htm.
AVEL - Nicole Clark reported that implementing the new version of the HotMeta software is taking more time than expected due to some unforseen technical problems. Currently 30 new AVEL records are added on average per month. All AVEL partners, with the exception of UNSW, have renewed their commitment to the service. The consultancy work for the UK minerals gateway continues. Content for the new service - Green Design Portal - is now being developed.
Educational research gateway (in the planning stage) - Jillian Dellit reported that establishment of the gateway has been recommended by the recent major report on the review of teaching and teacher education Australias Teachers: Australias Future Advancing Innovation, Science, Technology and Mathematics. The report recommended that development of such a gateway be guided by the MCEETYA ICT in Schools Taskforce. The gateway is to target policy makers, and wider research communities as well as parents and other interested members of the public, who play a part in improving schools.
PictureAustralia - Debbie Campbell briefly reported about the recent developments. Several new participants have joined PictureAustralia and total number of images has gone to over 940,000. Cheryl Brickell is currently overseeing the service and Jennifer Anderson is managing it.
WebLaw - Barbara Thorsen reported that WebLaw has two new participants and continues to look for new participants. The recently undertaken visual disability testing resulted in a positive response. Dead links checking (using an excellent software package developed in-house) is an important part of the routine activities.
Presentations
New generation EdNA Online: what we learned - presentation by Jenny Millea
Jenny stressed that EdNA Online in the present format is a set of web services, not just a website. In the course of implementation of the new generation EdNA Online various issues regarding legacy outsourcing and integration had to be dealt with. A decision was made to insource EdNA Online software development as of mid 2004. A separate module of Jahia (open source software) for personalisation functions is currently being developed. A number of issues resulting from the usability testing done with Vision Australia are now being addressed.
DC-ANZ: a regional organisation for Dublin Core in Australia and New Zealand - presentation by Liddy Nevile
Liddy outlined the origins, development and organisational model of DC-ANZ as a professional organisation for DC developers in the region. DC-ANZ now has its own website and a mailing list (with 150 people). It held the first of its bi-annual conferences in February 2003. An important activity of DC-ANZ has been the redevelopment of the Meta Matters website at http://metabrowser.dtdns.net/dcanz/. Everyone was invited to become a registered cataloguer and contribute content to Meta Matters. In the discussion after Liddy's presentation an issue of a need for an overarching body for all metadata standards was brought up.
Business arising
It was decided to remove from Action list items 8 and 9 as AusStage may not be ready to report on their data verification model for the next 6 months.
Progress report on the DEST Systemic Infrastructure Initiative
Debbie Campbell outlined the four projects chosen to be funded under the the DEST Systemic Infrastructure Initiative in 2004-06:
- Meta Access Management System Project (MAMS) - lead by Macquarie University
- Towards an Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories (APSR) - lead by the ANU
- Australian Research Repositories Online to the World (ARROW) - lead by Monash University
- Australian Digital Theses Program Expansion and Redevelopment (ADT) - lead by the University of New South Wales
More details are provided in Peter McGauran's media release at http://www.dest.gov.au/ministers/media/mcgauran/2003/10/mcg002221003.asp. The ASGF proposal for a subject gateways project did not get funded. A useful background paper on e-prints can be found on the AARE (Australian Association for Research in Education) website at http://www.aare.edu.au/execproj/index.htm.
- ACTION 1:
Debbie Campbell to raise with the ARROW board the issue of the involvement in the project by the ASGF gateways in the context of content provision.
Final report on the Senate Inquiry into the Role of Libraries in the Online Environment
Barbara Rozmus briefly outlined the process involved in the Senate Inquiry, which commenced in August 2002. A final report was tabled in the Senate on 16 October 2003. The report's coverage of subject gateways (Chapter 3 Online Library Initiatives, section Other Collaborative Efforts amongst Libraries) is based on the ASGF submission and the evidence provided by Barbara Thorsen and Janine Schmidt at a public hearing on 28 November 2002. The report has eleven recommendations. The Government is yet to formally respond to the report.
Other business
ASGF website usage
Barbara Rozmus tabled a report on the ASGF website usage. The key statistics for the last 4 months were presented, including visits and their breakdown, and top pages requested. A listing of other websites linking to the ASGF site was also discussed.
- ACTION 2:
All gateways to actively promote the ASGF website and individual pages as appropriate using the resolver url http://www.nla.gov.au/subjectgateways/.
Protocol for exposing the ASGF work on the publicly accessible part of the website
Jan Whitaker led a discussion on making more ASGF documents available to the public when appropriate. The meeting agreed that a number of papers resulting from our meetings might be useful to other gateway projects in Australia or elsewhere. The group will make decisions on making various documents publicly accessible on a case by case basis.
- ACTION 3:
Barbara Rozmus to move to the public area of the ASGF website:- the ASGF submission to the Senate Inquiry
- the usability studies page
National Online Archival Network project (NOAN)
Gavan McCarthy briefed the meeting on the project. Phillip Dermody was recently appointed by COFSTA (Council of Federal, State and Territory Archives) to prepare a business model for NOAN. There is no agreement as yet on what information architecture should be utilised but XML is likely to be used for pulling data. The European project called LEAF (Linking and Exploring Authority Files) is a good model for linking archival, library and museum resources, however it is not contextual.
Regulatory environment for subject gateways
Jan Whitaker suggested that we need to keep a watching brief on the regulatory environment factors which may affect subject gateways and similar services. After a considerable discussion the group agreed to keep this agenda item as a standing item for future meetings. The issues that need monitoring include privacy issues, harmonisation of standards, IP rights, harvesting regulations (e.g. permitted harvesting, blocking of spiders and robots), deep linking, jurisdictional boundaries, liability and indemnity, defamation (relevant in particular to those providing public forums and discussion lists).
- ACTION 4:
Barbara to include an item on regulatory environment issues for subject gateways in the agendas of future ASGF meetings.
- ACTION 5:
Barbara to make changes to the public part of the ASGF website to reflect the regulatory environment focus.
Next meeting
Next meeting will be held in Adelaide in May 2004 (the exact date to be advised), hosted by education.au.
Date last verified: 19 January 2005
