Australian Subject Gateways Forum

Summary of Outcomes of an Australian Subject Gateway Owners' Meeting

Held 22nd February 2000 at the National Library of Australia

The first meeting of Australian subject gateway owners was convened on 22nd February 2000 at the National Library of Australia in Canberra. It is important to note that there are many gateways in Australia which may be categorised in this service genre, including government gateways providing information to a specific sector such as Occupational Health and Safety. However, this was the first time that the subject-specific gateways delivering service to the higher education sector came together.

Context

The National Library of Australia's Coordination Support Branch has closely followed the activities of the Australian subject gateway projects since 1998, and provided advice to their development where appropriate. This resulted in a position statement from the National Library in 1999 which sought feedback from the Library and Higher Education sectors in Australia on areas for the continued support for the gateways. The position statement was provided to all participants in preparation for the gateways meeting.

Participants

The participants represented gateways ranging from established services to projects which have only received funding this year. They were: MetaChem (1998), the Australian Electronic Literature Gateway (2000), Agrigate (1999), Lawzone (2000), Performing Arts (2000), Australian Virtual Engineering Library - AVEL (1999), Bright Sparcs (1994) & Australian Science at Work (1999), and EdNA Online (1996).

Other services were also represented, including the Australian Libraries Gateway - ALG (1998), the Australian Digital Theses Project - ADT (1998), and Kinetica (1999). IMesh (1999), the international subject gateway mesh, was also represented by Chris Rusbridge, the U.K.'s eLib Programme Director.

Objectives of the meeting

The meeting was convened to meet three objectives:

Scope of the meeting

The participants were welcomed by the Director-General and the Deputy Director-General of the National Library, Jan Fullerton and David Toll. Each gateway representative gave a brief presentation of their service or project, and identified some issues, which are outlined below. A summary of the issues in common across the gateways was then revisited in full discussion and an action plan recommended.

AVEL

Chris Taylor from the University of Queensland presented an overview of AVEL. This gateway places an equal focus on industry and academia. One area requiring resolution is how to address a perception from end-users that because the gateway carries a smaller number of records than other services, it may not be comprehensive.

The Australian Electronic Literature Gateway

Marie-Louise Ayres from the Australian Defence Force Academy Library and ALEG Project Manager, spoke of the difficulties of sustaining a commercial value-added service while simultaneously expanding it within a small (human) resource base, and of ensuring the long-term intellectual infrastructure through succession planning and change management procedures. ALEG will be based partly on the AustLit service.

Bright Sparcs & Australian Science at Work

Gavan McCarthy, Director of the Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre at the University of Melbourne, described the entity model applied in both Australian Science at Work, and in Bright Sparcs, the matching gateway describing scientists themselves. The Centre has developed free software, known as the Online Heritage Resource Manager (OHRM), to empower small organisations with minimal funding to record and make accessible their unique data.

Lawzone

Sue Scott, Director of the Online Legal Access Project, raised the issues of coping with regional interpretations in the subject matter - in this case, law, which varies across State-based governments - and how to develop appropriate relationships with government gateways.

MetaChem

Alan Arnold, the MetaChem Project Manager, presented a summary of issues including the determination of a critical mass of resources in the face of a changing user base, the international scope of the chemistry discipline, and resistance from the chemist community to the inclusion of Web-based preprint services.

Performing Arts

Richard Stone, Chair of the Australian Peforming Arts Special Interest Group, spoke about his involvement in the Performing Arts gateway project. Issues to be addressed are the different stages of neglect of resources, collections which are locked up, that is, not accessible electronically, and the wide variety of stakeholders in the service such as industry, programme creators, and actors.

Australian Digital Theses Project

The University Librarian of the University of New South Wales, Marian Bate, spoke about this initiative which, although may not be a gateway in the strictest sense, emulates some of the delivery components of more subject-oriented gateways. The initiative seeks to 'establish a distributed database of digital versions of theses produced by the postgraduate research students at the participating institutions', namely the Universities of NSW, Melbourne, Sydney, and Queensland, the Australian National University, Griffith University, and the Curtin University of Technology. Subject slicing of the ADT metadata could provide metadata content for the appropriate gateways.

Agrigate

The Project Manager for Agrigate, Jan Whitaker, explained that the technical platform for the service was met by using a solution which was already in use in-house, with a new database design and functionality within it specifically to provide Agrigate services and data entry support, that offered cost-benefit advantages such as appropriate skills transfer. Jan indicated new directions for the service to include conference calendars, a review of data entry strategies from a distributed model of data entry shifting to a centralised input model combined with distributed editorial review, and a commitment to international liaison to ensure that Australian services don't become isolated from the broader community.

EdNA Online

Jon Mason, Technical Director at Education.Au, the Ministerial company charged with EdNA Online while also co-ordinating other EdNA (Education Network Australia) activities, outlined two current aims: to continue to populate EdNA Online with quality resources for education and research; and, to continue serving the growing network of practitioners in a manner which builds value for each practitioner within the network. Jon emphasised that EdNA is a network, not an "authority", nor a "project". Jon gave a commitment to continue maintaining the synergy of this Australian gathering.

Kinetica

Andrew Wells, the Assistant Director-General of the Kinetica Division at the National Library spoke about the Library's consideration of a relationship between the National Bibliographic Database and the Cooperative Online Resource Cataloguing (CORC) initiative of the US-based OCLC. CORC provides a range of software for the creation and maintenance of metadata records describing electronic objects, in both MARC21 and Dublin Core schemas.

Resource Discovery Network

Chris Rusbridge, eLib Programme Director in the United Kingdom gave a presentation on the history, scope and functions of the Resource Discovery Network. Challenges include a lack of proven exit strategies for full self-funding, resale and intellectual property ownership of the metadata records, and branding while cross-searching. Chris stressed the high value of international collaboration for resolving some of these issues, and this theme was reiterated in the full discussion of the major issues.

A consensus of issues

The meeting identified a number of key issues which affect all of the gateway projects and services. They were grouped under the following terms: use of terminology, selection of appropriate software, metadata application, promotion and branding, collaboration, and sustainability.

1. Use of terminology

A background document summarising different service types was circulated. The service types mentioned may appear to be similar to end-users in the electronic environment, and are therefore confusing.

Actions: the group agreed to define their use of the terms in all relevant publications. Jon Mason offered to raise the issue with W3C, and Debbie Campbell agreed to maintain a Web document of definitions for all to reference.

2. Selection of appropriate software

The group discussed how gateways could obtain advice on the best software for hosting a gateway service. While this depends to a certain extent on the software already available in some environments such as on university campuses, the following features were considered essential:

The decision was taken to share experiences between the Australian gateways regarding this information. For example, established gateways to make known their results to new gateway projects, and share 'opensource' software such as statistical packages.

Actions: a request was made of the National Library to provide the following information:

In addition, Chris Rusbridge offered to connect the UK's Resource Discovery Network Centre with the National Library to facilitate sharing of software solutions on an international level.

3. Metadata application

Four issues were considered in detail:

  1. the need for intellectual property agreements, to reflect the joint ownership of metadata records, and to facilitate interaction between services.

    Actions: David Toll will seek legal advice on the Australian situation, and circulate the advice for comment. In addition, the group agreed to encourage appropriate attribution and other good practice agreements between services, to act as a model. Marian Bate offered to use the ADT Project as another vehicle to explore this issue.

  2. The continued use of the ACore schema. ACore is a draft metadata schema provided for managing the provenance of metadata. However, some of the software used by the existing gateways does not currently support it inherently.

    Actions: The group agreed that the ACore would be an alternative appropriate model to explore to address the IP issue. Debbie Campbell offered to examine the possibility of encouraging further use of the ACore, in terms of both implementation and software support.

  3. The distinction between collection and item level metadata for end-users. The Australian gateway projects usually do not distinguish between the two levels, as it has not been perceived to be an issue affecting the search results provided to end-users. However, it was recognised that this may be due to the fact that several options are provided for using each gateway: browsing - to indicate coverage, and keyword searching - for more experienced end-users.

  4. Authority control metadata. While the use of traditional library tools such as the Library of Congress' Names Authority File offered an alternative, it was noted that the use of tools created in other communities such as the archives sector are also being considered. One example of this is use of the ISAAR(CPF) - the International Standard Archival Authority Record for Corporate Bodies, Persons and Families in Australian Science at Work gateway.

4. Promotion and branding

It was acknowledged that each gateway has an individual responsibility to promote gateway services generally in Australia, but more focused mechanisms were also discussed. An issue regarding the refusal to register some gateway services in the .edu.au domain was raised. Integration of services available to the Higher Education sector, including the National Bibliographic Database, Online Public Access Catalogues, and between the gateways themselves was recommended.

Common branding by use of a simple device such as a logo, to indicate the co-existence of services in a virtual Australian RDN, was not endorsed, although the value of such a model in the longer term was considered important. Wide exposure of Australian resources was also agreed to be critical to the long-term future of these services.

Actions: Jan Whitaker will approach auDA - the Australian body responsible for overseeing the allocation of domain names. A small group of volunteer gateways - MetaChem, ALEG, and PADI (the National Library's information gateway known as 'Preserving Access to Digital Information' ) - will work with Kinetica to explore cross-searching/linking mechanisms.

5. Collaboration

A range of collaborations was endorsed: between Australian services such as the National Bibliographic Database and the Australian Digital Theses project, between the gateways and PANDORA (the National Library's digital archive), with the Resource Discovery Network, with CORC and with the US-based ISAAC Network. Some collaborative activities have already commenced.

Action: Gavan McCarthy will examine the possibility of establishing a registry of archive agencies. Andrew Wells will test the relationship between CORC and the National Bibliographic Database. Debbie Campbell will provide this report of the subject gateway meeting to the international IMesh group, and provide further instructions for using the IMesh email list.

6. Sustainability

The most significant issue facing the existing gateways is their long-term sustainability. The group discussed a range of options including individual applications for short-term grant funding, various subscription models including free of advertising for paying customers or free services with advertising, subscriptions for institutions while remaining free to the end-user.

Combined approaches, such as a national framework for collaboration, maintaining agreements within and between initiatives, and joint requests for funding were considered to have a greater chance of success.

Actions: Education.Au offered to host the next meeting of the group, to continue the discussion of sustainability issues and exit strategies, in approximately six months' time (August 2000). This will allow some of the newer gateway projects to report back on their progress. For the next meeting, the National Library will release a paper discussing its intentions for the National Metadata Repository.

Future directions

It was suggested that the group continues its collaboration by working together on issues in the future, and this was generally agreed. The National Library was asked to provide further coordination support for the subject gateways' initiative. In addition, Education.Au offered to establish an e-mail list for Australian subject gateway owners to continue information-sharing and discussion of issues between meetings.

Summary of action items

  1. Use of terminology
    • the group agreed to define their use of the terms in all relevant publications.
    • Jon Mason offered to raise the issue with W3C
    • Debbie Campbell agreed to maintain a Web document of definitions for all to reference.


  2. Selection of appropriate software
    • the National Library will provide the following information: a definition of functional requirements, requirements for interoperability, such as unique identifiers, a checklist of what has already been done, what areas the gateways don't address, a list of possible software options, a checklist of best practice in gateway management, and a statement of new directions which might help to address this issue, such as the IMesh toolkit development.
    • Chris Rusbridge will connect the UK's Resource Discovery Network Centre with the National Library to facilitate sharing of software solutions on an international level.

  3. Metadata application

    Intellectual property agreements
    • David Toll will seek legal advice on the Australian situation, and circulate the advice for comment.
    • The group agreed to encourage appropriate attribution and other good practice agreements between services, to act as a model.
    • Marian Bate offered to use the ADT Project as another vehicle to explore this issue.
    The A-Core schema
    • Debbie Campbell offered to examine the possibility of encouraging further use of the ACore, in terms of both implementation and software support.

  4. Promotion and branding
    • Jan Whitaker will approach auDA - the Australian body responsible for overseeing the allocation of domain names.
    • A small group of volunteer gateways - MetaChem, ALEG, and PADI - will work with Kinetica to explore cross-fertilisation.

  5. Collaboration
    • Gavan McCarthy will examine the possibility of establishing a registry of archive agencies.
    • Andrew Wells will test the relationship between CORC and the National Bibliographic Database.
    • Debbie Campbell will provide this report of the subject gateway meeting to the international IMesh group, and provide further instructions for using the IMesh email list.

  6. Sustainability
    • Education.Au offered to host the next meeting of the group, to continue the discussion of sustainability issues and exit strategies, in approximately six months' time (August 2000). This will allow some of the newer gateway projects to report back on their progress.
    • For the next meeting, the National Library will release a paper discussing its intentions for the National Metadata Repository.
    • Education.Au offered to establish an e-mail list for Australian subject gateway owners to continue information-sharing and discussion of issues between meetings.

Further reading

A paper "Subject gateways in Australia - metadata as an agent of change" describing the current status of subject gateway developments in Australia and overseas was presented by Debbie Campbell at the VALA2000 conference. The presentation of the paper also provides a useful summary.

References

  1. A position statement, http://www.nla.gov.au/initiatives/sg/paper1999-07.html
  2. MetaChem, http://metachem.ch.adfa.edu.au/
  3. Agrigate, http://www.agrigate.edu.au
  4. AVEL, http://avel.library.uq.edu.au/
  5. Australian Science at Work, http://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/asaw/asawhome.htm
  6. EdNA Online, http://www.edna.edu.au
  7. Australian Libraries Gateway, http://www.nla.gov.au/libraries/
  8. Australian Digital Theses Project, http://www.library.unsw.edu.au/thesis/thesis.html
  9. Kinetica, http://www.nla.gov.au/kinetica/
  10. IMesh, http://www.nla.gov.au/meta/imesh/overview.html
  11. An overview of AVEL, http://www.nla.gov.au/initiatives/sg/meetings/avel/
  12. AustLit, http://www.lib.adfa.edu.au/austlit.html
  13. BrightSparcs, http://www.asap.unimelb.edu.au/bsparcs/
  14. Online Heritage Resource Manager, http://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/ohrm/
  15. MetaChem summary, http://www.nla.gov.au/initiatives/sg/meetings/MetaChem/
  16. Agrigate new directions, http://www.nla.gov.au/initiatives/sg/meetings/Agrigate/
  17. CORC, http://www.oclc.org/oclc/corc/
  18. Resource Discovery Network, http://www.nla.gov.au/initiatives/sg/meetings/RDN/
  19. Service types, http://www.nla.gov.au/initiatives/sg/servicetypes2000-02-22.html
  20. IMesh toolkit, http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/imesh-toolkit/
  21. ACore, http://metadata.net/ac/draft-iannella-admin-01.txt
  22. ISAAR(CPF), http://data1.archives.ca/ica/cds/isaar_e.html
  23. PADI, http://www.nla.gov.au/padi/
  24. PANDORA, http://www.nla.gov.au/pandora/
  25. ISAAC, http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/research/index.html
  26. Current status, http://www.vala.org.au/vala2000/2000pdf/Campbell.PDF
  27. Presentation, http://www.nla.gov.au/initiatives/sg/meetings/gateways/

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Date last verified: 19 January 2005

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