Australian Subject Gateways Forum

Minutes of the 8 November 2002 meeting

Held in Adelaide at Flinders University

The meeting was hosted by Flinders University and chaired by Garry Putland, Director, Education and Training Network Services, education.au limited.

Attendees

Marie-Louise Ayres, Debbie Campbell, Sten Christensen, Nicole Clark, Joh Hartog, Kerry Kilner, Jen Millea, Roxanne Missingham, Garry Putland (chair), Norbert Riedl, Barbara Rozmus (minutes), Barbara Thorsen, Jan Whitaker, Jenny White

Apologies

Toby Burrows, Tony Cargnuletti, Basil Dewhurst, Jon Mason

Gateways represented

Agrigate, AusStage, AustLit, Australian e-Humanities Gateway, AVEL, EdNA Online, MusicAustralia, PictureAustralia, Weblaw

Announcement on the 2003 ARC LIEF bids outcomes

Joh Hartog announced that AusStage was successful in obtaining $280,000 for phase two. This phase will involve completing the infrastructure and creating a sustainable business model.

Kerry Kilner announced that AustLit was successful in obtaining $403,000 to fund further development of AustLit, involving addition of over 100,000 work records and 6,000 agent records, and digitising audio materials in collaboration with the NLA. A free directory service will also be developed.

Business arising

Outcomes and action items from the 23 May 2002 meeting were discussed and the following comments were made:

Legal agreements

Barbara Rozmus asked that copies of any legal agreements, once finalised, be made available to the group on the members only part of the website. It was agreed that all references to the actual parties in the agreements be removed before placing them on the website. Barbara Thorsen pointed out that the WebLaw contributors' agreement is publicly available from the WebLaw website.

  • ACTION 1:
    Barbara Rozmus to link to the WebLaw contributors' agreement from the ASGF website.

ASGF membership model

It was agreed that the exploration of the ASGF membership model should look into what is a gateway and how gateways should be involved with the ASGF. It would be desirable to produce a position statement and a short paper outlining the process of change for subject gateways. Any consideration of the membership model would have to take into account the outcomes of the DEST submission (see the next item), therefore it was decided to put this work on hold till the end of December 2002.

ASGF submission to DEST Information Infrastructure Advisory Committee

Kerry Kilner informed the meeting that the ASGF submission went to DEST on 31 October as part of the overall package Research Information Infrastructure Framework for Australian Higher Education. Minister's decision is expected by the end of 2002. If funding is secured an expression of interest would need to be developed in order to identify a lead university (or a consortium if more than one university is interested).

  • ACTION 2:
    A small working group to be set up to work on the process resulting from the ASGF submission to the DEST Information Infrastructure Advisory Committee. The nominations so far: Kerry Kilner, Jan Whitaker, Jenny Millea, Barbara Rozmus.

Outcomes of the NLA/NOIE/NAA seminar on government online publications

The seminar, held in July 2002 at the NLA, was very well attended and resulted in publishing a document Keeping Government Publications Online: Guidelines for Commonwealth Publishers (the online version is available at http://www.nla.gov.au/guidelines/govpubs.html) to address the issue of ensuring that government web publications are archived/accessible in the long term. The NLA is now undertaking a trial project to identify different streams of acquiring records for government online publications.

Progress report on the proof-of-concept for a new resource discovery service (RDS) at NLA

Debbie Campbell informed the meeting that the proof-of-concept has been completed and is available as a pilot at http://www.nla.gov.au/initiatives/resdisc.html. Specifications for a production system will be developed between January and June 2003. Early next year Debbie will send an invitation to each ASGF gateway re participation in the service. If gateways contribute their data to RDS the service could make their metadata records available to AARLIN via Z39.50 search, resulting in user access to the aggregation of gateways resources.

Progress reports

The participants provided additional comments on their gateways developments in the last 6 months, complementing the progress reports submitted before the meeting.

Agrigate continues the link checking service which involves notifying the web documents providers about broken links. Agrigate has expressed interest in collaborating in the development of the new AusAID gateway.

AusStage in phase two of its development plans to complete the directory service, investigate cross-referencing to AustLit, and undertake error sampling/analysis. They have developed a model for such analysis with assistance from the Flinders University statistician.

AustLit has over 100 subscribers to its email alert service. AustLit received a number of invitations from Europe and US to present papers on the AustLit FRBR model. Would like to encourage small specialised research projects (eg North Queensland literature) which can contribute data to AustLit.

Australian e-Humanities Gateway was officially launched by by Professor Iain McCalman, President of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, on 1 November 2002. The event involved presentations by leading researchers and practictioners in the field of digital humanities research.

AVEL has recently changed the gateway emphasis from engineering and computing to sustainability and technological innovation following the recent paradigm shift in engineering. May consider sending its IT records to EEVL. AVEL has recently moved to the new version of the DSTC HotMeta harvesting software. AVEL has expressed interest in collaborating in the development of the new AusAID gateway.

EdNA Online commented on the recently done usability testing. The results included the following findings: people predominantly used the browse function, could not see the search box at the top right, did not understand how to restrict their search by checking selection boxes, used the browser 'back' button in preference to the 'home' button or logo, and did not use the breadcrumbs. EdNA Online has expressed interest in collaborating in the development of the new AusAID gateway.

MusicAustralia - the many challenges MusicAustralia is facing include deciding on a suitable data model to support desired relationships functionality, and data granularity issues (eg how to expose individual works within a container such as an album). Marie-Louise has also been involved in the work on Australia Dancing, which may be joining the ASGF mid next year.

PictureAustralia PictureAustralia's usage has increased in the recent months. A favourable article on the service was published in the Canberra Times on 4 November.

WebLaw - four new institutions expressed interest in joining WebLaw since its soft launch in September 2002. The software used by WebLaw has been developed in-house and is beeing modified according to requirements on an ongoing basis by the UQ IT Department.

New business

Presentation on the NLA Project Management Methodology

Paul Mulholland, NLA Risk Manager, presented an overview of the NLA project management methodology (PMM), which is based on the UK developed Prince package. It was agreed that selected PMM templates would be included in the members only area of the ASGF website. The presentation was followed by a short discussion on the different approach to project management in the HE sector, which is an uncontrolled environment.

  • ACTION 3:
    Barbara Rozmus to include selected PMM templates in the members only area of the ASGF website.

Data verification in the AusStage project

Joh Hartog and Jenny White presented the AusStage data verification model, which has been developed in-house with assistance from Kylie Lange, the Flinders University statistician. The model uses stratified and inverse sampling techniques and aims to help with maintaining integrity of database records. The presentation was received with interest by the participants. It was agreed that it would be included in the members only area of the ASGF website.

  • ACTION 4:
    Joh Hartog to report to the next meeting on the outcomes of the AusStage pilot project trialling the data verification model.
  • ACTION 5:
    All gateways to provide to the next meeting a short report on their data verification practices.

Web-based reference services - applicability to subject gateways

Marie-Louise Ayres told the meeting about AskNow http://www.asknow.gov.au, an online chat reference service being currently piloted by the NLA and State Libraries. She suggested that subject gateways need to think about providing (or linking to) a similar reference service in the future, allowing users to ask questions of an expert in real time and utilising the push/pull technology. Appropriate pathways should be provided to make subject gateways highly visible to reference librarians involved in such service.

Other business

Update on the ASGF submission to the Senate Inquiry into the Role of Libraries in the Online Environment

Barbara Rozmus provided an update on the Senate Inquiry process. There will be public hearings on 26-28 November and the ASGF has been invited to appear on 28 November in Sydney. University of Queensland has agreed to represent the ASGF, with Barbara Thorsen and Janine Schmidt likely to attend the hearing.

  • ACTION 6:
    Barbara Rozmus to send an urgent reminder to the group via the mail list re providing feedback to Barbara Thorsen before the hearing.

Interoperability Workshop on 7 November - discussion

The group found the interoperability workshop highly valuable. It was agreed that all presentations will be made available in the members only area of the ASGF website for future reference by the members. It was agreed that the mapping of the standards currently used by the ASGF gateways be updated and extended by including additional information.

  • ACTION 7:
    All presenters of the interoperability workshop to send their presentations to Barbara Rozmus for inclusion on the ASGF website.
  • ACTION 8:
    Barbara Rozmus to revise the standards information on the ASGF website and ask the ASGF members for updates as necessary.

Next meeting

Next meeting will be held in Brisbane in May 2003, hosted by Nicole Clark at University of Queensland.

Date last verified: 19 January 2005

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