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Characteristics of Australia's Subject Gateways

This is a brief summary of the characteristics of the Agrigate, AVEL, EdNA Online, and MetaChem gateways. Further details are available in the IMesh information paper. These characteristics will evolve to represent best practice for this type of service provision.

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Australian Subject Gateways

National Framework for the Development of Australian Subject Gateways

Characteristics

1. A small number of resources identified/expected, and intended update strategy.

Agrigate - 300; MetaChem - 500; EdNA - 8,000 assessed and 230,000 gathered but not assessed; AVEL - numbers not yet known.

The number of resources in each gateway reflect their maturity and the availability of human resources to identify and describe materials. The numbers will increase during 1999-2000. They reflect the availability of the materials themselves, for example, there seem to be more scientific materials on the Web and less literary, historical and cultural content. This is in part influenced by the longevity of the work - scientific information dates quickly and may be expected to be relevant for 3-4 years only. It also reflects the origins of the Internet itself.

EdNA increases the number of links by gathering material automatically. AVEL would also like to explore this by indexing the content of full-text documents that have been targeted through a pre-selection process. This approach, which has been adopted by some of the UK gateways such as EEVL, has resulted in resource numbers of approximately 200,000. However, unless the metadata description was precise, it has also resulted in an apparent (but not actual) duplication of resource description.

Update strategies also vary depending on the nature of the discipline, and the availability of human and software resources to perform checks regularly.

2. Percentage of Australian versus foreign content

Australian content is more relevant is some disciplines than others. For example, chemistry has no real geographical boundaries in terms of research. Literature and agriculture can have Australian boundaries. Components of engineering have useful regional boundaries, such as mining. EdNA focuses on Australian content, but is also 30% of overseas material.

3. Gateway coverage

The initial focus of each of the gateways has been on the assessment of electronic materials. The gateways have not excluded the possibility of adding non-electronic sources to their resources in the future, including print-based and interactive materials such as databases.

4. Ability to cross-search other gateways

The gateways have not yet explored solutions to facilitate simultaneous access to topics that may be described by more than one gateway.

5. Current partners

One of the key characteristics of each current gateway project is collaboration in equal partnerships. Decisions on development paths are taken democratically. The participants have an equal responsibility for content provision. The lead institution of each gateway provides the server host, and takes overall responsibility for service provision.

6. Plans for expansion within Australia

Agrigate has been successful in a bid for a second round of funding to consolidate new partnerships. AVEL is seeking to do so. MetaChem and AVEL also have expressed interest in pursuing their futures under the auspices of the JANUS Project.

7. Extent of planned international partnerships

The gateways have expressed keen interest in sharing information, but not necessarily data, with the UK gateways in a general sense. AVEL and EEVL have sought closer collaboration, as has EdNA and the ISAAC Scout Project.

8. Metadata schemas used for resource description

The gateways use the Dublin Core metadata standard for resource description, with local extensions from the EdNA schema to provide selection functionality, AGLS (http://www.naa.gov.au/recordkeeping/gov_online/agls/summary.html) to cater for print resources and the Admin Core to manage the currency of resources.

9. Technical issues arising

Each gateway faces different technical issues depending on their server platforms, but share a common concern about how to implement cross-gateway searching.

10. Intended gateway audience

Each gateway, except for EdNA Online, has targeted research communities in universities and the CSIRO.

11. Selection criteria used for gateway content

Agrigate completed an evaluation of many different sets of criteria. Although the application of rankings has been discussed by both Agrigate and MetaChem, an interim decision has been taken not to apply any, partly due to their subjective nature.

12. Thesaurus used (if any) and purpose

Agrigate and AVEL have identified international thesauri already available for use. MetaChem is exploring two potential candidates. The functionality for navigation using thesauri needs further exploration to ensure maximum benefit from their use.

13. Types of resources described

The gateways have focused on describing electronic resources.

14. Promotional activities planned

A range of promotional activities has been planned. The National Library also alerts the gateways of opportunities, and provides a link to them through the Australian Libraries Gateway.

15. Notional guidelines for linking to the gateways' sites and link analysis

A further criterion of success is the number of links to each gateway. This science is immature, and being further explored by the National Library.

16. Long-term strategies

The long-term sustainability of each of the gateways is of concern to the National Library. See the section on funding for further discussion [this is no longer available].

17. Evaluation criteria - critical success factors

Agrigate has completed and initial evaluation, which will be used as a benchmark for subsequent success when launched. A standard set of evaluation criteria will be sought from the IMesh group.

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