National Library of Australia Staff Papers, 2002

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Australian Subject Gateways Forum: How the Australian Subject Gateways Contribute to Internet Use in Learning Education and Training

Barbara Rozmus

Abstract


The emergence of a subject gateway as an Internet service has resulted largely from a reaction of information professionals to the poor performance of search tools on the web.  Most search engines index only fraction of the web resources.  Despite the ongoing development and increasing sophistication of some of the popular search engines they are still not reliable in finding relevant items quickly.  Subject gateways address this issue by providing a mechanism for accessing a collection of high quality, evaluated resources identified to support research in a particular subject discipline.  The resources identified typically include websites, e-journals, and databases.  Therefore subject gateways can provide a substantial contribution to supporting learning and teaching in the new online environment.

The Australian Subject Gateways Forum (ASGF) http://www.nla.gov.au/subjectgateways/, formed in February 2000, brought together the subject gateways in Australia.  They evolved predominantly within the Australian Higher Education sector.  The aims of the ASGF include facilitating an information exchange between new and existing gateway projects and identifying common issues needing to be addressed.  The ASGF include subject-specific gateways (such as agriculture, engineering, sustainable development, chemistry, education and preservation of digital resources) and non-subject specific gateways.  The gateways currently under development cover the areas of Australian literature, performing arts, trade union history and law.  The primary target audience for the ASGF subject gateways are under- and post-graduate students and lecturers in the HE sector, as well as professionals and researchers in the field.

What all the ASGF subject gateways have in common is the application of standard policies and procedures to ensure effective resource discovery.  Only high-quality web resources are included – selected by subject specialists who apply defined selection criteria, described and classified by information specialists who use a recognised metadata schema and an appropriate controlled vocabulary.  As a result, the resource discovery process for a user is likely to be effective.  In this way subject gateways offer a unique capacity to support innovative learning and teaching and are exemplary in demonstrating best practice in online resource description.


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