ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 44 | April 2000
Subject gateways meeting
Subject gateways are a relatively new service type in Australia, consisting of standard descriptions linking to high-quality evaluated electronic resources, chosen mainly for their research value to the higher education sector and other interested parties. The National Library hosts a number of gateways on its web site (http://www.nla.gov.au/initiatives/sg/).
On 22 February the National Library hosted a meeting of developers of Australias subject gateways for the first time. The meeting was convened to facilitate an information exchange between the services, identify common issues and agree on actions which would help to address these issues.
The projects and services represented were MetaChem (1998), the Australian Electronic Literature Gateway (2000), Lawzone (2000), Performing Arts (2000), Australian Virtual Engineering Library (AVEL) (1999), Agrigate (1999), Bright Sparcs (1994), Australian Science at Work (1999) and EdNA Online (1996) (see http://www.nla.gov.au/meta/sg/gateways.html for subject gateways to the disciplines).
Other services with which the gateways will explore relationships were also included: the Australian Libraries Gateway (ALG) (1998), the Australian Digital Theses Project (ADT) (1998), Kinetica (1999) and through it, CORC. IMesh, the international subject gateway mesh in which Australia is a participant, was represented by Chris Rusbridge, the U.K.s eLib Programme Director. More information about Imesh is available on its web site (http://www.imesh.org/). Chris also spoke about the U.K.-based Resource Discovery Network, which utilises a coordination centre to oversee and assist in the development of subject gateways on a national scale (http://www.rdn.ac.uk/).
Important issues identified during the meeting included the need to agree on terminology for referring to the gateway service type, the most appropriate software solution for delivering a gateway service, options for enhancing metadata to support interoperability, identifying and maintaining collaborative opportunities and sustaining the services in the longer term. Actions were apportioned across the gateways hosts, and an email list for informal communication was established.
The participants agreed that it would be important not to lose the cooperative momentum engendered by this meeting. A full report of the February meeting is on the NLAs web site(www.nla.gov.au/initiatives/sg), and as actions from the meeting progress, their status will also be posted there.
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| Andrew Wells, Assistant Director-General, Resource Sharing Division, speaking at the subject gateways meeting |
Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: tford@nla.gov.au