ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 64 | August 2003
Australian Subject
Gateways Forum
Report of May Meeting
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Have you ever wondered what a ‘subject gateway’ is, and how it is different from the plethora of other web-based services? The Australian Subject Gateways Forum (ASGF) can provide you with answers to these questions through its website at <www.nla.gov.au/subjectgateways/servicetypes.html>.
A number of the Australian subject gateways have been working together under the banner of the ASGF for the last four years. This collaboration involves holding regular six-monthly meetings and maintaining a website (hosted by the National Library of Australia) for information sharing and promulgation of agreed actions. The 18 gateways constituting the ASGF at present work towards developing a common approach to deploying technologies, specifications and standards where it is practicable to do so. Their ultimate aim is to achieve a persistent, sustainable and interoperable infrastructure.
The last ASGF meeting, held on 23 May 2003 in Brisbane, resulted in finalising for inclusion on its website a comprehensive document titled Technical Considerations of the ASGF: Technologies, Specifications & Standards. It summarises each gateway’s approach to those issues under the following topics: software, metadata, interoperability, thesauri, quality assurance, usage statistics, partners, milestones and contact details. The document can be found at <www.nla.gov.au/subjectgateways/standards.html>.
The other outcomes of the May meeting included agreeing to a pilot project involving sharing of records between the National Bibliographic Database (NBD) and subject gateways. The aim of the pilot is to work out how this can be achieved in an efficient manner.
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EdNA Online—http://new.edna.edu.au/ |
The gateways have also agreed to collaborate with PANDORA, the national archive of selected digital Australian publications, by using its Service to Indexing and Abstracting Agencies <pandora.nla.gov.au/abstracting.html> to alert PANDORA to online materials such as research reports, conference proceedings and other major items of scholarship which are likely to meet PANDORA’s criteria for archiving.
Two interesting presentations were made at the May meeting. Jillian Dellit spoke on the work of the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs—Information and Communication Technologies (MCEETYA ICT) in Schools Taskforce <http://icttaskforce.edna.edu.au/>, and Jenny Millea spoke on the new generation EdNA (Education Network Australia) online portal. Jillian briefed the group on the work of the taskforce, aiming at establishing a publicly accessible web-based knowledge network for education, available to teachers, parents, students and researchers. The discussion following Jillian’s presentation showed a mutual interest in exchanging information and experiences regarding models of such knowledge networks in Australia and elsewhere. The meeting closed with Jenny’s very interesting demonstration of the prototype of the new generation EdNA Online portal <http://new.edna.edu.au/>. Its new functions include shared workspace, personalisation (MyEdNA) and enhanced features of the search facility.
If you are interested in finding out more about the Australian Subject Gateways
Forum meetings, or its other activities, please visit the ASGF website at <www.nla.gov.au/subjectgateways/>.
—Barbara Rozmus, Manager, National Initiatives, Coordination Support Branch
| Contents list for this issue of Gateways |
Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: pcliff@nla.gov.au