The Discussion

The UK subject gateways:
 

SOSIG: Social Science Information Gateway	http://sosig.ac.uk/
OMNI: Organising Medical Networked Information	http://omni.ac.uk/
EEVL: Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library	http://www.eevl.ac.uk/
Biz/ed: Business Education on the Internet	http://www.bized.ac.uk/
ADAM: Art, Design, Architecture & Media Information Gateway	http://www.adam.ac.uk/
History	http://ihr.sas.ac.uk/
RUDI: Resources for Urban Design Information	http://rudi.herts.ac.uk/
CAIN: Conflict Archive on the INternet	http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/

The Electronic Libraries Programme has funded the development of a suite of software and Internet standards for the development of new subject gateways.  This is called ROADS and is freely available for anyone to use.  Further information is available from the ROADS Web site:

ROADS: Resource Organisation and Discovery in Subject-based services  http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/roads/
 

The Netherlands

The Koninklijke Bibliotheek (National Library of the Netherlands) has created a national gateway covering all subjects, called DutchESS (Dutch Electronic Subject Service.  This has been developed by librarians in universities across the Netherlands and is freely available via the WWW:
 

DutchESS

http://www.konbib.nl/dutchess.ned/

 
 

Namibia

There has been discussion with NetLab in Sweden about the development of a subject-based information gateway for materials from developing countries.  Further information will be available from NetLab later this year (after September).
 

France

The National Library of France currently has not set up a subject gateway but they have been investigating the possibility.  They currently have lists of links to Internet resources from their Web site and they also catalogue Internet resources into their OPACs.
 
 

Finland

In Finland the Finnish Virtual Library Project is a national project whcih will set up a number of distributed ROADS-based gateways, located in various Finnish universities - that will all be cross-searchable.  This project is underway but in an early stage.  Details can be found on the WWW:
 

Finnish Virtual Library Project

http://www.uku.fi/kirjasto/virtuaalikirjasto/

 
 

South Africa

Collections of links to Internet resources have been started but not with a database, cataloguing or indexing.  No funding has yet been made available for gateway development.  The South African Library of Parliament is currently not on the WWW but has obtained funding to be put on the Web in the future.  There is interest in gateway development - and one reason for this is to provide support for distance learners.
 

Islamic Republic of Iran

The Minstry of Energy currently links to relevant Internet sites
 

United States of America

The ISI have started to link to key Internet sites but do not intend to develop large-scale subject gateways.  However, they would be interested in collaborating with gateways if a good proposal is suggested.
 

Russia

The Library of Foreign Literature currently provide link to international Internet sources
 

Elsewhere

There are a number of sites that point to other subject gateways being developed around the World:

A list of ROADS-based gateways
http://www.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/roads/who/

Pinakes
http://www.hw.ac.uk/libWWW/irn/pinakes/pinakes.html

Subject Based Information Gateways
http://www.lub.lu.se/desire/sbigs.html
 
 

Standards For Gateway Development

The group discussed the need for international standards to be used in gateway developments - to ensure that gateways do not use technological  or metadata systems that will become obsolete, and to ensure that all the gateways can be interoperable.

The following work on standards development was mentioned:
 

ROADS: Resource Organisation and Discovery in Subject-based services

http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/roads/

ROADS has created a system for gateway development that is compatible with metadata standards (eg Dublin Core) and bibliographic standards (eg MARC).
 

DESIRE Internet Cataloguing and Indexing Web Site

http://www.desire.org/results/discovery/content.htm

DESIRE is a project funded by the European Union that supports the development of a pan-European network of subject gateways.   The DESIRE Indexing and cataloguing Web site offers links to DESIRE Research on:

• quality Selection Criteria
• metadata / resource description
• the use of classification schemes
• developing multilingual subject gateways
• distributed cataloguing

I hope we will continue to talk about these issues and look for ways of collaborating and doing complimentary work.   If you are interested in this area please email either Marianne or myself, Emma Worsfold - our emails are given at the top of the page.