Australian subject gateways: political and strategic issues
| Published date | 01 February 2000 |
| Pages | 73-77 |
| Date | 01 February 2000 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520010320266 |
| Author | Debbie Campbell |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Australian subject
gateways: political and
strategic issues
Debbie Campbell
Introduction
During 1998-99, several subject gateway
projects were funded from the Australian
Research Council, an independent research
body supported by the Commonwealth
Department of Education, Training and
Youth Affairs. The goal of each project was to
establish a high quality source of discipline
specific materials at a single Web location[1].
The selection of the disciplines in question:
chemistry, agriculture, engineering and
information technology, was based on
historical and political factors in the
Australian research library community.
The advent of the subject gateway projects
has opened up a lively debate in Australia
about the place of resource discovery and
access services for Web resources in a national
information and research environment. While
a range of strategic and political issues still
need to be addressed for the further
development of the Australian subject
gateways, this paper willfocus on the following
key issues: content creation, integration of
access to print and electronic resources,
archiving and persistent identification,
sustainability and service integration.
Content creation
Content creation is used here in the context of
metadata as content. While Web resources
themselves may also be classified as content,
this discussion concentrates more on the
management of their descriptive and
administrative information. Metadata refer to
standard descriptive schemata which have
been developed for international use in the
1990s, such as the Dublin Core[2]. This paper
assumes that the creation or augmentation of
metadata for Web resources is a key
mechanism for facilitating enhanced resource
discovery and access in research disciplines.
The identification, description and
provision of access to Web resources in a
single discipline, sufficiently reliable and
qualitative to support research, require a high
level of strategic management. A distributed
creation service, where subject categories
within the discipline are apportioned between
partner sites, is effective only if the selection
criteria and description guidelines are well
understood and consistently applied.
Duplicate inclusion of resources is prevented
The author
Debbie Campbell is Manager of Infrastructure Projects,
National Library of Australia, Canberra, Australia.
Keywords
Strategy, Internet, Libraries, Co-operation,
Online retrieval, Australia
Abstract
The key political and strategic issues which need to be
addressed for the future development of the Australian
subject gateways are: continued quality of content
creation, integration of access to print and electronic
resources, archiving and persistent identification,
sustainability of services and service integration. These
isssues will be more effectively tackled internationally,
and the Australian subject gateways are keen to work
with international collaborators to achieve a mutually
beneficial outcome.
Electronic access
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is
available at
http://www.emerald-library.com
Specialized articles
73
Online Information Review
Volume 24 .Number 1 .2000 .pp. 73±77
#MCB University Press .ISSN 1468-4527
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