DutchESS: Dutch Electronic Subject Service – a Dutch national collaborative effort
| Pages | 46-49 |
| Published date | 01 February 2000 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520010320095 |
| Date | 01 February 2000 |
| Author | Marianne Peereboom |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
DutchESS: Dutch
Electronic Subject
Service ± a Dutch
national collaborative
effort
Marianne Peereboom
In The Netherlands the Koninklijke
Bibliotheek (National Library) has from an
early stage initiated various projects and
services to provide access to Web resources.
One of them is NL-Menu[1], which serves as
an entry point to resources in the Dutch
domain. DutchESS is aimed more specifically
at the academic community. It had been set
up in 1993 as a local KB gopher-service, BC-
Gopher, named after the Basic Classification,
the classification scheme that was the basis of
its menu structure. The service was moved to
the Web in 1995 as NBW (Nederlandse
Basisclassificatie Web). DutchESS has been
the new name of the service since September
1997, when the completely restructured
version went online. DutchESS has been
developed as part of a two-year project (1996-
1998) funded by IWI (Innovatie
Wetenschappelijke Informatie), a funding
body for innovative projects in the area of
scientific information. Initially a local KB
project, from 1995 onwards Dutch academic
libraries joined, and at this moment
DutchESS is a collaborative effort of the KB
and seven academic libraries. After the end of
the project, KB decided to continue
developing and supporting DutchESS in a
structural way. Co-operation with the other
libraries was consolidated in a formal
agreement, whereby it was decided that the
KB would co-ordinate the collaborative
efforts and provide the necessary technical
support.
Organisation
Subject gateways may follow a centralised or a
distributed model. DutchESS is a
combination of both. Technically it follows
the central database model: the database and
user interface are sitting on a KB server. But
the responsibilities and workflow are based on
a distributed model: the selection of resources
and database maintenance are the shared
responsibility of the participating libraries. No
central content maintenance or editing takes
place. The KB provides a national co-
ordinator, a research scientist (who advises on
further development of the service) and
technical support. The other libraries appoint
their own local co-ordinator and a board of
editors. Policy is developed by the Co-
ordination Working Group (CWG), which
consists of the national co-ordinator, the
The author
Marianne Peereboom is a employed as a Research
Scientist and Project Co-ordinator at the Library Research
Department of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (National
Library of The Netherlands). E-mail:
marianne@python.konbib.nl
Keywords
Distribution data processing, Classification,
Information retrieval, Internet, Databases, Libraries
Abstract
This article gives an overview of the design and
organisation of DutchESS, a Dutch information gateway
created as a national collaborative effort of the National
Library and a number of academic libraries. The combined
centralised and distributed model of DutchESS is
discussed, as well as its selection policy, its metadata
format, classification scheme and retrieval options. Also
some options for future collaboration on an international
level are explored.
Electronic access
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is
available at
http://www.emerald-library.com
Service profiles
46
Online Information Review
Volume 24 .Number 1 .2000 .pp. 46±48
#MCB University Press .ISSN 1468-4527
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