NOVAGate – a Nordic gateway to electronic resources in the forestry, veterinary and agricultural sciences
| Published date | 01 February 2000 |
| Pages | 69-73 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520010320158 |
| Date | 01 February 2000 |
| Author | Adrian Price |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
NOVAGate ± a Nordic
gateway to electronic
resources in the
forestry, veterinary and
agricultural sciences
Adrian Price
1. Introduction
The then eight libraries of the five Nordic
countries' agricultural and veterinary
universities began work on the NOVAGate
gateway at the end of 1996. The original
project proposal was drafted by the Finnish
partners in the project and the first project
meeting was held in Sweden in December
1996. Over the next 18 months, until the
database opened in July 1998, the project
group began building the various structures of
the NOVAGate service.
2. Structure of the service
2.1 Organizational structure
The NOVA University ± The Nordic
Forestry, Veterinary and Agricultural
University[1] ± is a research and education
network made up of the five Nordic countries'
forestry, veterinary and agricultural
universities established in 1996. The libraries
of these universities have for many years had
contact with one another, and it was therefore
natural that the gateway should become a
service within the framework of the NOVA
University.
Across the libraries which serve the NOVA
universities, the core subject coverage of the
institutions involved is luckily very
homogeneous (though not identical!), and it
has thus far been relatively simple to define
the subject boundaries of the service, even
though from the start there were eight
organizations involved. NOVAGate covers
agriculture, forestry, horticulture,
landscaping, aquaculture and the veterinary,
environmental, plant and food sciences. The
initial three years of the project have been
partly financed by The Nordic Council of
Ministers, with the remainder coming from
the institutions themselves.
Project groups have been established in
each ``NOVA country'' and, in the
development of the service, each country/
project group has had responsibility for
various areas of development as well as
coordinating the entire project. Sweden is the
database administrator and was coordinator
in 1998, Denmark had responsibility for the
Web-interface, marketing and coordinating
the project in 1999, Norway has conducted
evaluations of the service, and Finland has
produced a Web-based cataloguing guide and
The author
Adrian Price is a Librarian at The Danish Veterinary and
Agricultural Library, Frederiksberg, Denmark. E-mail:
ap@kvl.dk
Keywords
Information services, Online retrieval, Internet, Special
libraries, Scandinavia
Abstract
NOVAGate is a subject-based information gateway
covering electronic resources in the agricultural,
veterinary and related fields. The service, which opened in
July 1998, is produced by the veterinary and agricultural
libraries of the five Nordic countries ± Denmark, Finland,
Iceland, Norway and Sweden ± which serve the NOVA
University. The gateway covers Nordic and European
resources as well as the resources of international
organizations, but being planned is a network of subject
gateways which will give access to a wide range of
international quality resources within the agricultural,
veterinary and related fields. The service uses the ROADS
software.
Electronic access
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is
available at
http://www.emerald-library.com
Service profiles
69
Online Information Review
Volume 24 .Number 1 .2000 .pp. 69±72
#MCB University Press .ISSN 1468-4527
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