Quality‐controlled subject gateways: definitions, typologies, empirical overview
| Published date | 01 February 2000 |
| Date | 01 February 2000 |
| Pages | 24-34 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520010320040 |
| Author | Traugott Koch |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Quality-controlled
subject gateways:
definitions, typologies,
empirical overview
Traugott Koch
1. Introduction
Discussions about definition and terminology
are usually boring exercises and not always
very fruitful or important for the subsequent
work or publication. Throughout the last few
years of Internet development we have,
however, experienced both the need and the
difficulty of doing so because of the fact that
so many different communities are
participating in common developments and
discussions and that some people come even
from outside traditional research
communities.
For this special issue it seems necessary to
make an effort to define the concept of subject
gateways used, since this term is not
established and the type of service not yet
frequently occurring. Instances of this kind of
service are not always generally perceived as
belonging to the same type of Internet service.
An empirical overview of existing subject
gateways will be provided in this article
focusing on factual descriptions of the main
characteristics. In addition, a kind of typology
is presented which could be useful in
understanding the breadth of alternative
approaches and in distinguishing between
different variants of gateways.
This overview cannot be more than a
cursory examination, since two factors lead to
more variations. First, the number of similar
services seems to be growing quickly at the
moment. Additionaly, existing services
themselves are changing frequently regarding
scope, coverage and content, methods and
features. Because of the large investment of
time required to discover, examine, and study
all these ever-changing services, a larger,
collective effort would be needed in order to
obtain better definitions and typologies.
2. Elements of a definition of ``subject
gateways''
In the following, I will try to propose and
discuss some important elements in defining
the concept of subject gateways, mainly
derived from existing services[1].
2.1 ``Subject gateway''
The following could be an initial approach to
a definition of subject gateways:
Subject gateways are Internet services which
support systematic resource discovery. They
The author
Traugott Koch is Senior Librarian, Digital Library
Scientist, NetLab, Library Development Department,
Lund University, Sweden.
Keywords
Quality control, Classification, Internet,
Information resources management, Cataloguing
Abstract
``Quality-controlled subject gateways'' are Internet
services which apply a rich set of quality measures to
support systematic resource discovery. Considerable
manual effort is used to secure a selection of resources
which meet quality criteria and to display a rich
description of these resources with standards-based
metadata. Regular checking and updating ensure good
collection management. A main goal is to provide a high
quality of subject access through indexing resources using
controlled vocabularies and by offering a deep
classification structure for advanced searching and
browsing. This article provides an initial empirical
overview of existing services of this kind, their
approaches and technologies, based on proposed working
definitions and typologies of subject gateways.
Electronic access
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is
available at
http://www.emerald-library.com
Overviews
24
Online Information Review
Volume 24 .Number 1 .2000 .pp. 24±34
#MCB University Press .ISSN 1468-4527
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