The subject gateway: experiences and issues based on the emergence of the Resource Discovery Network
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520010323029 |
| Date | 01 February 2000 |
| Pages | 8-23 |
| Published date | 01 February 2000 |
| Author | Lorcan Dempsey |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
The subject gateway:
experiences and issues
based on the
emergence of the
Resource Discovery
Network
Lorcan Dempsey
1. Introduction
This special issue is about a set of services
which have been known, but not universally,
as subject gateways, or as subject-based
information gateways. For the moment, we
can say that in the usage envisaged here such
terms typically refer to a network resource
discovery service which provides database(s)
of Internet resource descriptions with a
specific subject focus, created according to
specific selection and quality criteria.
Examples are SOSIG, EDNA, and EELS. A
fuller discussion of the characteristics and
range of such services can be found in the
companion article by Traugott Koch and
readers are referred there for the further detail
which will not be found here. There is also
some discussion of issues, which I will draw
on below, in the report of the first Imesh
Workshop (Dempsey et al., 1999), which
brought together the creators of such services
to discuss shared concerns.
``Subject gateway'' as a term was
popularised in the UK Electronic Libraries
Programme (eLib), and it has been given
currency by initiatives which have been
influenced by the eLib gateways. It tends to
be used by services in the research,
educational or cultural domains, which
sometimes have a significant R&D or project-
based focus. In several cases, subject gateway
activity has been conceived and carried
forward as a part of academic or research
information infrastructure initiatives, as has
happened in the UK and more recently in
Denmark, for example. The R&D aspect
means that there is a considerable pool of
literature on subject services, some of it with
an evangelical tinge. It also means that, in
some cases, there are relatively high levels of
interaction between developers in different
countries, as services have been developed
within collaborative projects, or by people
The author
Lorcan Dempsey is Co-Director at Resource Discovery
Network, and Director, UKOLN, UK.
Keywords
Information retrieval, Internet, Cataloguing, Research,
Academic libraries, United Kingdom
Abstract
Charts the history and development of the UK's Resource
Discovery Network, which brings together under a
common business, technical and service framework a
range of subject gateways and other services for the
academic and research community. Considers its future
relationship to other services, and position within the
information ecology.
Electronic access
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is
available at
http://www.emerald-library.com
Lorcan Dempsey is the director of UKOLN at the
University of Bath, and co-Director of the
Resource Discovery Network. UKOLN is
supported by the Library and Information
Commission, JISC, and the University of Bath.
The RDN is funded by the JISC. Thanks are due
to Derek Law for commenting on the section about
the policy background to the eLib gateways, and to
Traugott Koch for inviting the contribution.
Thanks also to Ray Lester and to Nicky Ferguson
for some specific discussion. Any views expressed
are those of the author alone.
Overviews
8
Online Information Review
Volume 24 .Number 1 .2000 .pp. 8±23
#MCB University Press .ISSN 1468-4527
who have been concerned to keep in touch
with centres of activity. Finally, it means that
a major issue for many of these services is how
to transition into sustainable, persistent
components of the emerging information
landscape.
In this article, a first section presents a
historical perspective; a second examines
some more general issues as the subject
services develop. In the first section, I take a
perspective influenced by UK experiences. I
hope that this has some intrinsic interest, but
also that it is more generally interesting as a
consideration of some representative policy
and service questions which have ultimately
led to the setting up of the Resource
Discovery Network (RDN). The RDN is a
new service, funded within the academic and
research community in the UK, which brings
together under a common business, technical
and service framework a range of subject
gateways and other services. I hope also that
the frankly retrospective perspective of the
first section complements the treatment of
current developments available in other
contributions to this special issue.
Finally, an important scope note. This
article, as with the rest of this issue, takes as
its starting point a particular set of services
which have sufficient commonality to allow a
general discussion about them ± they are
described in Traugott Koch's article. Other
services are beginning to appear which have
similar characteristics, some from within the
commercial publishing sector, for example,
but these are treated here in relation to
subject gateway interests. This is not to say
anything about the usefulness of those
services, merely to note a boundary on this
discussion.
2. From eLib to the resource discovery
network: the historical example of the
UK
2.1 A schematic historical context
The subject gateways emerged in response to
the challenge of ``resource discovery'' in a
rapidly developing Internet environment in
the early and mid-1990s. It might be useful to
contextualise briefly the emergence of the
subject gateways within a rather schematic
account of Internet development. I have
elsewhere suggested that we can identify four
very approximate phases, or emphases, in the
growth of Internet and information
infrastructure which have emerged
successively but whose characteristic user and
service orientations continue to exist modified
within later phases (Dempsey, 1993, 1994):
(1) Esoteric. The networks emerge as esoteric
instruments of the physics and wider
scientific community. Resources are
largely computational.
(2) Community. Their use expands rapidly,
and they become central to the
communications, research and
collaborative habits of many in the
academic and research world and
increasingly beyond it. Several network
infrastructures exist, funded in several
ways (Quarterman, 1990). For a growing
group of incipient users, the network has
become a type of communal social space,
which is integral to communications and
work behaviour. Information services also
began to be more widely used: ftp
archives, remotely accessible databases
and so on. These may often be based on
begged or borrowed resources. The large
number of electronic discussion lists and
bulletin boards, and the emergence of the
network information retrieval systems
(Gopher, WWW, Archie, netfirst, etc.)
from the academic and research sectors,
are evidence of flourishing communities
of network users. Much of this work is
based on voluntary, collaborative,
uncompetitive effort, developing the
characteristic ``Internet culture''. The
WWW Virtual Library is an example of
an information service representing this
phase: it was started by Tim Berners-Lee
in 1994 and is run by ``a loose
confederation of volunteers, who compile
pages of key links for particular areas in
which they are expert'' (VLib). In the UK
we can point to the original BUBL service
and to the creation of Aliweb (Koster,
1994) as UK examples characteristic of
this phase.
(3) Academic and research information
infrastructure. The networks are
recognised as integral to the academic
information environment and as strategic
resources for research and, later, for
learning. This stage is marked by national
funding for network and information
services (e.g. van der Werf, 1994),
institutional interest in opening up views
of Internet resources to their users (e.g.
9
The subject gateway: experiences and issues
Lorcan Dempsey
Online Information Review
Volume 24 .Number 1 .2000 .8±23
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