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Abstract

For those building digital library services, the organisational barriers are sometimes far more intractable than technological issues. This was firmly flagged in one of the first workshops focusing specifically on the digital library research agenda: Digital libraries are not simply technological constructs; they exist within a rich legal, social, and economic context, and will succeed only to the extent that they meet these broader needs. The innovatory drive within the development of digital library services thrives on the tension between meeting both technical and social imperatives. The Renardus project partners have previously taken parts in projects establishing the technical basis for subject gateways (e.g., ROADS, DESIRE], EELS) and are aware that technical barriers to interoperability are outweighed by challenges relating to the organisational and business models used. Within the Renardus project there has been a determination to address these organisational and business issues from the beginning. Renardus intends initially to create a pilot service, targeting the European scholar with a single point of access to quality selected Web resources. Looking ahead beyond current project funding, it aims to create the organisational and technological infrastructure for a sustainable service. This means the project is concerned with the range of processes required to establish a viable service, and is explicitly addressing business issues as well as providing a technical infrastructure. The overall aim of Renardus is to establish a collaborative framework for European subject gateways that will benefit both users in terms of enhanced services, and the gateways themselves in terms of shared solutions. In order to achieve this aim, Renardus will provide firstly a pilot service for the European academic and research communities brokering access to those European-based information gateways that currently participate in the project; in other words, brokering to gateways that are already in existence. Secondly the project will explore ways to establish the organisational basis for co-operative efforts such as metadata sharing, joint technical solutions and agreement on standardisation. It is intended that this exploration will feed back valuable experience to the individual participating gateways to suggest ways their services can be enhanced.
The Renardus project has brought together gateways that are 'large-scale national initiatives'. Within the European context this immediately introduces a diversity of organisations, as responsibility for national gateway initiatives is located differently, for example, in national libraries, national agencies with responsibility for educational technology infrastructure, and within universities or consortia of universities. Within the project, gateways are in some cases represented directly by their own personnel, in some cases by other departments or research centres, but not always by the people responsible for providing the gateway service. For example, the UK Resource Discovery Network (RDN) is represented in the project by UKOLN (formerly part of the Resource Discovery Network Centre) and the Institute of Learning and Research Technology (ILRT), University of Bristol -- an RDN 'hub' service provider -- who are primarily responsible for dissemination. Since the start of the project there have been changes within the organisational structures providing gateways and within the service ambitions of gateways themselves. Such lack of stability is inherent within the Internet service environment, and this presents challenges to Renardus activity that has to be planned for a three-year period. For example, within the gateway's funding environment there is now an exploration of 'subject portals' offering more extended services than gateways. There is also potential commercial interest for including gateways as a value-added component to existing commercial services, and new offerings from possible competitors such as Google's Web Directory and country based services. This short update on the Renardus project intends to inform the reader of progress within the project and to give some wider context to its main themes by locating the project within the broader arena of digital library activity. There are twelve partners in the project from Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden, as well as the UK. In particular we will focus on the specific activity in which UKOLN is involved: the architectural design, the specification of functional requirements, reaching consensus on a collaborative business model, etc. We will also consider issues of metadata management where all partners have interests. We will highlight implementation issues that connect to areas of debate elsewhere. In particular we see connections with activity related to establishing architectural models for digital library services, connections to the services that may emerge from metadata sharing using the Open Archives Initiative metadata sharing protocol, and links with work elsewhere on navigation of digital information spaces by means of controlled vocabularies.