Heery, R.; Carpenter, L.; Day, M.: Renardus project developments and the wider digital library context (2001)
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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.
Funding from the UK Electronic Libraries (eLib) programme and the European Community's Fourth Framework programme assisted the initial emergence of information gateways (e.g., SOSIG, EEVL, OMNI in the UK, and EELS in Sweden). Other gateways have been developed by initiatives co-ordinated by national libraries (such as DutchESS in the Netherlands, and AVEL and EdNA in Australia) and by universities and research funding bodies (e.g., GEM in the US, the Finnish Virtual Library, and the German SSG-FI services). An account of the emergence of subject gateways since the mid-1990s by Dempsey gives an historical perspective -- informed by UK experience in particular -- and also considers the future development of subject gateways in relation to other services. When considering the development and future of gateways, it would be helpful to have a clear definition of the service offered by a so-called 'subject gateway'. Precise definitions of 'information gateways', 'subject gateways' and 'quality controlled subject gateways' have been debated elsewhere. Koch has reviewed definitions and suggested typologies that are useful, not least in showing the differences that exist between broadly similar services. Working definitions that we will use in this article are that a subject gateway provides a search service to high quality Web resources selected from a particular subject area, whereas information gateways have a wider criteria for selection of resources, e.g., a national approach. Inevitably in a rapidly changing international environment different people perceive different emphases in attempts to label services, the significant issue is that users, developers and designers can recognise and benefit from commonalties in approach.
