AUSTRALIAN SUBJECT GATEWAYS FORUM

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AUSTRALIAN SUBJECT GATEWAYS FORUM

• making a difference in the knowledge age

http//www.nla.gov.au/subjectgateways/
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Australian Subject Gateways Forum (ASGF)

• The ASGF was formed in February
• 2000 with the following objectives
• To facilitate an information exchange between new
  and existing gateway projects
• To identify common issues needing to be addressed
• To identify activities that would help to address
  the larger issues, with an ultimate aim of
  ensuring the continued sustainability of the
  member gateways

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Why a forum?

• The ASGF members can work
• together on a number of issues and
• thus avoid costly duplication of effort in
• areas such as
• developing resource selection criteria
• applying a metadata schema
• designing access principles
• determining intellectual property rights
  considerations
• meeting obligations as government agencies
• technical architectures

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ASGF member gateways coverage

• Six gateways are subject specific and cover
  between them agriculture, engineering,
  sustainable development, chemistry, education and
  preservation of digital resources.
• Four gateways are not subject specific
  (Australian Digital Theses Program, Australian
  Science at Work, Bright Sparcs and
  PictureAustralia).
• Five gateways currently under development will
  provide access to resources in literature,
  performing arts, trade union history and law.
• The emphasis is on Australian material.

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Benefits to the users

• The ASGF explores issues relating to
• improving discovery of relevant and
• high quality resources for users
• through research and surveys on
• common definitions of Web-based services
• common software to improve interoperability
• metadata interoperability and proposals for a
  national metadata repository
• best practice in resource management and
  discovery
• use of thesauri

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International collaboration partners

• Renardus (European) information sharing and
  discussing common issues such as business models,
  sustainability etc
• Resource Discovery Network (UK) exploring the
  possibility of sharing content associate of RDN
  Centre
• Imesh (UK, US) advice in toolkit development
• Subject-specific collaboration between AVEL and
  EEVL (UK), Agrigate and NAL (US) and other
  agricultural gateways

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Key issues

• Interoperability and resource discovery
• Technologies for brokering cross-searching (eg
  Z39.50)
• Accessibility (compliance with W3C guidelines)
• Improved efficiencies (possibility of central
  national metadata repository or an
  interoperability framework)
• Sustainability and funding
• Awareness and promotion of the gateways services

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ASGF member gateways

• Agrigate (agricultural resources)
  http//www.agrigate.edu.au
• AVEL (Australasian Virtual Engineering Library)
  http//avel.edu.au
• AVELSD (Australasian Virtual Engineering Library
  for Sustainable Development ) http//avel.edu.au/a
  velsd/
• Australian Digital Theses Program
  http//adt.caul.edu.au
• Australian Science at Work (resources on
  Australian science organisations)
  http//www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/asaw/
• Bright Sparcs (resources on Australian
  scientists) http//www.asap.unimelb.edu.au/bsparcs
  /
• EdNA Online (Education Network Australia)
  http//www.edna.edu.au
• MetaChem (chemistry resources) http//metachem.ch.
  adfa.edu.au
• PADI (Preserving Access to Digital information)
  http//www.nla.gov.au/padi/
• PictureAustralia (digital image collections)
  http//www.pictureaustralia.org
• Gateways under development information is
  available at
• http//www.nla.gov.au/subjectgateways/