Information gateways are now a well established feature on the Internet. There are a number of different models for setting up and running gateways. The technology behind gateways can also vary considerable. But quality information gateways all have key similarities that make them invaluable resources to their respective user communities.

Information gateways are quality controlled information services that have the following characteristics:

1. an online service that provides links to numerous other sites or documents on the Internet
2. selection of resources in an intellectual process according to published quality and scope criteria (this excludes e.g. selection according to automatically measured popularity)
3. intellectually produced content descriptions, in the spectrum between short annotation and review (this excludes automatically extracted so-called summaries). A good but not necessary criterion is the existence of intellectually assigned keywords or controlled terms.
4. intellectually constructed browsing structure/classification (this excludes completely unstructured lists of links)
5. at least partly, manually generated (bibliographic) metadata for the individual resources

After T. Koch: http://www.ub2.lu.se/tk/SBIG-definition.txt

Many academic libraries and institutions are currently looking for ways to help their users discover high quality information on the Internet in a quick and effective way. The DESIRE project and others (e.g. IMesh) suggest that the development of information gateways can provide a solution.

Researchers and academics do not always have the time, inclination or skills to surf the Internet for resources that could support their work. As Internet publishing and communication become more commonplace this could disadvantage some researchers as they will miss valuable information and communication resources.

In the traditional information environment human intermediaries, such as publishers and librarians, filter and process information so that users can search catalogues and indexes of organised knowledge as opposed to raw data and disparate information. Subject gateways work on the same principle - they employ subject experts and information professionals to select, classify and catalogue Internet resources to aid search and retrieval for their users. Users are offered access to a database of Internet resource descriptions which they can search by keyword or browse by subject area. They can do this in the knowledge that they are looking at a quality controlled collection of resources. A description of each resource is provided to help users assess its origin, content and nature, enabling them to decide if it is worth investigating further.

The following information gateways are used elsewhere in the handbook as examples of good practise and/or having interesting development information to contribute to the wider gateway's community. A full listing of information gateways can be obtained from:

• http://www.hw.ac.uk/libWWW/irn/pinakes/pinakes.html

Desire - Development of a European Service for Information on Research and Education, EU funded research project
ESRC - Economic and Social Research Council. The ESRC is the UK's largest independent funding agency for research and postgraduate training into social and economic issues.
IMesh - International Collaboration on Internet Subject Gateways
JISC - Joint Information Systems Committee. UK Higher Education organisation, with the aim to stimulate and enable the cost effective exploitation of information systems and to provide a high quality national network infrastructure for the UK higher education and research councils communities
ROADS - Resource Organisation And Discovery in Subject-based Services

Biz/ed - Business and Economics Education on the Internet, http://www.bized.ac.uk/

Desire - Development of a European Service for Information on Research and Education, http://www.desire.org/

DutchESS - Dutch Electronic Subject Service, http://www.konbib.nl/dutchess/

EEVL - The Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library, http://www.eevl.ac.uk/

The Finnish Virtual Library Project, http://www.uku.fi/kirjasto/virtuaalikirjasto/

IMesh, http://www.desire.org/html/subjectgateways/community/imesh/

NMM Port, http://www.port.nmm.ac.uk/

OMNI - Organising Medical Networked Information, http://www.omni.ac.uk/

PINAKES - A Subject Launchpad, http://www.hw.ac.uk/libWWW/irn/pinakes/pinakes.html

SOSIG - The Social Science Information Gateway, http://www.sosig.ac.uk/

Chapter author: Martin Belcher

Contributors: Phil Cross