Information gateway projects have several distinct phases; planning and scoping, technical and information setup, administration and maintenance. Each phase requires different skills and perhaps different staff. In the ideal world a gateway project would be able to call on a large pool of staff, this may be the case in some instances, more often a few key staff will perform the majority of the tasks, with external people being brought in from time to time.

Depending on the exact technology used, there is going to be relatively large up front cost in terms of time and unique skills, in the setting up of a gateway. The information management issues will require research and documentation. It is likely that the people involved with this side of the setting up, will continue to play a part in the project, most usually in the building of the resources database and the day to day running of the project. There will also be a large up front cost in terms of the technical implementation of the infrastructure software that the gateway will operate on. How large this cost will be depends on whether or not an existing set of gateway technology is being used (e.g. ROADS) or a new system is being developed. Either option will require people with the appropriate technical skills.

If the gateway technology is being developed from scratch or using an existing system with significant modification, then significant amounts of technical research and development will be required. Staff with the appropriate technical skills will be essential. Additional there may be a need for an interface designer, to develop the user front end to the system. These skills will only really be required for a set period and set of tasks. As such they are the ideal skills to bring in from external sources.

A project manager or supervisor will also be invaluable, to help in the development of the project to time, budget and its original aims and objectives. The project manager should be able to operate on both the subject specialist level and technical level. This doesn't mean that you need a programming librarian, but someone who can understand both areas and manage their different strengths and weaknesses.

The key staff needed for the running of a gateway are subject specialists who will be involved in the expansion and development of the resources catalogue. The exact number of these will depend on the scope of the gateway. If the gateway aims to catalogue all resources in a given field within a short period, then a larger number of cataloguers will be required. The more subject specialist and resource cataloguers there are, then the faster the number of resources in the gateway can grow.

Various models of developing the catalogue of resources and distributed staffing are discussed elsewhere (resource discovery strategies, working with information providers and distributed cataloguing and collaborative working), each model can have a significant effect on the number and type of core staff that a gateway requires for expanding the catalogue of resources.

Resource discovery, Working with information providers, Distributed cataloguing, Co-operation between gateways

Depending on the technology used to set up and run a gateway, the need for continued technical support and development can vary considerably. Under some circumstances the need for technical support staff effort can be kept very low. However, it is essential for the long term survival of the gateway that a reasonable amount of staff effort is kept aside for technical support and development. Even the most robust technologies can run into problems. Simple problems can cripple a gateway if the technical staff are not there to fix them.

Under ideal circumstances an information gateway will be able to draw on the skills of staff with the following roles and/or job titles. Reality may mean that a few staff cover all these roles:

The ideal versus the real world

Ideally we would all like to be able to draw on the specialist skills of all those people outlined above. The real world dictates that more often than not, we will be required to draw the skills from a smaller group of multi-skilled people. This means a very broad skill set is required from a small number of staff. It can also mean the development of an excellent, tight-nit, well focused team.

When skills are lacking within the core team, it can often be very effective to bring in experts from outside. These experts could be drawn from within the same organisation (e.g. other sections of the same university) or they could be commercial consultants. People involved in the technical implementation, user interface design and publicity and promotion are often brought in under such circumstances.

ROADS - Resource Organisation And Discovery in Subject-based Services

Chapter author: Martin Belcher