Building an Academic Subject Gateway in Europe The Clever Route to Information follow the fox

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Building an Academic Subject Gateway in
EuropeThe Clever Route to Information - follow
the fox!
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What is Renardus?

• An EU-funded project funded (1 Jan 2000 - 30
  June 2002) under the Information Society
  Technologies programme (5th framework)
• With partners drawn from 7 European countries,
  Renardus aims to build an academic subject
  gateway service in Europe
• a single interface for cross-searching and
  cross-browsing distributed records from existing
  quality-controlled subject gateways across Europe

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Rationale

• No one country or service can identify, catalogue
  and organise all available Internet resources to
  support the academic and research communities of
  Europe
• International collaboration is needed to maintain
  quality and improve users access
• Renardus builds on existing intra-national and
  international initiatives to benefit providers
  (effort distribution and sustainability) and end
  users (single source for a comprehensive range of
  quality records)

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Coverage

• Participating gateways cover all disciplines via
• 11 subject-specific services covering
  engineering, maths, social sciences, literature,
  life sciences, agriculture, fisheries, forestry,
  geography, history
• 2 services covering all subjects and one offering
  digital theses
• All gateways provide English-language metadata as
  well as native language records
• Some gateways focus on native resources but the
  majority have worldwide coverage

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Collaborative framework (1)

• Renardus offers a sustainable broker service to
  distributed gateways records via collaborative
  technical, metadata and organisational
  frameworks
• Classification mapping (DDC-local)
• A minimum common metadata set (7xDC, 1xnon-DC and
  2 administrative elements)
• Z39.50 indexing and server software using the
  Renardus profile
• Collection level descriptions (RSLP schema)
• Conversion and normalisation routines

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Collaborative framework (2)

• Other gateways from across Europe are invited to
  participate in Renardus from June 2002
• Continuing contacts with international library
  and information communities (Imesh, ASGF, IFLA,
  CENL, TERENA, etc) ensure scope for further
  collaboration and technical development
• Interoperability Guidelines and a workshop for
  potential participants (November 2001) will
  facilitate participation

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Finding out more ...

• Project research and development outcomes (full
  reports and summaries) are available from
  http//www.renardus.org/deliverables/
• Sign up for the bi-monthly Renardus email News
  Digest at http//www.renardus.org/news/sign-up.htm
  l
• Browse details of participating gateways and
  related projects and services athttp//www.renard
  us.org/gateway/http//www.renardus.org/reading/

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Participating Gateways/Partners

• DutchESS (Koninklijke Bibliotheek), The
  Netherlands
• Finnish Virtual Library (Jyväskylä University
  Library), Finland
• Resource Discovery Networks five gateways (UK
  Office for Library and Information Networking,
  University of Bath), UK
• SSG-FI four Special Subject Guides
  (Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbiblioth
  ek, Göttingen), Germany
• DAINet (Zentralstelle für Agrardokumentation Und
  -information), Germany
• EELS (NetLab, Lund University), Sweden
• Deposit DDB Document Server (Die Deutsche
  Bibliothek), Germany
• NOVAGate (Viikki Science Library, University of
  Helsinki), Finland
• Bibliothèque Nationale de France (National
  Library of France)
• Center for Scientific Computing, Finland
• Institute for Learning and Research Technology
  (ILRT), University of Bristol, UK
• Technical Knowledge Centre and Library of Denmark
  (DTV)
• Full details and links at http//www.renardus.org/
  about/