Chapter 2. Slide 1 CULTURAL SUBJECT GATEWAYS CULTURAL SUBJECT GATEWAYS Subject Gateways  Started as links of lists  Continued as Web directories  Culminated into quality-controlled resource discovery systems discovery systems  Criteria: quality, descriptions, browsing capabilities

Chapter 2. Slide 2 Building a Subject Gateway To provide the full-fledged services of a subject gateway you need to resolve:  Strategic issues  Information issues  Technical issues CULTURAL SUBJECT GATEWAYS CULTURAL SUBJECT GATEWAYS

Chapter 2. Slide 3 Strategic Issues  Focus on a subject as narrow as human resources and funding dictate and funding dictate  Design a professional software project  Employ a balanced number of domain experts and IT technicians and IT technicians For details see: CULTURAL SUBJECT GATEWAYS CULTURAL SUBJECT GATEWAYS

Chapter 2. Slide 4 Information Issues  Define quality criteria for resource inclusion  Share criteria with cataloguers and perhaps users  Select metadata scheme for cataloguing  Think big: consider future interoperability issues with other gateways with other gateways For details on metadata and interoperability see: CULTURAL SUBJECT GATEWAYS CULTURAL SUBJECT GATEWAYS

Chapter 2. Slide 5 Technical Issues (1/3)  Define an information model that can capture the multitude of resources you are addressing the multitude of resources you are addressing  Utilise “intelligent” tools for semi-automatic resource discovery resource discovery  Define and implement personalised views for your data your data  Define and implement a resource inclusion model CULTURAL SUBJECT GATEWAYS CULTURAL SUBJECT GATEWAYS

Chapter 2. Slide 6  Is there an optimal resource inclusion model for Internet resources? for Internet resources?  Data Warehousing over the Web: collect and mirror material material BUT: BUT:  how often should you update?  what about copyright issues?  Federated Virtual Database over the Web: identify, catalogue and delegate to original source catalogue and delegate to original source BUT: BUT:  how easy is to write “wrappers”?  how can you anticipate future resource formats? Technical Issues (2/3) CULTURAL SUBJECT GATEWAYS CULTURAL SUBJECT GATEWAYS

Chapter 2. Slide 7  Future technical developments towards automatic subject gateway creation: subject gateway creation:  Development of Web-based information discovery agents  Development of mediator layers that will support transparent interoperability  Development of dynamic wrappers  Development of uniform architectures for user annotations  Development of uniform user-modelling schemes supporting roaming user profiles and communities Technical Issues (3/3) CULTURAL SUBJECT GATEWAYS CULTURAL SUBJECT GATEWAYS

Chapter 2. Slide 8  Next generation subject gateways will compete on extra services, e.g. on extra services, e.g.  multilingual user interfaces  translation services  resource monitoring for changes  user involvement  interoperability for single-point queries Generation Next: Gateway Services CULTURAL SUBJECT GATEWAYS CULTURAL SUBJECT GATEWAYS

Chapter 2. Slide 9 Selective Internet Guide Information from usual search engines lead often to:  Non existing/non updated sites  Sites of commercial publicity  Information not free of charge  Many steps required to access really relevant information information Selective Internet Guide is an Internet based service allowing to:  Identify and access rapidly most relevant Web sites  Provide up-to-date information free of charge CULTURAL SUBJECT GATEWAYS CULTURAL SUBJECT GATEWAYS

Chapter 2. Slide 10 Characteristics of Selective Internet Guide  Web sites selected by experienced staff  Information accessible according to:  Hierarchical subject- oriented structure  The level of the web page referred to (Portal, home page, etc.) home page, etc.)  List of the main types of the problems  The country to which they are related CULTURAL SUBJECT GATEWAYS CULTURAL SUBJECT GATEWAYS

Chapter 2. Slide 11 Subject Oriented Gateway  It is following the links found in the Selective Internet Guide Guide  When user specifies keywords, it automatically follows the links trough 3 steps from the sites selected by the the links trough 3 steps from the sites selected by the means of the Selective Internet Guide to other means of the Selective Internet Guide to other relevant web - pages relevant web - pages This tool is a software system, based and developed by Danish Technical Knowledge Center and Library and Budapest University of Technology and Economics CULTURAL SUBJECT GATEWAYS CULTURAL SUBJECT GATEWAYS

Chapter 2. Slide 12 Software Aspects The main components of the system:  COMBINE – a robot for harvesting of web resources  ZEBRA – an indexing and search tool  YAZ – the interface between COMBINE and ZEBRA CULTURAL SUBJECT GATEWAYS CULTURAL SUBJECT GATEWAYS

Chapter 2. Slide 13 The Principles of Operation  Distributed data collection (servers having the areas of responsibility) of responsibility)  Usage of hyper – links found in the page for the feedback into the harvester feedback into the harvester  Indexing of all records in data base  Locally configurable user interface  Result in a hit – list: showing a summary information plus a direct link to the resource plus a direct link to the resource CULTURAL SUBJECT GATEWAYS CULTURAL SUBJECT GATEWAYS

Chapter 2. Slide 14 Combine It consist of three parts:  Cabin – the part controlling the robot itself  Harvester:  gets a URL  checks it  sends to one or more data base  Harvesting Database (HDB) – the part where resources are collected for future processing resources are collected for future processing CULTURAL SUBJECT GATEWAYS CULTURAL SUBJECT GATEWAYS

Chapter 2. Slide 15 Example of Application in the Fields of Culture of Culture The framework CULTURLINK (Zagreb/Croatia): Portal containing Subject oriented gateway services:  Access to selected web sites  Structuring the links in a multi – level hierarchy  Presenting evaluated description of web sites  Providing full – text search tools CULTURAL SUBJECT GATEWAYS CULTURAL SUBJECT GATEWAYS