The term ‘gateway’ is used to describe a range of Internet sites that in some way provide access to other, predominantly Internet-accessible, resources. Gateways are intended to facilitate resource discovery by their target audience – to help their users find what they need via the Internet.

The use of the term ‘gateway’ varies and is often qualified but, in the Renardus context, it is defined in the following ways:

Information Gateways and Subject Gateways

Information Gateway – a generic term that refers to a whole range of Web-based resource guides pointing to Internet information resources.

Subject Gateways – are subject-based resource discovery guides that provide links to information resources (documents, collections, sites or services), predominantly accessible via the Internet. Resource description and subject classification are the most important characteristics of such guides.

Quality-controlled subject gateways and resource discovery broker systems

Quality-controlled Subject Gateways – are subject gateway services that apply a documented set of quality measures to support systematic resource discovery. This implies that the subject gateway services are managed. Crucial characteristics of quality-controlled subject gateways are:
Selection and collection development: human intellectual effort is applied to select information resources on the Internet. There is some form of policy with regards to collection development and there are documented selection criteria.
Collection management: sustained and regular effort is invested in maintaining or improving the level of quality of the collection. There is some form of policy with regards to maintenance.
Resource description: all selected resources are described according to a fixed and documented metadata set in order to enable identification and location of the resource. The metadata is structured in well-defined semantic fields, as opposed to free-text annotations. This enables structured searching.
Subject classification: all resources are indexed according to a subject classification scheme in order to enable subject browsing. Subject heading systems and thesauri used for subject indexing are controlled systems involving human intellectual input.
A Resource discovery broker service – is a third party, creating a broker service based on the resources selected and described by individual subject gateways. For instance, a broker service could be established for Agriculture based on agricultural subject gateways from a specific region or worldwide. Another example would be to establish a multi-disciplinary broker service based on subject gateways that cover different subject areas.

Glossary, Information systems
gateway, Information Gateways, resource, Subject Gateways