Executive Summary

This report stems from the preliminary work carried out on Indexing and Cataloguing within DESIRE. It is the second of three studies which look at current resource description approaches for selective subject gateways on the Internet. These three studies examine in turn: resource description formats (metadata), quality resource selection and finally classification. Each aims to independently provide a comprehensive and current snapshot of approaches in these areas. As such they provide the basis for recommendations which will inform subsequent developments in DESIRE and be of general use to emerging selective subject services outside DESIRE. Each report has an associated set of recommendations, which itself does not form part of these reports, but exists as a working paper, updated throughout the life of the project.

The study detailed here has two foci. The first is narrow and specific and formed the initial motivation for this task - to define the quality criteria to be used for resource selection within the DESIRE subject gateways. The second is far broader and stems from the need to provide a framework within which the quality processes necessary to a selective Internet service could be understood, developed, tested and evaluated.

These two foci have produced two components of a toolset which can be readily adapted to suit the requirements of individual subject gateways and related services. To date, these two tools have been evaluated by existing subject gateways. They have been well received and appear to be flexible general purpose tools of value particularly to new and emerging services.

The first tool is a diagrammatic conceptual model developed using Soft Systems Methodology. SSM is particularly appropriate to examining problem situations (in this study the issue of quality for subject gateways) within purposeful human activity systems. The subject gateway model is not a specification or a system definition, but a conceptual representation of what is necessary to effect the principal transformations which subject gateways are established to achieve. The model is first and foremost an analytical tool to be used in a systematic comparison with the real world. The disparities which are observed in any such comparison are intended to result in real world action to improve the existing situation (continuous improvement).

The second tool is a comprehensive and structured list of quality criteria employed in resource selection. Subject gateways recognise that human judgement is essential if only resources of the highest quality are to be selected. If detailed and definitive criteria could be established then expert systems could be developed to do the job, but this has not happened. The implication is that the evaluation of information resources is a very complex process best carried out by subject specialists whose judgements are likely to involve detailed and complex mental processes. It is necessary to draw out and formalise the tacit knowledge which is currently used so that the selection process becomes more transparent, consistent and accountable, and itself is subject to a process of continual improvement.

Both tools were developed independently of each other in the first stages. The model was constructed from an analysis of the intentions and expectations underlying the concept of a subject gateway, formulated as a series of root definitions. The list of quality categories and criteria was derived from an examination of what was happening in real selective Internet services. Only when the list had been analysed and grouped and the model had been drafted were the criteria mapped onto the model and the model itself revised to reflect natural clusters which had been found to exist in the real world quality criteria.

It is important to recognise that as it stands this report is of limited general applicability to the wider community of potential providers of and participants in future selective Internet services. What is vital is that the core results (the tools) are developed during the lifetime of the DESIRE project and made available in a form which is of maximum general use to that community. These tools are in essence the starting tools for the foundation of the cataloguing demonstrators in this workpackage. They will be further developed and refined in parallel with the specification and construction of the Social Science demonstrator within this workpackage. Fully developed, they will form part of the Verified Toolset and Methodology (Deliverable D3.4).

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