Page 118 - DLIS407_INFORMATION AND LITERATURE SURVEY IN SOCIAL SCIENCES

Unit 13: Web-Based Resources and Services

Features Notes

y Subject specific: Gateways are subject-centric in the sense that they host only information
related to a particular subject. This means that if you are doing some research on a particular
subject you do not have to go to a search engine, which simply dishes out relevant and
irrelevant links without looking at the context; you can simply go to the gateway that provides
information on your subject of interest.
y Quality of the resource: One of the hardships faced by a person looking for materials from the
Net is to ascertain the quality and authenticity of the located resource. This is really important
in this age of information overload especially if you are a serious researcher or industry analyst.
As subject experts, using well-established techniques check and filter out the data gathered by
gateways, they turn out to be a big solace for the researcher in this regard.

y Data scientifically organised: One of the objectives of subject gateways is to provide an
easy mechanism for the users to access the resources compiled and stored in the gateway
database. In this respect, the gateways are guided by the traditional library model that has
got excellent tools to store/disseminate information in the real world. The resources collected
by the gateway subject experts are properly catalogued and classified using data organisation
and classification schemes adopted and built on traditional and well-established principles
of library science. In fact, subject gateways can be considered the Net equivalent of a library.
The role of an experienced librarian, who is well versed in the techniques of data organisation
and retrieval, has become all the more important. All those predictions of `librarians going
out of business’, once the Net becomes pervasive are nothing but nonsense. A skilled and
knowledgeable librarian with enough Net skills will become a highly valuable and demanding
resource in the future Net-centric world.

Some Gateways

y SOSIG (http://www.sosig.ac.uk/): The Social Science Information Gateway (SOSIG) provides
an authentic source of select, high quality Net information for researchers and practitioners
in the social sciences, business and law. This is an excellent information gateway for social
scientists. Grapevine feature of the site helps you find departments, courses, conferences, like-
minded colleagues and CVs of people interested in a particular field. The site offers the option
to register with the site so that you will be able to get additional services such as weekly email
notification of new Net sites, conferences and courses.
y PICK (http://www.aber.ac.uk/tplwww/e/): A subject gateway for Librarianship and Information
Science resources. A notable feature of the site is the facility to browse the resources by the
famous `Dewey Decimal System’ classification scheme.
y BIOME (http://biome.ac.uk/biome.html): A gateway that is basically tuned to the needs of the
academic community in health and life sciences.
y Alex (http://www.infomotions.com/alex/): This gateway contains information on full-text
digital documents available in the public domain on American literature, English literature and
Western philosophy. An attraction of this site is the `free goodies’ (http://www.infomotions.
com/alex/downloads/) section that helps you download many famous works by great
authors.
y Bized (http://www.bized.ac.uk): This is a gateway that aims to serve the needs of students,
teachers and researchers of business studies and economics.
y ADAM: (http://adam.ac.uk/index.html): A gateway for people looking for information on
art, design, architecture and media.

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