Renardus - Academic Subject Gateway Service for Europe

["Esther Scheven" <scheven _at__ dbf.ddb.de>]

Renardus - Academic Subject Gateway Service for Europe
http://www.renardus.org

What is Renardus?
----------------------------
Renardus is a project of the EU's User-friendly
Information Society programme.  Its aim is to build a single
service allowing users to search and browse existing
Internet-accessible resource collections distributed across
Europe.  Between January 2000-June 2002, the project will
investigate technical, information and organisational
issues, build a pilot system and develop a
fully-operational service.

Renardus will be of interest to those involved in the
development and running of subject gateway initiatives,
interoperability issues and related standards and
technologies.  Ultimately anyone looking for improved
access to Internet-accessible resources for the academic
and research communities in a wide range of subject areas
should be interested in Renardus.  The project builds on
the success of subject gateways, where subject experts
select quality resources for their users, taking some of
the hard work out of searching the Web.

Where can I find out more?
---------------------------------------
The project Web site is now live at www.renardus.org where
you can find details of work in progress and sign up to
receive a copy of News Digest.  This is an email newsletter
issued every two months and archived on the Web (first
issue due at the end of April).  The site also
provides details of - and individual links to - each of the
participating European subject gateways and many other
related projects, services and events.

Titia van der Werf, project coordinator from the National
Library of the Netherlands, offers a personal overview of
the project in the first of the informal interview series
'Talking Heads' available from the Web site.

Who's involved?
----------------------
Partners in Renardus are drawn from national libraries,
university research and technology centres and subject
gateways Europe-wide.  UK partners include the Institute
for Learning and Research Technology at the University of
Bristol (host to the Social Science Information Gateway)
and UKOLN, the UK Office for Library and Information
Networking at the University of Bath (UKOLN is jointly
responsible for the UK's academic Resource Discovery
Network Centre).

One of the project's key features is its collaborative and
pragmatic approach: partner organisations from Denmark,
Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the
UK are working together to address the considerable
implications for development of both technical and
information standards.

The Renardus service will initially be developed around
partners' existing services in order to pilot data models,
technical design and organisational issues.  At least one
other gateway service will join the broker before the end
of the project in June 2002 to test extensibility of the
pilot.  Other initiatives are welcome to register an
interest in participating in the fully-operational service.

Lesly Huxley, Renardus Dissemination and Support,
ILRT, University of Bristol
--
----------------------
Lesly Huxley : lesly.huxley _at__ bris.ac.uk
http://www.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/~eclh
Training & Research Manager
Institute for Learning and Research Technology
University of Bristol,  BS8, UK
Tel: 0117 928 7196 fax: 0117 928 7112


---------------------------------------------------------
Esther Scheven
Dipl. Biol., Dipl. Geol.
Deutsche Bibliothek Frankfurt am Main
Adickesallee 1
D - 60322 Frankfurt am Main
e-mail: scheven _at__ dbf.ddb.de
Tel.: 069-1525-1547
Fax:  069-1525-1555