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Renardus: Academic Subject Gateway Service Europe

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This page describes some of the activities that were undertaken by staff at UKOLN as part of the Renardus project

Introduction

The Renardus (Academic Subject Gateway Service Europe) project was funded from 2000-2002 as part of the Information Societies Technology (IST) Programme, a theme of the European Union's Fifth Framework Programme managed by the Information Society Directorate-General of the European Commission.

Renardus's objective was to establish an academic subject gateway service in Europe, co-ordinated by national initiatives. A pilot system was developed based on a generic broker-architecture and data-model that allowed integrated searching and browsing of distributed resource collections.

The pilot system has now evolved into the Renardus Service, run by a consortium of participating subject gateways and technical partners. UKOLN's involvement in this is described on a separate page

Seleted project publications:

Becker, H.J. & Neuroth, H. (2002). "Cross-searchen und cross-browsen von 'Quality-Controlled Subject Gateways' im EU Projekt Renardus." Zeitschrift für Bibliothekswesen und Bibliographie, 49(3), 133-146.

Day, M., Koch, T., & Neuroth, H. (2004). "Searching and browsing multiple subject gateways in the Renardus Service." In: Dijkum, C. van, Blasius, J., Kleijer, H., & Hilten, B. van (eds.) Recent developments and applications in social science methodology: proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Logic and Methodology, August 17-20, 2004, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Amsterdam: SISWO Instituut voor Maatschappijwetenschappen (CD-ROM). [link]

* Heery, R., Carpenter, L & Day, M. (2001). "Renardus project developments and the wider digital library context." D-Lib Magazine,7(4). [link]

Huxley, L. (2000). "Follow the fox to Renardus: an academic subject gateway service for Europe." In: Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries: 4th European Conference, ECDL 2000, Lisbon, Portugal, September 2000. Proceedings. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 1923). Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 395-398.

Huxley, L. (2001). "Renardus: fostering collaboration between academic subject gateways in Europe" Online Information Review 25(2), 121-127.

Huxley, L. (2002). "Renardus: following the fox from project to service." In: Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Technology : 6th European Conference, ECDL 2002, Rome, Italy, September 16-18, 2002. Proceedings. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2458). Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 218-229.

* Huxley, L., Carpenter, L. & Peereboom, M. (2003). "The Renardus broker service: collaborative frameworks and tools." Electronic Library, 21(1), 39-48.

* Koch, T., Neuroth, H. & Day, M. (2003). "Renardus: Cross-browsing European subject gateways via a common classification system (DDC)." In: McIlwaine, I.C. (ed.) Subject retrieval in a networked world: proceedings of the IFLA Satellite Meeting held in Dublin, OH, 14-16 August 2001. (UBCIM Publications, New Series, Vol. 25). München: K.G. Saur, 25-33. [preprint]

Neuroth, H. & Koch, T. (2001). "Metadata mapping and application profiles: approaches to providing the cross-searching of heterogeneous resources in the EU project Renardus." DC-2001: International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications 2001, Tokyo, Japan, 24-26 October 2001. [PDF]

Neuroth, H. & Lepschy, P. (2001). "Das EU Projekt Renardus." Bibliotheksdienst 35(1), 49-63. [PDF]

Peereboom, M. (2001). "Renardus: de slimme route naar informatie." Informatie Professional, 5(1), 26-29.

* Starred publications include one or more UKOLN staff as co-authors

Project Partners:

  • Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB) - Netherlands [project co-ordinator]

  • Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF)- France

  • Die Deutsche Bibliothek (DDB) - Germany

  • Institute for Learning and Research Technology (ILRT), University of Bristol - UK

  • Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen (SUB) - Germany

  • Lund University Library Research and Development Department (NetLab), Lund University - Sweden

  • Technical Knowledge Centre and Library of Denmark (DTV) - Denmark

  • Finnish Virtual Library Project, Jyväskylä University Library (JyU) - Finland

  • Zentralstelle für Agrardokumentation und- information (ZADI) - Germany

  • Viikki Science Library, University of Helsinki (ALUH) - Finland

  • Center for Scientific Computing (CSC) - Finland

 

Work on Renardus at UKOLN:

UKOLN contributed to most work packages in the Renardus project.

More specific information on UKOLN's role in Renardus can be found in: Rachel Heery, Leona Carpenter and Michael Day, "Renardus project developments and the wider digital library context," D-Lib Magazine, vol. 7, no. 4 (April 2001). [link]

WP1: Functional Model

UKOLN led this work package, concerned with the establishment of an architectural model that would support the development of the Renardus broker system.

Deliverables:

D1.1 Evaluation report of existing broker models in related projects - Michael Day, Anders Ardö, Matthew J. Dovey, Martin Hamilton, Risto Heikkinen, Andy Powell and Arthur N. Olsen (April 2000). [Renardus deliverables page]

D1.3 Specification of functional requirements for the broker system - Leona Carpenter et al., issue 1.2 (October 2000) [Renardus deliverables page]

WP2: Design and Implementation

WP2 was concerned with the design and development of the pilot broker system. The workpackage was led by DTV.

WP3: Organisational Infrastructure

This KB-led workpackage had the objective of developing organisational structures for the management of the Renardus service and for collaboration between participants.

WP4: Service Provision

WP4 establish (and launched) a pilot sevice based on the system developed in WP2. The workpackage was led by KB.

WP6: Data Model and Data Flow

This workpackage defined the scope of the Renardus pilot service and developed a data model and data flow for the broker system consistent with the functional model (WP1) and technical standards specification (WP2). WP6 was led by SUB.

WP7: Data Interoperability

This workpackage addressed interoperability issues relating to multilinguality and metadata sharing in the Renardus context. It was also led by SUB. The workpackage also included the classification mapping work that was be required to generate browse structures in the pilot broker. See:

Koch, T., Neuroth, H. & Day, M. (2003). "Renardus: Cross-browsing European subject gateways via a common classification system (DDC)." In: McIlwaine, I.C. (ed.) Subject retrieval in a networked world: proceedings of the IFLA Satellite Meeting held in Dublin, OH, 14-16 August 2001. (UBCIM Publications, New Series, Vol. 25). München: K.G. Saur, 25-33. [preprint]

WP8: Business Issues

UKOLN led this workpackage. It was concerned with any business-type issues that may have impacted on the design of the Renardus broker, the feasibility of the collaborative approach embodied in Renardus, and the sustainability of central broker services. The first deliverable described a number of business models in use by gateways and introduced a number of important issues.

Deliverables:
D8.1 Business issues which impact the functional model - Michael Day, Hans Jürgen Becker, Petra Lepschy and Heike Neuroth (September 2000). [Renardus deliverables page]

D8.2 Review of business models in operation within Renardus - Michael Day (draft, June 2002). [draft]

D3.4/D8.3 Documentation of the service organisation (final) and sustainability of a central broker service - Marianne Peereboom, Michael Day and Lesly Huxley (draft, June 2002).

The IST Project Factsheet on Renardus

More detailed information about the Renardus project is available from the project's archived Web pages.


UKOLN staff that worked on the Renardus project:
Leona Carpenter
Technical Development and Research
E-mail:l.carpenter@ukoln.ac.uk
Michael Day
Research Officer
E-mail: m.day@ukoln.ac.uk

 
Rachel Heery
Assistant Director (Team Leader, Research & Development)
E-mail: r.m.heery@ukoln.ac.uk
Jessica Lindholm
Technical Development and Research Officer

Maintained by: Michael Day of UKOLN, University of Bath.
Document created: 21-Jan-2000.
Last updated: 25-Sep-2003.

[Metadata] [UKOLN]