Gateway news 4 (25 March 2003)
Yes: we have now more than 300 files in our Gateway!
To be precise: 305 websites are described.
Comparison with the previous months:
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Partner
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10-02 |
12-02
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30-01-03
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28-02-03
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28-03-03
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Progression
this month
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| Drugscope |
56
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56
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57
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57
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66
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+ 9
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| Toxibase |
21
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28
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39
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46
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51
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+ 5
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| Gruppo Abele |
24
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27
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38
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39
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40
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+ 1
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| Archido |
20
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21
|
27
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35
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40
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+ 5
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| CAN |
5
|
5
|
5
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16
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38
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+ 22
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| Trimbos |
15
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15
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24
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28
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30
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+ 2
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| PND |
8
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8
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16
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21
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27
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+ 6
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| CZU |
3
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5
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5
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5
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5
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+ 0
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| Hung. Lib |
0
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0
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2
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2
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2
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+ 0
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| Ektepn |
5
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5
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5
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5
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5
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+ 0
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| IPDT |
1
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
1
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+ 0
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| TOTAL |
159
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171
|
219
|
255
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305
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+ 50
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General remarks
- Congratulations to Gunnel who has done the best progression.
- The biggest problem remain the Portuguese and CEEs' websites...
Corrected files
- 130 files have been proof-red either by Stephan, myself or both.
News
- A change in the distribution of some duties: Since Marianne's health is not so good, Berndt, our technician at the Bremen university is now our webmaster technical assistant, Marianne remaining our webmaster supervisor. He is currently working on the content and functioning of the various interfaces.
- A new design is being built, but it is to early to show you something yet.
- In partnership with Toxibase, the OFDT (French observatory on drugs) will participate to the analysis of French websites until the end of the gateway project. The OFDT is an Elisad member and two librarians are involved: Anne de l'Éprevier and Laurence Callard.
Call for a prototype test questionnaire
I am looking to find a good prototype questionnaire. If I already have numerous lists of quality criteria, that doesn't built automatically a good «scientific» questionnaire. I am wondering if some of you already have a model that could be adapted to our gateway... If yes, please send it to me.
«Common ways of writing» decided in Bremen:
- «website» in one word and not in two
- «full text» in two words and not in one
- «programme» and not «program» (unless it is a software program)
- to use the «ise» ending and not the «ize» one.
Eg: legalisation, minimise, decriminalisation, etc...
Proof-reading your files gives me the occasion of multiples questions and remarks. Here are some of them.
1- Is it useful to use <i> and </i> in the little free text fields within the sections?
No, this is not at all useful as these fields will never appear somewhere in a result screen. These html tags are only useful in texts appearing in the result screens, that is to say the Producer's and the website descriptions.
2- In the General subject keywords, can I tick, for example, on the research tickbox, even if in the corresponding Research section, no text is present in the free text field and no tickbox is ticked on?
No, if nothing is present in the Research section, ticking on research within the General subject keywords serves to nothing. These General subject keywords are our browsing subject headings. If nothing is present in the Research section, the result will be zero!
Other remarks
- Sometimes there are 25 lines to describe the producer, and only 3 or 4 to describe the website. I would like to emphasise that our aim is more to describe the content of the website, than the producer's activity. The aim of the Gateway is to help our users find information and documents on the website.
- Sometimes the name of the producer is quoted about 10 times in the producer's description. Remember: we are not making publicity to any producers. The first occurrence of the producer's name will be in bold, and that should, in most of the cases, be enough, as further sentences can start with: Its aim is... Its activities includes... , etc.
- Sometimes, I am thinking that this website contains nothing but the description of the producer's activities... Remember that we have a selection policy... Select only sites that have consistent info/docs. When a site cannot - for political reasons - be absent of our selection, we then describe it but, as most of the fields and tick boxes will be empty, the site will not occur many times in the result list...
- Speaking about the selection process, I remember a remark of Stefan Quensel, member of our scientific committee: he didn't find much originality in our selection of sites. Now, as most of you did already describe the indispensable institutional sites, the time has maybe come to search for originality and unknown sites... Use the search tips Marianne told us about, the Internet Detective, etc. and find sites you never heard about before...
- Speaking about originality, I would like to reproduce a sentence that is in the definition of a gateway (Desire handbook: www.desire.org)
" A gateway presents intellectually produced website descriptions. (...) This automatically excludes the use of extracted so-called summaries.
Please, describe your website with originality. Put the emphasis on what is here particularly interesting. Express a bit of personal view on it. Well, that is my own opinion. Maybe we can exchange on this theme. To me, the partner who is writing the most personal descriptions is Toxibase.
- Important: many files don't mention a contact email although, most of the time, there is an email contact on the site. Please, pay a special attention to fill in the field. Although it is named «webmaster administration email», put in this field any other type of contact email present on the site
I am doing a list of these contact emails that will allow me, in the promo step, to inform people that their website is present in the Gateway and, in a further step, to ask them to inform us about futures changes and up-datings...
- To conclude this letter, find hereby an updated flyer on our project, for your best use. And please, tell me what use of it you have had: this will be reported in my Promo report to the EC.
Also don't hesitate to use this letter to announce all of your personal remarks, questions and suggestions that could serve to the others partners!
All the best,
Anne Singer
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The project
of an internet gateway
on alcohol, drugs and other addictions
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What is a gateway?
A subject gateway is not a simple internet portal listing and giving links to other websites. Although it also provides links to other internet websites, a gateway is a quality controlled information service that presents the following characteristics:
" The selection of resources is done using an intellectual process according to published quality and scope criteria. This automatically excludes a selection done on measured popularity.
" A gateway presents intellectually produced website content descriptions, in the spectrum between short annotation and review. This automatically excludes the use of extracted so-called summaries. Generally, it also presents intellec-tually assigned keywords or controlled terms.
" A gateway allows an intellectually constructed browsing structure or classification. This excludes completely unstructured lists of links.
" At its most basic, a gateway provides partly manually generated (bibliographic) metadata for each resource.
Desire Handbook
www.desire.org
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At a time when information on the use and misuse of drugs on the internet is constantly growing, it is increasingly difficult to find relevant and reliable information quickly.
The Elisad gateway project aims to provide professionals with a tool that will help them quickly find quality information on the use and misuse of drugs on the world wide web. The project started in 2002 and is funded by the European Commission.
Elisad is the European association of libraries and information services on alcohol and other drugs. It is a non-profit making association and was founded in 1988.
The gateway project is managed by Archido, a German library on drugs, situated at Bremen University, and the gateway partners comprise 15 Elisad members situated in various countries in Europe.
The gateway partners have already done a lot a work, including developing a scope policy and quality criteria, thereby ensuring a good selection of websites to be analysed, evaluated and integrated in the gateway database. To date, about 300 websites have been evaluated.
Now, any professional working in the field of alcohol, tobacco, drugs and addictions is invited to participate in the project.
There are many ways to participate, from suggesting a website that deserves to be analysed, to helping or becoming a partner, to testing our prototype. Training is available for those who want to learn how to evaluate a site following the Elisad gateway criteria.
If you are interested in testing the gateway prototype by answering an emailed questionnaire (around May/June 2003), please write to Anne Singer:
If you are interested in:
- signalling /describing a website you are producing,
- helping a partner responsible for a specific European region,
- following a training to become a new partner or
- testing the prototype in a face-to-face consultation,
please contact Anne Singer: asinger-internet
who will forward your demand to the Gateway partner in charge of your region or country.
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For more information, visit our website: elisad.org
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