The ROADS project has now ended and these pages are no longer maintained. Please note that the ROADS software is no longer available for download and we would suggest that those interested in subject gateway tools should instead look at the Scout Portal Toolkit. The original ROADS manual is still available from this Web site, however.

For more information about current ILRT metadata work, see the Digital Libraries and Semantic Web group homepages.

ROADS is a set of software tools to enable the set up and maintenance of Web based subject gateways. Subject gateways are services which provide searchable and browseable catalogues of Internet based resources. Subject gateways will typically focus on a related set of academic subject areas.

The sofware is highly configurable, providing a flexible approach to gateway administration and allowing the user interface to be tailored to suit your needs.

ROADS is a software tool-kit allowing gateway managers to pick and choose what parts of the software they require whilst allowing the the integration of other software according to requirement.

This open-source software toolkit is being produced by a consortium of developers with expertise in network-based resource identification, indexing and cataloguing. This has resulted in a standards-based approach to software development, making it compatible with current, and developing indexing and cataloguing requirements. In addition, there is ample documentation and online support for people interested in using the software for either experimental purposes or service provision.

 New! Improved Z39.50 support: version 1.0b1 of the ROADS Z39.50 Plugin is available for testing

 New! Diary of a ROADS Gateway Installation

 New! Guide to upgrading from ROADS v1 to v2

David Williams, Database Research Specialist at the Law Library at Pace University, writes in response to support from the ROADS team on 11th May 1998: "Thanks again! Great software!"

An independent ROADS installer (Eric Lease Morgan) writes on 3rd September 1997:

"I believe the ROADS software has a lot of potential for my application. I am impressed by the thoroughness of the implementation and documentation. It is flexible and customizable. The search interface offers everything a person could ask for except for a direct brain transfer interface :-) The templates allow for an unlimited number of fields and field repetitions much like relational databases - this is something inherently necessary for true database applications. It provides a HTTP interface to creating records but I can do the same thing using my local database application as well. The link checking seems to work very well and the administration tools provide wonderful insights into how the database is being used and what might be broken. Thank you very much!!!"

Many organisations in the UK and US have used the ROADS software to build subject-based information gateways, covering subject areas such as the Social Sciences, Health and Medicine, the Arts, Business and Economics and Engineering. Several more organisations in the UK, Europe and the US are currently building ROADS-based gateways covering a variety of subject and topic areas.

The ROADS project has three partners:

• the Department of Computer Science at Loughborough University of Technology
• the ILRT (Institute for Learning and Research Technology) at Bristol University
• UKOLN (the UK Office for Library and Information Networking) at the University of Bath

ROADS is a project from the Access to Networked Resources section of eLib (the Electronic Libraries Programme) and is funded by JISC, the Joint Information Systems Committee.