Suggestions for initiatives that are related to any aspect of ROADS are welcome, and should be sent to: roads-liaison@bris.ac.uk.

DESIRE: Development of a European Service for Information on Research and Education

DESIRE is one of the largest projects funded in the Telematics for Research Sector of the Fourth Framework Programme funded by the European Union. The partners in DESIRE have been at work since January 1996 on a series of related tasks which extend the technology of the World Wide Web and implement pilot information services on behalf of European researchers.

Work package 3 of DESIRE I is particulary relevant to ROADS and subject gateways. This work package is aimed at meeting the needs of research users for better means of locating the information that is relevant to their research endeavour. The package contains two major elements: subject-based information gateways (distributed resource discovery based on rich descriptions and quality-controlled resource catalogues based on specific subject areas) and exhaustive automated indexing of existing World Wide Web information sources in all subject areas. Verifiable objectives are:

• Provide methods and tools for the development of quality-controlled information catalogues
• Provide methods and tools for automatic indexing of information in the World-Wide Web