By Adrian Price, NOVAGate Project Officer: Adrian.Price@dvjb.kvl.dk
Work on NOVAGate, the Nordic Gateway to Information in Forestry, Veterinary and Agricultural Sciences, is progressing. Unfortunately the planned launch date didn't quite hold, but we're now on course for opening on the 5th May!
The gateway is a co-operative project between the 5 Nordic countries' agricultural and veterinary libraries. As described in the previous newsletter, each country updates a central ROADS database in Sweden, at the library of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Each ressource is given an English description as well as a description in the local language of the resource and descriptors from the Agrovoc thesaurus. Updating the central database from groups working in the participating countries has been without any major problems, interrupted only by the occasional hiccup and maintenance on the server.
Activities: At the moment the Finnish NOVAGate group is working on an English language guide for cataloguers, which will be a web-based handbook of detailed guidelines as to how each country must describe resources included in NOVAGate. Up until now guidelines have been established by voluminous e-mail correspondence! The Danish NOVAGate group is working on a marketing plan for the service and our logo is at the moment undergoing a final polishing-up with a professional graphic artist. In April cataloguers from the various local groups will be making their way to Sweden for a two-day course/workshop and the NOVAGate steering committee will also hold a meeting. On the 4th September Adrian Price from the Danish group will present a short paper on NOVAGate at the NORDI&D 98 conference in Turku, Finland.
Communication: Steering a project such as this with 5 participating countries, has at times put our communication skills to the test. We meet a couple of times a year, but not all meetings are as productive as one would expect. We have held one telephone meeting, and are now looking into establishing some form of net chat, where we can meet and discuss details.
For more information on the project, contact Adrian Price, The Danish Veterinary and Agricultural Library, ap@kvl.dk
