Information Research Weblog

Paul Miller attempts to disentangle portals, gateways, and other linguistic confusions in the latest issue of Ariadne. However, doesn't the definition of 'Gateway' as:

"...collections of links and pointers to content of value, mostly elsewhere on the Web, and generally within a single defined topic or small set of topics. Their defining characteristics are that they are primarily a collection of descriptions of resources, rather than the resources themselves, and that the bulk of those resources tend to be held elsewhere and belong to others. Typically, the resources being described tend to be Web sites."

sound like a 'directory', 'guide' or even a 'catalogue'? In analysing the hits on Information Research, I've come to the conclusion that what I've previously labelled as 'Directories', 'Guides to resources', and 'Library catalogues' are all doing essentially the same thing - listing and providing links to resources.

On this basis, what would the guide to research methods be?

I suspect that 'gateway' was invented by techies who had never seen a catalogue :-) I'm not referring to Paul here, since he is obviously trying hard to disentangle the semantic confusion, but to the originators of the term. Does anyone have any recollection of its first mention?

I should add, that Paul's definition of 'portal' as involving customization, does strike me as a useful distinction to make.

Tom