PSIgate: Physical Sciences Information Gateway

Citation

Landesman, B. (2002), "PSIgate: Physical Sciences Information Gateway", Online Information Review, Vol. 26 No. 5, pp. 354-355. https://doi.org/10.1108/oir.2002.26.5.354.8

PSIgate is a gateway to catalogued Internet resources in the physical sciences. It is sponsored and maintained by the Resource Discovery Network (RDN), a service of the Joint Information Systems Committee in the UK. The main page provides ready access to everything available on the site. Users can search the database or read news stories from sources such as the New York Times, abcnews.com, and the BBC. They can also select one of six broad subjects (astronomy, chemistry, earth sciences, history and policy, materials, physics) by clicking on the logo for that subject. From the subject gateway pages, they can browse resources organised by topic, search for resources in that subject or all subjects, go to links to professional and government bodies and university departments, or read subject‐specific news stories.

The list of resources retrieved contains the title, description and URL of the resource. The title is a direct hyperlink to the resource. Also available is a fuller description of the resource, containing the keywords assigned, the subject(s) to which it was assigned, the type of resource (such as preprint, journal, image, Web directory), last modified date and copyright information.

Searches are executed only against the metadata (title, description, keywords) assigned to the resource. There is a larger database, PSIgate+, created by harvesting up to 50 pages from the sites in PSIgate and using a search engine for retrieval. There is an appropriate disclaimer that the resources in PSIgate+ do not undergo the same quality control as those in the main PSIgate catalogue. Search results are displayed in strict alphabetical order by resource title. There is no relevance ranking; any match against the controlled metadata retrieves the associated record.

The news section is updated daily. Additional resources are added, if not daily, certainly frequently. On 12 January 2002 PSIgate contained 3,267 resources. By 27 January 2002 it had grown to 3,480. Users can suggest an Internet resource for inclusion in the database. They can also tell others about a resource, send a comment to PSIgate, and rate a site. There are online tutorials to provide an orientation to Internet resources for students, faculty and researchers in chemistry, earth science, physics and the history and philosophy of science. Because of the selectivity and the application of controlled metadata by subject specialists, as well as the focus on the academic and research community, PSIgate is a valuable tool for academic libraries seeking to identify useful resources in the physical sciences.

This review was first published in Reference Reviews Volume 16 Number 5 2002.