RDN Humbul Humanities Hub, a new centre of gravity for online information in the humanities

Abstract

The Humbul Humanities Hub was launched in November 1999 as one of the five subject gateways forming part of the Resource Discovery Network's information system, the national British network funded by the Joint Information System Committee with additional support from the Arts and Humanities Research Board and the Economic and Social Research Council. Contrasting the alarming spread of the "invisible Web", the RDN, led by the University of Bath (UKOLN) and King's College in London, aims to provide the British teaching and learning community both with an efficient access to high-quality and cross-searchable subject-selected resources and with a series of value-added free tools such as online tutorials and alerting services, making the user feel part of a living virtual community, tailored to his needs. The relationship between the main network, the RDN, and the inner subject-dedicated gateways, the so-called "hubs", relies on a new strategic interplay of mutual, structural and functional, self-mirrorings that exploit the interlinking nature of the Web and inside which the traditional concept of subject gateway is transformed into something more flexible and malleable, easily adaptable both to envelop something external and vaster and to respond to specific, even individual needs. The idea of the hub model is to create inside the broad network a cluster of subject-cut portals, each conceived as a dynamic, self-planned and self-maintained centre of gravity within its own area. This relationship between the parts and whole is developed through a seemingly paradoxical harmony of centralization and decentralization in an interplay of centripetal and centrifugal forces, inventing a new way of connecting resources in a structured yet flexible data Web, never accessible one way only but, rather, always open to a strictly user-conditioned reading, from the general to the specific or viceversa, depending on the user's needs. Imitating the matrix of the main information network, The Humbul Humanities Hub, which originated as a collaboration project between the Oxford University Computing Services and the Oxford Library Services, hosts both a selected collection of Web resources and a collection of value-added subject-orientated news, tools and broker services. Currently Humbul's database can be searched either by keyword through a simple input box or browsing through subject-selected and then type-selected, period-selected or audience-selected areas. Records are catalogued according to the Dublin Core metadata description scheme and following a precise collection development policy which highlights Humbul's overall target to provide access to a selected database of Web resources broad enough to meet the needs of the Web community as a whole but specifically tailored to meet the information demand of a particular audience such as the British teaching and learning community. Never loosing sight of its aim to build a highly-qualified centre of gravity for online information in a defined subject area, the current tendency of the hub is, however, to move in the direction of a new concept of gateway where the user is called upon more and more to participate actively in the life of the virtual community through a series of services, such as the possibility of suggesting resources to be catalogued, or thanks to new tools, such as My Humbul and the recent My Humbul Include that highlight this new user-orientated approach to the subject gateway model, no longer conceived as a closed, static cluster of selected data but as a subject-focused fulcrum, modelled to cater efficiently for a variety of functions: the hub as a flexible, living entity, with infinite possibilities of adaptation and growth according both to intended targets and to the somehow unpredictable rhythm of the Web itself.