| Subject Information Gateway (SIG) was an outcome of contradiction between continually expanding information resources and users' needs of academic information in Internet. It has been another organization mode of network information after web directories and Search Engines. With a number of quality control methods, such as selection and evaluation criteria, management mechanism of collections and description based on metadata standard, SIG satisfies the needs of Internet academic information resources by teaching and research staff, and improved their efficiency of searching and using resources, therefore SIG has extensive potential for development.First, the dissertation describes the concept of SIG in detail and the background on which SIG developed. Second, it studies 100 SIGs abroad from the aspects of operators and maintainers, the number of records, funds and cooperation, as well as the business models, then summarizes six main characteristics of the foreign SIGs. Meanwhile, this dissertation investigates 20 domestic SIGs through the Internet and compares the difference between SIGs in China and that of foreign countries. The research shows that SIGs in China have some gaps with what in foreign countries, the major problem is: the limited access of funds, the lacked cooperation among different institutions, the imperfect system platform, and the lacked personalized services which will influence sustainable development of SIGs. Based on these problems, the dissertation puts forward the sustainable development problem of SIGs in China.It is considered that our country should construct sustainable development system of SIGs from three areas of resources, services and business models. That is: we should build high-quality resources of SIGs, build user-centered SIGs' service models, and explore appropriate business models to ensure the SIG's sustainable development.SIGs' quality depends on the quality of the selected Internet information resources. They can only be quality-controlled SIGs unless applying a rich set of quality measures and considerable manual effort, which is to support systematic resources discovery, to secure a selection of resources to meet quality criteria, and to display a rich description of resources with standards-based metadata. Indispensably, regular checking and updating are needed to ensure good collection management. SIGs should provide a high quality of subject access through indexing resources using controlled vocabularies, classification and through advanced searching and browsing. In order to get a high quantity of resources, cooperation among different SIGs and different institutions should be strengthened.SIGs are Internet services, they focus on providing users with an integrated information retrieval entrance and raising their efficiency to use Internet resources, so we should construct user-centered functional modules from the perspective of users, do well in users surveys and users guides, provide personality and value-added services beyond the basis function of browsing and retrieving.It takes too much to construct and maintain SIGs. The SIGs which constructed with the form of a project couldn't get long-term development. So it should obtain more funding, and explore business models as much as possible to achieve benefits continue. This dissertation holds that the SIGs could advertise in their sites, and advertising is the most feasible and convenient means to get profit, other business models such as holding academic meetings, cooperating with database providers are also feasible. These three models are based on free of charge to users .When SIG's high-valued and unique academic information resources accumulated to a certain amount, the charge service model has bright future. So this dissertation discusses three modes of charges, which is the cell phone subscription model, pay-to-surf model and pay packet mode per year for group users. Based on these series of business models, it establishes economic base for SIGs to secure sustainable development. |
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