Renardus: fostering collaboration between academic subject gateways in Europe

Renardus is a collaborative project of the EU’s User‐friendly Information Society programme with partners from national libraries, university research and technology centres and subject gateways Europe‐wide. Its aim is to build a single service allowing users to search and browse existing Internet‐accessible scientific and cultural resource collections distributed across Europe. Renardus builds on the successes of subject gateway initiatives in Europe and elsewhere, and is evolving a collaborative model for addressing the increasingly difficult issues of sustainability and scalability facing individual gateway services. Describes the project’s context, progress to date and outstanding issues. Also outlines the opportunities and benefits for future collaboration with other organisations in developing the fully operational service.