The gateway is thus seen as a portal view of the wider collection. The enormous dollar investment in electronic resources, and their special value of providing desktop access, whether in office, home, residence hall or true distance learning were also cited as reasons to make these resources visible. Since electronic products are more expensive than print, they normally represent resources which are heavily used, or have special, enhanced features that patrons want to be aware of. Most attendees had created some version of custom, locally-based subject headings to guide patrons. Participants noted that subject headings for electronic resources are often drawn from institution disciplines, departments and majors.
Selectors are able to code resources for several subject areas as they see appropriate.
Flat file coded lists using some kind of perl scripting were mentioned. At least one person said that they are using a 'subset' of their online catalog database to create such a gateway, thus avoiding the technical difficulty of creating links to records within the OPAC from an external Web link. Ideal gateways allowed real time lists to be called up according to a patron's preference for subject, or full text, or type of information such as Reference. To some degree this kind of database slicing entails dual workflows with cataloging however. The counter-question was posed, why are we creating another database instead of fixing the catalog limitations in 'scoping' resources more powerfully.