Subject-based interoperability: issues from the high level thesaurus (HILT) project

The subject-based interoperability issues covered in this paper arise from two projects, now called HILT Phase I and HILT phase II. HILT Phase I (previously referred to only as the HILT Project) reported in November 2001. It was funded jointly by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and the Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP) and lasted just over a year. JISC funding for HILT Phase II is expected to be confirmed in April 2002. Phase II will last for 12 months, and will utilise the work of HILT Phase I, and the skills and experience of the team that carried it out, to build on the crosscommunity consensus achieved in HILT Phase I by creating a pilot terminologies mapping service or route map with a specific focus on current concerns in the developing Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER), including - but not necessarily limited to - Higher Education (HE) and Further Education (FE) focused subject terminologies for collection level description in the JISC's planned Information Environment (IE). The user evaluation and cost benefit analysis of various levels of service will also be features of the project.