Elisad - the European Association of Libraries and Information Services on Alcohol and other Drugs (AOD) - is a non-profit organisation founded in 1988. Elisad membership is mainly within Europe, as well as some from North America, Canada and elsewhere. The primary purpose of Elisad is to enable those working in the field of alcohol and drugs information to exchange ideas, and experience in order to improve their knowledge and skills. For more information, see www.elisad.eu
The Elisad Gateway Project was funded by the European Commission in 2002-2003 and 2005-2007 to create a database of evaluated websites on addictions from across Europe. The selection, indexing and evaluation of included websites has been done by subject specialists and information professionals from the participating countries. Details of the project partners are on the contact page.
A Subject Gateway is a quality controlled information portal characterised by:
- An online service providing links to numerous online resources, based on selection of resources according to quality and scope criteria
- Intellectually produced evaluation and content descriptions, in the spectrum between short annotation and review
- Systematically constructed browsing structure / subject classification
[Definition from DESIRE project 1999]
- An agreed working methodology including scope policy, selection criteria and task distribution
- Cataloguing guidelines, input manual and typographic guidance to ensure consistency
- Expertise of Elisad addiction information specialists and EMCDDA monitoring
- AOD keywords taxonomy to ensure controlled vocabulary for indexing input and retrieval
to our public relations officer Ms Anne Singer, for example:
- Feedback relating to the gateway catalogue
- and suggestions for additional European AOD websites for possible inclusion (Title, Publisher, URL)
