According to Paul Miller, gateways are: "collections of links and pointers to contents of value, mostly elsewhere on the Web, and generally within a single defined topic or small set of topics." ⁶ Although they do not offer users the option to customize the information that they receive, gateways are nevertheless valuable resources for electronic information, generally Internet sites. Unlike web portals and search engines such as Yahoo! or Google, there is a significant amount of "quality control" with web sites being assessed for relevance, bias and reliability. There are several examples of gateways available on the Internet, including the following two resources.

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The Library of Congress Global Gateway provides access to the digital collections of international materials at the Library of Congress as well as "Research Guides" on individual countries produced by the library and a section entitled "Portals to the World" which provides links to websites arranged by country and subdivided by topics such as "Culture," "History," "Language and Literature," and "Recreation and Travel."

    is the subject gateway of the National Maritime Museum in the United Kingdom.  

PORT is aimed primarily at researchers and others interested in maritime related information on the Internet. The gateway is divided into several subject areas that include "Adventures and Sport," "Art and Literature," "Conflicts at Sea," "Law," and Shipbuilding." Users can search by keyword or by subject area. Websites are reviewed according to certain criteria and a summary of sites is provided with each link. For regular users, there is also an updated list of the latest additions to the site.

  Click on the "PORT" logo to browse the gateway.

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