A comprehensive information service for higher education based at the University of Bath yesterday launched a gateway on the World Wide Web.

The National Information Service and Systems (NISS) has brought together disparate elements of its data resources which can be located through its new home page.

NISS is committed to making the service free at the point of use and, says its director, Mike Johnson, directing it specifically to users in higher education.

Some services carry a subscription charge and users will not be able to access them unless their institution has paid the fee.

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The NISS Information Gateway, unveiled at Sun Microsystems in London yesterday, absorbs all existing service resources but will not disenfranchise existing users.

Access from VT100 and PAD (X29) terminals is still available and the service will support these elements until users begin to access the Web location.

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The gateway will offer easy visual access to NISS services provided in the past seven years with a careful selection of higher education information. It will also use Web technology to point users to other services on the Internet, including those launched by The THES.

NISS embraces: news and current affairs, academic subject areas, reference and bibliographic, administrative and professional services, and IT and computing.

The home page can be located at