DutchESS (Dutch Electronic Subject Service) was a directory service of academic internet resources, maintained by the Koninklijke Bibliotheek and a number of university libraries. The service was online from 1997 until 2007.

DutchESS was an Internet Guide for the academic community produced by the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in cooperation with a number of Dutch academic libraries. Seven University Libraries were involved, others could decide to join in the future. DutchESS was the new name of the service since September 1997, when the completely restructured version went online. DutchESS has been developed as part of a two year project funded by IWI (Innovatie Wetenschappelijke Informatie: a funding body for innovative projects in Dutch academic institutions). Before that it was called NBW: Nederlandse Basisclassificatie Web (Dutch Basic Classification Web).

DutchESS gave access to a collection of resources relevant to academic research, via a bilingual interface (English and Dutch). Distinctive features of the service were:

  • Quality selection: the resources were selected by subject specialist of the participating libraries on quality and relevance for the academic community, based on the DutchESS selection policy.
  • Subject indexing: the resources were classified according to the Nederlandse Basisclassificatie (Dutch Basic Classification), a national Dutch classification scheme, on which the browsing pages of DutchESS were based. Keyword searches of all the fields in the database were also possible.
  • Abstract: a short description of the resources (in English) was provided.