Service The word "service", for example, carries different meanings depending on whether GILS is discussed in the context of policy, technology, or standards. For policy people, GILS can be viewed as a "service" in the sense of a set of human, organizational, and technological facilities that help people find information. Extending this policy sense to technology, implementors sometimes refer to GILS not as a service but as a specific system built of software and utilized in support of the policy goals. To my mind, such systems are examples of compliance with GILS, just as a particular building may be an example of compliance with a building code.
For the Digital Libraries audience, I would like to focus on the precise meaning of GILS in the standards context. In the general architectural model of networks, GILS is a service in the sense of an application profile that is part of a service definition. This service performs specific functions useful for locating information. It is available for use by higher level applications and makes use of lower level components such as bitways.