www.portal.ac.uk/spp
Portal-to-portal : joining up content to decrease the time spent clicking as distinguished from the time spent
workingMichael Fraser
Research Technologies Service University of Oxford
www.portal.ac.uk/spp
What is a 'portal'?
• Provides a framework for– Retrieving, aggregating (and integrating)
information• From distributed remote services
– Presenting information according to user preferences
“Building portals is not about creating new content. It is less about developing functionality than it is about building a coherent presentation of existing content and applications
tailored to specific users.”
www.portal.ac.uk/spp
Essentials of a portal
• Provides an integrated view (“pocket guide”) to the information resources of an institution or community– For students, teachers, researchers, academic-
support, alumni…– From information exposed by universities and
their parts, academic services, publishers, professional bodies...
www.portal.ac.uk/spp
And what a portal is not
• Not– Content creation/management system– Replacement for existing processes
• A portal is only as good as its content• The content is only as good as the
processes to create/retrieve/manage it• Developing a portal may result in
changing processes but it is not an aim
www.portal.ac.uk/spp
Evolution of Portal Types
Web pagePortal
Gateway Portal
Cross-searching Portal
Library Portal
InstitutionalPortal
Portal-to-PortalPortal ?
www.portal.ac.uk/spp
Web Page Portal
www.portal.ac.uk/spp
Gateway Portal
www.portal.ac.uk/spp
Gateway-to-Digital Library Portal
www.portal.ac.uk/spp
Cross-searching Portal
www.portal.ac.uk/spp
Library Portal
www.portal.ac.uk/spp
Institutional Portal
www.portal.ac.uk/spp
Summary of functionality
• Access management
• News, alerting and updating
• Cross-searching
• Linking
• Personalisation
www.portal.ac.uk/spp
Access Management
• Single Web Access Point• Common functionality for disparate resources • Complexities of user/resource access
management– Manage Local and Remote Users – Access Local and Remote Resources
Resources
Use
rs
Local
Remote
Local Remote
www.portal.ac.uk/spp
Access Management System
• Manage the Agreements Previously Established – Institutions & Resource Providers – Ensure Authentication of Users– Grant Authorisation to Protected Resources
Kno
ws
Ow
ns
Agrees
Protected Resources
Resource Provider
UNIVERSITY
Users
Access Management System
Institution
Wants
www.portal.ac.uk/spp
Subject Portals Project
• JISC-funded 2 year project led by UK Resource Discovery Network (Biome, Eevl, Humbul, Sosig and Psigate) with UKOLN (Bath) and ILRT (Bristol)
• Aims to develop portal functionality to enable RDN hubs to present a subject-based view of national academic collections etc.
• Phase one ended August 2003• Phase two until Sept 2004
www.portal.ac.uk/spp
Rationale
• Multiple distributed digital resources
• Desire for greater simplicity– PORTAL Project (Hull) survey:
“Search across your favourite library resources or websites: Scoring a total of 217 points, the ability to search across your favourite resources was the highest rated feature for survey participants taken as a whole.” (p.16)
• Convergence of standards and portal types
www.portal.ac.uk/spp
Subject Portals Architecture
HT
TP
AthensAccess Management(authentication/authorisation)
NewsFeedsPortlet
AlertingPortlet
XSearchingPortlet
DBMS
National AccessManagement System (NAS)
DSP 1
FileStoreFileStore
Local AccessManagement System (LAS)
User Profiling(personalisation)
LDA P/S
S L
Z39.50Target
Athens
RDNLDAP
OAIRep
RSSFeeds
DBMS
Z39.50Target
FileStore
RSSFeeds
...
Z39.50
Z
39. 5
0
RSS
(HTT
P) R
SS
(HT
TP)
RDNOpenURL
HTT
P
Z39.50
Z3
9.5
0JD
BC
XM
LH
TT
P
JDB
C
XM
LH
TT
P
XM
LH
TT
P
Subject Portals
DSP 2 DSP N
...
www.portal.ac.uk/spp
Subject Portals Project Demonstrator
www.portal.ac.uk/spp
The cross-search screen
www.portal.ac.uk/spp
The search results screen
www.portal.ac.uk/spp
Saved records and full record view
www.portal.ac.uk/spp
Searchable newsfeeds
www.portal.ac.uk/spp
Choosing portlets and customising the layout
www.portal.ac.uk/spp
Initial user feedback
“Excellent research facility once one has decoded the ways into it. The screen is too cluttered for a computer-illiterate person (like me!) – too much information makes the actual process of searching too complex, although the results are excellent.”
“Gives access to a range of resources and spares students the time of searching a range of different portals. Saving of resources and printing very easy and clear.”
“I would use it if it was much clearer and obvious where I could find resources relating to my research. Presently I would search under HUMBUL because this is the only resource I know. More has to be done to familiarise students with the other collections so they know where these would be of some use.”
“I really wasn’t sure what portal meant before I came but now I think I understand it better. A doorway to other resources? It certainly meets that.”
www.portal.ac.uk/spp
Standards for interoperabilityFunctionality
– Access management
• Pluggable authentication module
• LDAP (EduPerson)
– Alerting
• RSS newsfeeds
– Cross-searching
• Dublin Core Metadata
• Z39.50 (Bath Profile)
• Open Archives Initiative
– Linking
• OpenURL
FrameworkJSR 168 Portlet SpecificationWeb Services for remote portlets
(WSRP)Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)XML/XSLT
Avoid locking content into black boxes
www.portal.ac.uk/spp
Observations
• More user consultation!
• Issues with searching disparate resources– Compare and contrast
• Google – OPAC – texts – images – Humbul ...
• Standards only work if...
• Open Source licensing
• Challenge of user interfaces– clarity; subject-based; personal
• user has a role in a group
• Content negotiation and management
www.portal.ac.uk/spp
The joined-up future?
The JISC Information Environment Technical ArchitectureDiagram courtesy of Andy Powell, 2003
www.portal.ac.uk/spp
Michael FraserResearch Technologies Service
University of Oxfordhttp://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/rts/
Email: [email protected]
