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Any Port(al) in a Storm?

Any Port(al) in a Storm?. Developing a Portal for the UK Health and Life Sciences Community Donald M Mackay BIOME Service Manager 9th European Conference of Medical and Health Libraries September 2004. Any Port(al) in a Storm?. BIOME, JISC & RDN Portals in UK HE/FE

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Any Port(al) in a Storm?

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  1. Any Port(al) in a Storm? Developing a Portal for the UK Health and Life Sciences Community Donald M Mackay BIOME Service Manager 9th European Conference of Medical and Health Libraries September 2004

  2. Any Port(al) in a Storm? • BIOME, JISC & RDN • Portals in UK HE/FE • Subject Portals Project (SPP) • BIOME & the SPP • BIOME Environment • Context • Strands of Activity

  3. BIOME, JISC & RDN • Access to high quality Internet resources in the Health and Life Sciences • University of Nottingham • Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) • UK HE and FE • Core Catalogue (IRC) of 25,000+ items • Six Subject Gateways • Internal and external subject and information specialists • Resource Discovery Network “Hub”

  4. Portals • What is a “Portal”? • Fat, Thin, Institutional, Commercial, VLE, MLE, etc., etc. • Single point of access for a particular audience • Sense of community • Customisation, personalisation, integration

  5. Portals & the JISC • UK HE/FE (JISC provided) Information Environment • Lots of disparate information services • Each with its own user interface • Many interfaces to learn, search, and to keep up to date with • JISC • Clear need to enhance discovery of and access to content • Ideal: to provide seamless discovery across multiple content providers

  6. Portals & the JISC • JISC Portals Programme • Institutional, media specific, subject specific, community specific • Resurfacing – “yet another portal” / one stop scenario….. • Subject Portals Project & The RDN • Eight RDN hubs – distributed team • University of Bath & University of Bristol

  7. Subject Portals Project • Builds on existing RDN hub services. • A basic Portal framework (using Jetspeed) • “Portlets” embedded into framework & elsewhere (JSR-168 & WSRP) • Customisable – user & administrator • Funded to September 2004 • Beta demonstrators currently available at each of the hubs • Made available as Open Source to encourage continued development in the community

  8. SPP Portal Functions • Portlets: • Database cross search • E-journals cross search • Newsfeeds & newsfeed cross search • Alerting service • Events portlet • Core: • User profile store • Access management system (Athens & LDAP)

  9. BIOME & the SPP • Active in the software’s development • Beta portal installed • User feedback: • Beta portal functionality • Portal concepts/services

  10. Future of SPP in BIOME • Uncertain • Keen to develop service, but more than SPP…. • Other contextual issues: • Articulated user needs & feedback – portals nice, but… • Funding – restricted, cost effectiveness • JISC policy – more than just portals – e.g. collaboration, FE, etc. • Collection development issues

  11. Future of SPP in BIOME • Other contextual issues: • Other services • “Yet another portal” - NeLH, HONNI, eLibrary Scotland, Doctors.Net, MIDIRS, TRIP, vetschools.ac.uk • Duplication of effort • Institutional portals – 1st and last port of call? • JISC/RDN decision making

  12. BIOME Environment • BIOME Environment: • Not an SPP Implementation (well, not yet anyway...) • Enhance & develop existing service • In line with SPP experience and feedback • In line with user needs • Interoperabilty/surfacing • Partnerships/collaboration • Cost effective service development (IRC) • Technical developments • Marketing activities

  13. Developing Existing Service • Partnerships/Collaboration • Building on existing networks • Identify new partners • NHS – NHS eLibrary Scotland, HONNI, NeLH/NLH, NHSU • Other “Portals” - Vetschools.ac.uk, Scenta

  14. Developing Existing Service • Cost Effective Service Development • Content from NHS partners • Further Education content • LTSN SC Pedagogic content • Internal restructuring • BIOME Web search engine

  15. Developing Existing Service • Technical Developments • XML & XHTML compliant • Web services / SOAP • Search boxes / RDN Include • RSS newsfeeds – in & out • OAI2 PMH compliance & harvesting • Reusable learning objects • Website restructuring

  16. Developing Existing Service • Marketing • Feedback on existing services • Feedback on proposed services • Online questionnaires • Focus groups • Refocus steering group • Revamp quantitative data collection – e.g. “visits”? • Publicity and partnership – LTSN SCs, JISC RSCs, Librarians, etc., etc.

  17. Any Port(al) in a Storm? • Portals are EVERY WHERE • Potential for RDN Hubs to evolve into subject based portals • Perhaps / perhaps not…. • Development and enhancement of existing services • Interoperable as possible

  18. More Information Subject Portals Project http://www.portal.ac.uk/spp RDN http://www.rdn.ac.uk BIOME http://biome.ac.uk/portal

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