How to Plan and Implement a Library Portal
2002; American Library Association; Volume: 38; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1945-4538
Autores Tópico(s)Web and Library Services
ResumoOVERVIEW OF PORTALS An increasing number of requests for proposals (RFPs) for automated library systems now include specifications for a portal module. A portal is a single user interface for access to many electronic resources. It may include: * A library's own catalog * The catalogs of other libraries * Online reference services to which the library subscribes * Selected websites * Even the Internet as a whole Most library patrons want information regardless of where they find it. They don't want to limit themselves to their library's collection. A portal offers them one-stop shopping that takes them from the initial need for information through its delivery--without having to use several different tools. If well-designed, a portal also provides effective navigation of complex, multiple, and disparate collections. In the words of Vinod Chachra, president of VTLS, a vendor of automated library systems: It's not if libraries should be portals, it's not when libraries should be portals, it's how libraries should be portals. Despite the growing interest in portals, fewer than one-half of 1% of libraries have implemented them, which is why only limited information is available at this time. The consensus among vendors is that widespread implementation is at least two years away. History Portals were first developed by large companies seeking to provide employees with a single interface by which they could access corporate information from multiple computer systems. Although the first portals were developed by or for a specific company, commercially produced portal software soon became available. A portal can be mounted either on a dedicated server or on a Web server that supports other applications. The software is generally described as a portal server or enterprise portal product. Major portal software vendors include BroadVision, Epicentric, iPlanet, Oracle, Plumtree, Tibco, and Thunderstone. Plumtree is the market leader with a 39% share; none of the others has more than 9% market share. The products of these companies are not discussed in this report because few libraries have entertained the idea of building their own portals from scratch. Thunderstone is the only vendor that claims a library (an ARL member) as a customer. The library, which was not identified, selected Thunder-stone before library portal options became available. The library had to do much development work to tailor the portal to the needs of its faculty and students. Four smaller vendors (Auto-Graphics, Fretwell-Downing Informatics, MuseGlobal, and WebFeat) have developed portal software they sell directly to the library market. (See Chapter 3 for more information.) Elements of a portal A portal typically contains the following: * Intuitive and customizable Web interface A portal provides an easy-to-navigate interface that can be designed to match the look and feel of an organization's existing applications. Although most portals are implemented with Web browsers, they can have another client interface, such as a graphical user interface (GUI). * Personalized content presentation A portal can access user profile information to deliver personalized content. Each user can gain a view tailored to his or her access privileges. The personalization can be for a person or a category of people. In most organizations, each employee is provided with personalized content; customers and suppliers are provided content personalized for a category. * Security User profiles can be used to increase the security of the systems being accessed because most portal servers use caching to improve performance. The users access the cache, rather than the back-end server that is the source of the information. Patron authentication is another security feature that can be used not only to determine rights to access that information stored on the local system, but to access remote resources that are limited to specific people or categories of people. …
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