Portal proliferation:
Good, Bad, or just Confused?
Paul Miller
17 June 2003
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
Overview
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What is a portal?
The PORTAL project
Understanding users
Standards
Conclusions
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
What is a portal?
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
Portal definition #1
“a term, generally synonymous with
gateway, for a World Wide Web site that is
or proposes to be a major starting site for
users when they get connected to the
Web or that users tend to visit as an
anchor site.”
(whatis.com)
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
See www.royalmail.com/
See odur.let.rug.nl/arge/
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
Portal definition #2
“A network service that provides a personalised, single
point of access to a range of heterogeneous network
services, local and remote, structured and unstructured.
Portal functionality often includes resource discovery,
email access and online discussion fora. Portals are
intended for (human) end-users using common Web
'standards' such as HTTP, HTML, Java and JavaScript. In
the context of the JISC IE, portals interact with brokers,
aggregators, indexes, catalogues and content providers
using Z39.50, SRW, the OAI-PMH and RSS/HTTP.”
(JISC Information Environment Architecture glossary)
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
Gateway definition #1
“A network service based on a catalogue of
Internet resources”
(JISC Information Environment Architecture glossary)
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
See
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
www.scran.ac.uk/jisc/
See hds.essex.ac.uk/go-geo/
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
See ads.ahds.ac.uk/heirport/
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
Portal definition #3
“a [thin] layer which aggregates,
integrates, personalises and presents
information, transactions and applications
to the user according to their role and
preferences”
(JISC PORTAL Project)
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
See www.digital.hull.ac.uk/
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
So when is a portal not a portal?
• Everyone claims to have a portal
– The value of the term is therefore diluted
• Can we identify what’s important about a
portal, and use other terms for other
things?
– Web site, gateway, thingummy, portal…
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
Web site
• Online content
• Defining Characteristics
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On the Internet
Visible using a standard web browser
Principally HTML/XHTML text and associated images
Uses hyperlinks, but principal focus is itself, rather
than other sites
• The Royal Mail!
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
Gateway
• Links and pointers to content of value
– Mostly online, often within a single topic
• Defining characteristics
– Primarily a collection of descriptions of resources, and
pointers to those resources
– The bulk of the resources belong to other people
– Typically descriptions of web sites
• ARGE ?
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
Thingummy
• Links and pointers to content of value
• Defining characteristics
– Not restricted to HTTP
– May include search/cross-search capability
• Pixus, Go-Geo, HEIRPORT ?
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
Portal
• Personalisable aggregator of information and
services
• Defining characteristics
– Customisable
– Personalisable
– Aggregates and integrates
• Capable of Single Sign-On ?
– Embedding of transactional services
• port.hull.
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
3 web sites, 2 gateways, 5 thingummies and a portal…
…and Alice!
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
Customisation & Personalisation
• Customisation
– Can I have
red text, please?
– Can I see departmental news, please?
– Can I have the accessible version, please?
– Get rid of that weather forecast!
– Please tell me about new journal articles.
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
Customisation & Personalisation
• Personalisation
– You asked for departmental news. Here is the news for
your department…
– I know you’re visually impaired. Here is the accessible
version of this site…
– You asked for new journal articles. I know you’re an
archaeologist, so here’s the Table of Contents for
Antiquity…
• I won’t bother telling you about Nature or The Economist, though,
unless you tell me to
– You have 273 new e-mails, owe the library £12 in fines,
and are overdrawn at your bank by £1,362.40.
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
The PORTAL Project
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
PORTAL project
Presenting natiOnal Resources To Audiences
Locally
– Funded by the JISC’s FAIR Programme
• 18 Month project, from September 2002
• University of Hull and UKOLN
– Building upon Hull’s development of an institutional
portal
– Surfacing external content and services
– Addressing content provider issues
– Understanding user needs
See www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
Understanding Users
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
Current work
• Focus upon ‘institutional portals’ in FE and
HE
– Online questionnaire
• 557 responses by 14 February
– Focus groups
• 53 participants
– Interviews
• 27 interviews
See www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/deliverables.html
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
See www.learndev.hull.ac.uk/portal_survey/
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
Top Ten Features
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Search favourite resources
Library administration
Access or update teaching materials
Personal information
Library and quality Internet resources alerts
Access your institutional email
Handbook
Deadline alerts
Access or update reading lists
Campus news
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
What users want…
Admin Staff:
Staff development
Personal information
Forms & documentation
Search your favourite resources
Access your institutional email
Campus news
Postgraduate Students:
Library admin
Search your favourite resources
Deadline alerts
Library & Internet resource alert
Access reading lists
Higher Education Undergrad:
Deadline alerts
Review marks
Library admin
Access teaching materials
Search your favourite resources
Academic Staff:
Search your favourite resources
Library & Internet resource alerts
Library admin
Personal information
Update teaching materials
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
…and what they don’t
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The Weather !
News
Catering Bookings
Salary Data
Voting in Student
Elections
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
Additional Features
• Single Sign On
– Internal
– External
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Accessible
Targeted Announcements
Remote Access
Reliable!
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
…and elsewhere…
• The Cultural Content Forum is exploring
audience requirements for the digitised
cultural heritage.
See www.culturalcontentforum.org/
See June issue of D-Lib Magazine at www.dlib.org/
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
Standards
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
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RSS
WSRP/WSDL/WSFL/UDDI
Z39.50
OAI
Liberty Alliance
etc.
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
RSS
• Rich/RDF Site Summary
– ‘easy’ mechanism for syndicating content
– Works especially well for ‘news’
– Many versions
• JISC IE currently recommends version 1.0
See www.britarch.ac.uk/archaeoblog/
See www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue35/miller/
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
Web Services
• About making the Web transactional
– Web Services for Remote Portals (WSRP)
especially relevant
• Also Universal Description, Discovery & Integration
(UDDI), Web Services Description Language
(WSDL), Web Services Flow Language (WSFL)
See www.oasis-open.org/
See www.digicult.info/downloads/digicult_info3.pdf (pp. 21-23)
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
Z39.50
• Grandaddy of distributed search standards
– Ageing, but still deployed, especially in library
sector
– Current effort – under ‘ZING’ umbrella – to
make underlying semantics relevant to the
web and web services environment
See www.loc.gov/z3950/agency/
See www.loc.gov/z3950/agency/zing/
See www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue21/z3950/
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
OAI
• Open Archives Initiative
– Not really about archives at all
– Preprints, e-Prints, etc, but with relevance to
this sector
• Demonstrated by CIMI, ADS CIE demonstrator, etc.
See www.openarchives.org/
See www.oaforum.org/
See www.cimi.org/wg/metadata/
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
Liberty Alliance
• Multi-organisational approach to
understanding people, their rights and
roles
– Enabling interoperable exchange of access
rights, etc., whilst protecting personal data
• For now, many educational portals using
IMS LIP or EduPerson
See www.projectliberty.org/
See www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/deliverables.html
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
WP6
Conclusion
• A lot of people claim to be building ‘portals’
– Some of them even are
• We need a better understanding of what users
want from all of this
– “Build it and they will come” is simply not true
• There may be nothing wrong with a multitude of
ways in
– Accessing a common pool of content in a standardsconformant and interoperable fashion.
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
PORTAL
Presenting natiOnal Resources To Audiences Locally
p.miller@ukoln.ac.uk
See www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/