Panel session on “Avoiding Portal Wars” given at the IWMW 2002 event. See http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/webmaster-2002/talks/panel/

1. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk
What is JISC?
• The Joint Information Systems
Committee promotes the innovative
application and use of information
systems and information technology
in further and higher education
across the UK

2. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk
Old definition of a portal…
• A portal accepts requests from users and
itself interrogates information services it
believes may hold appropriate resources.
It sends queries to those services and
accepts result sets. It then processes
those result sets (eg. by removing
duplicates) and presents them to
the user. In essence the user never
leaves the portal.
… from 5/99 Learning & Teaching Programme 2000

3. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk
New user-based definition
• A portal is an online service that provides a
personalised, single point of access to
resources that support the end-user in one or
more tasks (resource discovery, learning,
research etc). The resources made available
via a portal are typically brought together
from more than one source.
…taken from the new Portal FAQ
… and …

4. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk
From the Information
Environment (formally DNER)
• Portals typically focus on supporting the
end-user in their learning and/or research
activities by providing personalised
discovery services across multiple,
heterogeneous content providers.
• The key technologies that support
interoperability between JISC IE portals
and content providers are Z39.50 and
OAI Protocol.

5. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk
JISC Portal portfolio
We are building:
 Subject Portals
 Data Format-based Portals
 Community-based Portals
We are working with:
 Institutional Portals
 VLE/MLE’s

6. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk
Subject Portals Project
Portal Framework
Other community tools and content
Account ManagementCross-SearchAlertsUser Profiling
SOSIG EEVL BIOME HUMBUL PSI-Gate Other hubs
Subject Portals
JISC funded content

7. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk
The SPP challenges
• Not to ‘compete’ with other portals
• Offer a menu of ‘portlets’
• Consider different ‘frameworks’
• Help facilitate integration of services
• Subject based approach
• Future-proof our work
• Consider new/existing technologies

8. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk
EEVL – The Hub

9. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk
EEVL – Some additional services ideas…
Sorry about the pink!!!

10. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk
EEVL – Some additional services ideas…
Sorry about the pink!!!