Portal proliferation: Good, Bad, or just Confused

1
Portal proliferationGood, Bad, or just
Confused?

• Paul Miller
• 17 June 2003

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Overview

• What is a portal?
• The PORTAL project
• Understanding users
• Standards
• Conclusions

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What is a portal?
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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)

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See www.royalmail.com/
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See odur.let.rug.nl/arge/
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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)

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Gateway definition 1

• A network service based on a catalogue of
  Internet resources
• (JISC Information Environment Architecture
  glossary)

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See www.scran.ac.uk/jisc/
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See hds.essex.ac.uk/go-geo/
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See ads.ahds.ac.uk/heirport/
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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)

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See www.digital.hull.ac.uk/
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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 whats important about a portal,
  and use other terms for other things?
• Web site, gateway, thingummy, portal

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Web site

• Online content
• Defining Characteristics
• 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!

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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 ?

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Thingummy

• Links and pointers to content of value
• Defining characteristics
• Not restricted to HTTP
• May include search/cross-search capability
• Pixus, Go-Geo, HEIRPORT ?

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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.

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3 web sites, 2 gateways, 5 thingummies and a
portal
and Alice!
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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.

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Customisation Personalisation

• Personalisation
• You asked for departmental news. Here is the news
  for your department
• I know youre visually impaired. Here is the
  accessible version of this site
• You asked for new journal articles. I know youre
  an archaeologist, so heres the Table of Contents
  for Antiquity
• I wont 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.

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The PORTAL Project
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PORTAL project

• Presenting natiOnal Resources To Audiences
  Locally
• Funded by the JISCs FAIR Programme
• 18 Month project, from September 2002
• University of Hull and UKOLN
• Building upon Hulls development of an
  institutional portal
• Surfacing external content and services
• Addressing content provider issues
• Understanding user needs

See www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
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Understanding Users
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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
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See www.learndev.hull.ac.uk/portal_survey/
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Top Ten Features

• 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

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What users want
Postgraduate Students Library admin Search your
favourite resources Deadline alerts Library
Internet resource alert Access reading lists
Admin Staff Staff development Personal
information Forms documentation Search your
favourite resources Access your institutional
email Campus news
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
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and what they dont
û

• The Weather !
• News
• Catering Bookings
• Salary Data
• Voting in Student Elections

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Additional Features

• Single Sign On
• Internal
• External
• Accessible
• Targeted Announcements
• Remote Access
• Reliable!

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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/
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Standards
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• RSS
• WSRP/WSDL/WSFL/UDDI
• Z39.50
• OAI
• Liberty Alliance
• etc.

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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/
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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)
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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/
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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/
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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
WP6
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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
  standards-conformant and interoperable fashion.

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PORTALPresenting natiOnal Resources To Audiences
Locally

• p.miller_at_ukoln.ac.uk

See www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/