1. Supporting further and higher education Portals and Portal Services Routes to Discovery in the Information Environment

2. 2 The Information Environment Web Content End-user Portal Broker or Aggregator Authentication Authorisation Collection Desc. Institutional Profiles Resolver Service Desc.

3. 3 JISC Portal Developments Subject-based portals –Subject Portals Project Format-based portals –Pixus Image Portal –Go-Geo! –Xgrain User community-based –Learning & Teaching Portal

4. 4 External Portal Developments Institutional portals –Commercial, e.g., Oracle, Novell –Open source, e.g., uPortal –Part of an MLE Virtual Learning Environments –Discovery alongside learning Library Portals –Standalone or add-ons to library systems

5. 5 Portals, portals, portals… Very popular concept Many different definitions –JISC Portals FAQ Everyone wants a piece of the action Nightmare scenario… –List of bookmarks replaced with list of portals

6. 6 Portal Services and Functionality Portals as brokers –Providing behind the scenes functionality Embedding locally –e.g., RDN-Include Web services model? –Web Services for Remote Portals (WSRP) standard

7. 7 The Information Environment Web Content End-user - JISC Portal - Institutional Portal - VLE Broker or Aggregator Authentication Authorisation Collection Desc. Institutional Profiles Resolver Service Desc.

8. 8 The Information Environment Web Content End-user - JISC Portal - Institutional Portal - VLE Broker or Aggregator Authentication Authorisation Collection Desc. Institutional Profiles Resolver Service Desc.

9. 9 Role of Portals Key activity –Discovery –Presentation Shared activity –Authentication/Authorisation –Maintenance of targets for cross- searching –Determining the appropriate copy –Others?

10. 10 Shared Services Portals use functionality provided by separate, and shared, service Use open standards and protocols Implications for portal development –Funding to examine transition Portals as lightweight discovery tools

11. 11 Usability and HCI Design JISC Information Environment Presentation Programme Usability studies –Now complete –Dissemination being planned HCI Design and Visualization studies –About to start

12. 12 This meeting To find out about current shared service developments To raise issues in current portals development To meet other portal project staff and exchange ideas and solutions To meet in the bar later…

13. 13 Thank you Over to Helen…