Developing portal services: the Subject Portals Project Rosemary Russell SPP Project Manager UKOLN, University of Bath ELAG 2004

The Subject Portals Project Originally –2 year project ended August 2003 (phase I) –Started life as SAD (!) (Subject Access to the DNER) research project Now –SPP phase II runs from Sept 2003 – August 2004 –Funded by JISC, as part of the Portals programme (JISC = the Joint Information Systems Committee of the Higher and Further Education Funding Councils)

SPP, RDN & Hubs SPP builds on the Resource Discovery Network RDN consists of: –RDNC (Resource Discovery Network Centre) –Hubs - independent service providers Hubs –provide data for the RDN –subject gateways to Internet resources –quality resources - selected, indexed and described by specialists

Hub partners in SPP

SPP lead partners

Portals defined Definition Technically, a portal is a network service that brings together content from diverse distributed resources using technologies such as cross searching, harvesting, and alerting, and collates this into an aggregated form for presentation to the user, usually via a website (JISC)

Typical portal features single point of access for particular audience broad array of resources and services brought together from one source sense of community customisation, personalisation, integration portal types - subject portals, data type portals, user community portals, institutional portals…

Project rationale Current UK HE/FE Information Environment –lots of disparate information services –each with its own user interface –many interfaces to learn, search, and keep up to date with changes JISC 5 Year Strategy for the IE –clear need to enhance discovery of and access to content –concept: to provide seamless discovery across multiple content providers

Aims of SPP the portalisation of RDN services to provide seamless access to a range of subject based information resources for users in the UK Higher and Further Education community (and beyond) use same technology to surface subject based content in third party environments eg institutional portals, VLEs

Portal functions Core –authentication –customisation –user data storage Portlets –searching –newsfeeds –alerting –‘additional services’ eg e-journal searching

Searching parallel cross searching Z39.50 mainly, but extensible –OAI Athens compliant single consistent interface search history record storage, export

Access to resources resource wish list compiled by Hubs negotiations with resource providers technical access issues most providers happy to cooperate authorised access

Newsfeeds and alerting Newsfeeds –RSS1.0 extensible events, subject information –searchable Alerting – alerts available to registered users –created from user’s subject interests and selected sources –newsfeed based, but extensible

Modular development plug-in portlets choose functions to install non-framework specific –possible to embed portlets in other portal environments eg uPortal demonstrator based on Apache Jetspeed portal framework

Standards Compliance with emerging portal standards JSR168 –Java portlet standard WSRP –remote portlet communication protocol –portals aggregate remote portlets

Current work (1) interface - implementing recommendations from usability testing developing additional services –eJournal portlet – OAI to harvest data –newsfeed searching –events database installation of beta portal software at the 8 Hub sites (1 up and running!) –testing and review

Current Work (2) uPortal integration –standards-based –working with University of Birmingham evaluation –impact on users –external evaluation by consultants open source –copyright and licences exit strategy

Questions Any questions?