Introduction to Portals

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Introduction to Portals
Web Portals Gateways to Information February 2,
2001
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What is a Portal Anyway?
A Web site or service that offers a broad array
of resources and services, such as e-mail,
forums, search engines, and on-line shopping
malls. The first Web portals were online
services, such as AOL, that provided access to
the Web, but by now most of the traditional
search engines have transformed themselves into
Web portals to attract and keep a larger
audience. - ZDWEBOPEDIA.

• Generally fall into two categories
• Horizontal, also called HEPs (Horizontal
  Enterprize Portals) and mega-portals. General
  sites that attempt to provide on a single web
  page all the services any user might need -
  Examples MyYahoo, Excite
• Vertical, also called VEPs (Vertical Enterprize
  Portals) or Vortals. Delivers organization-specifi
  c information in a user-centric way. Examples
  MyLibrary (from NCSU),pets.com
• Other terms in use include ERP (Enterprize
  Resource Portals), EIP (Enterprize Information
  Portal), Affinity Portal, Corporate Portal,
  Knowledge Management Portal, IT Portal, Niche
  Portal, Industry Portal, B2B Portal...

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Common Components of Portal Space

• Gateways to Web Access, i.e. well-defined places
  to start
• A hub from which users can locate all the web
  content they commonly need at a general level
  (Horizontal) or organizational/interest level
  (Vertical)
• Usually support some level of personalization
  and/or customization
• A portal is user-centric, while a homepage is
  owner-centric

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Horizontal Portals Up Close MyYahoo
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Horizontal Portals Up Close MyYahoo
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Horizontal Portals Up Close MyYahoo (what it
cant do)
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Vertical Portals Up Close MyAssociation
How do we both ensure and leverage our
credibility is one of the key issues facing
academic libraries
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Vertical Portals Up Close MyAssociation
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Vertical Portals Up Close MyAssociation
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Portal Technologies at a web page near you
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The Achilles Heel of Portals does Yahoos
disadvantage work to the librarys favour?
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Portals Libraries the building blocks for a
social machine?

• Some web pundits envision a social machine
  based on web technologies to allow citizens to
  fully participate in society
• Portals offer a network desktop that can follow
  users everywhere
• Voting is already taking place on the Internet
  for various organization activities, e.g.
  electing board representatives
• Libraries have a historical and important role to
  play in allowing the broadest spectrum of society
  to take advantage of all forms of communication

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Tools for Building a Portal
Commercial Actuate, Blackboard, Epicentric,
Perspecta, Plumtree, Lotus Notes/Domino,
eLPHIN Library System iBistro (from
SIRSI) Open Source JetSpeed (from Apache),
MyLibrary, Zope
Key Question Where will the content of the
portal be created?
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Library Examples MyLibrary from NCSU
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Library Examples iBistro
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Library Examples iBistro
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Library Examples Open Online
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Library Examples Michigan Electronic Library
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Library Examples TeleEducation NB
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Where to go for more information on Portals

• http//www.zdnet.com/pcmag/features/webportals/int
  ro.html - PC Magazines Introduction to Portals
• http//www.traffick.com/ - The Guide to Portals
  
• http//www.cren.net/know/techtalk/events/portals.h
  tml - CREN TechTalk on Portals
• http//hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/development/mylibrary/
  - MyLibrary site
• http//www.zope.org/ - Search for portal, there
  is a Portal Toolkit and information on applying
  it to specific organizations, including schools