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Developing a Portal for the UK Health and Life Sciences Community

This article explores the development of a portal for the UK health and life sciences community. It discusses the need for portals in the UK higher education and further education sectors, the Subject Portals Project (SPP), and the role of BIOME in the project. The article also discusses the functions of the SPP portal and the future of portal development in BIOME.

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Developing a Portal for the UK Health and Life Sciences Community

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  1. Any Port(al) in a Storm? Developing a Portal for the UK Health and Life Sciences Community Donald M Mackay BIOME Service Manager 9th European Conference of Medical and Health Libraries September 2004

  2. Any Port(al) in a Storm? • BIOME, JISC & RDN • Portals in UK HE/FE • Subject Portals Project (SPP) • BIOME & the SPP • BIOME Environment • Context • Strands of Activity

  3. BIOME, JISC & RDN • Access to high quality Internet resources in the Health and Life Sciences • University of Nottingham • Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) • UK HE and FE • Core Catalogue (IRC) of 25,000+ items • Six Subject Gateways • Internal and external subject and information specialists • Resource Discovery Network “Hub”

  4. Portals • What is a “Portal”? • Fat, Thin, Institutional, Commercial, VLE, MLE, etc., etc. • Single point of access for a particular audience • Sense of community • Customisation, personalisation, integration

  5. Portals & the JISC • UK HE/FE (JISC provided) Information Environment • Lots of disparate information services • Each with its own user interface • Many interfaces to learn, search, and to keep up to date with • JISC • Clear need to enhance discovery of and access to content • Ideal: to provide seamless discovery across multiple content providers

  6. Portals & the JISC • JISC Portals Programme • Institutional, media specific, subject specific, community specific • Resurfacing – “yet another portal” / one stop scenario….. • Subject Portals Project & The RDN • Eight RDN hubs – distributed team • University of Bath & University of Bristol

  7. Subject Portals Project • Builds on existing RDN hub services. • A basic Portal framework (using Jetspeed) • “Portlets” embedded into framework & elsewhere (JSR-168 & WSRP) • Customisable – user & administrator • Funded to September 2004 • Beta demonstrators currently available at each of the hubs • Made available as Open Source to encourage continued development in the community

  8. SPP Portal Functions • Portlets: • Database cross search • E-journals cross search • Newsfeeds & newsfeed cross search • Alerting service • Events portlet • Core: • User profile store • Access management system (Athens & LDAP)

  9. BIOME & the SPP • Active in the software’s development • Beta portal installed • User feedback: • Beta portal functionality • Portal concepts/services

  10. Future of SPP in BIOME • Uncertain • Keen to develop service, but more than SPP…. • Other contextual issues: • Articulated user needs & feedback – portals nice, but… • Funding – restricted, cost effectiveness • JISC policy – more than just portals – e.g. collaboration, FE, etc. • Collection development issues

  11. Future of SPP in BIOME • Other contextual issues: • Other services • “Yet another portal” - NeLH, HONNI, eLibrary Scotland, Doctors.Net, MIDIRS, TRIP, vetschools.ac.uk • Duplication of effort • Institutional portals – 1st and last port of call? • JISC/RDN decision making

  12. BIOME Environment • BIOME Environment: • Not an SPP Implementation (well, not yet anyway...) • Enhance & develop existing service • In line with SPP experience and feedback • In line with user needs • Interoperabilty/surfacing • Partnerships/collaboration • Cost effective service development (IRC) • Technical developments • Marketing activities

  13. Developing Existing Service • Partnerships/Collaboration • Building on existing networks • Identify new partners • NHS – NHS eLibrary Scotland, HONNI, NeLH/NLH, NHSU • Other “Portals” - Vetschools.ac.uk, Scenta

  14. Developing Existing Service • Cost Effective Service Development • Content from NHS partners • Further Education content • LTSN SC Pedagogic content • Internal restructuring • BIOME Web search engine

  15. Developing Existing Service • Technical Developments • XML & XHTML compliant • Web services / SOAP • Search boxes / RDN Include • RSS newsfeeds – in & out • OAI2 PMH compliance & harvesting • Reusable learning objects • Website restructuring

  16. Developing Existing Service • Marketing • Feedback on existing services • Feedback on proposed services • Online questionnaires • Focus groups • Refocus steering group • Revamp quantitative data collection – e.g. “visits”? • Publicity and partnership – LTSN SCs, JISC RSCs, Librarians, etc., etc.

  17. Any Port(al) in a Storm? • Portals are EVERY WHERE • Potential for RDN Hubs to evolve into subject based portals • Perhaps / perhaps not…. • Development and enhancement of existing services • Interoperable as possible

  18. More Information Subject Portals Project http://www.portal.ac.uk/spp RDN http://www.rdn.ac.uk BIOME http://biome.ac.uk/portal

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