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The Subject Portals Project

The Subject Portals Project. JISC Portals and Shared Services Meeting 22 nd -23 rd May 2003 Ruth Martin Subject Portals Project Manager UKOLN. The Subject Portals Project (SPP). 2 year project, ending August 2003 Funded by JISC as part of its 5/99 DNER Enhancement call

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The Subject Portals Project

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  1. The Subject Portals Project JISC Portals and Shared Services Meeting 22nd-23rd May 2003 Ruth Martin Subject Portals Project Manager UKOLN

  2. The Subject Portals Project (SPP) • 2 year project, ending August 2003 • Funded by JISC as part of its 5/99 DNER Enhancement call • Started life as “Subject Access to the DNER” – acronym SAD! • Now known as SPP (mercifully)

  3. RDN partners

  4. Two other partners

  5. So, what is a subject portal? • Tailored view of the web within a particular subject area • Ability to cross-search specially selected resources • Single authentication/authorisation at log-on

  6. Subject portals continued... • Storage of user profiles • Alerting service • Newsfeeds • Additional services: jobs listings; web resource catalogues; e-journal search engine etc.

  7. The aim? Seamless access to a range of specially selected high-quality information resources for users in the UK Higher and Further Education community (and beyond).

  8. Modular development • Development of portlets, not portals • Gives hubs choice of which functions to install • Non-framework specific, freeing us to embed portlets in other portal environments

  9. The architecture • Core • Portal framework • Access management system • User profiling • Storage for user data • Available to all portlets • Portlets • Framework provides portlet API

  10. Portal architecture: core and portlets

  11. Portal framework • Jetspeed • Apache open source java portal framework • Provides tools for personalising layout, portlet selection etc. • Design allows for other portal frameworks • Bridge code hides framework specifics • Java Community Process portal standards • Currently working to test portlet installations in uPortal

  12. Access management SPP authentication module: • Replaces framework’s system • Provides 1) national authentication • e.g. Athens Single Sign-On 2) local authentication • e.g. LDAP • Provides a profile of users’ access rights to various resources

  13. Work with Athens • Athens Single Sign-On (SSO) allows publishers to implement the Athens agent to allow users to log on once and move between Athens-protected resources • Athens Devolved Authentication (DA) allows an institution to use its local authentication system to authorise access to Athens-protected resources

  14. Access management • Aim for portal to act as broker between user and the authentication service on behalf of the resource provider • And thus enable users to enter credentials only once, at log-on, for every resource they are authorised to use • A relationship of trust

  15. Cross-searching • Resources selected by the hubs to reflect subject interests • “Wish-list” of 140 resources – work on-going to include as many as possible • Supporting Z39.50 compliant targets at present – but hope to extend this to other protocols such as XML, OAI, SOAP etc • Also collaborating with Xgrain broker service.

  16. More on cross-searching • Work has involved negotiating with resource providers for access to resources • Advantage of increased visibility of resources • On-going support from resource providers crucial

  17. The future • Movement from project to service • Continuing technical development - exploring feasibility of embedding portal functions into institutional portals, VLEs etc - offering portlets as open source developments • Collaborative work the way forward for the RDN?

  18. Contacts: Julie Stuckes Project Manager UKOLN University of Bath j.a.stuckes@ukoln.ac.uk Jasper Tredgold Technical Co-ordinator ILRT University of Bristol jasper.tredgold@bristol.ac.uk

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