JISC

This project will provide the building blocks for a set of faculty level subject portals offering access to online information resources as envisaged for the DNER. Prototype portals will be based around 3 of the established  Resource Discovery Network faculty-level hubs (subject gateways) which serve Engineering, Mathematics and Computing (EEVL), BioMedical Sciences (BIOME) and Social Sciences, Business and Law (SOSIG).

The RDN has established a distributed service model and provides a good basis for the development of portals in a coordinated programme. The RDN also provides an existing organisational framework upon which to build portals, the technical expertise to build content infrastructure and the subject knowledge and understanding of user needs to develop content collections.

Aims and Objectives

The key goal of the portals functionality is to give users the ability to search seamlessly from the RDN hubs across a wider range of resources. The hubs are subject gateways, which means they point end users towards selected resources on the Internet, but to explore those resources the user leaves the hub environment. A search portal is able to handle the data and information held in external organisations in such a way as to be able to present that to the end user via the hub. This has many advantages for users.

Additional functionality to be developed as part of this project will allow the hubs to offer a wider range of community building services at the faculty level. Some of these value-added services are already provided by the hubs and the project aims to make these more attractive to a wider audience.

Project design

The project is built around five main areas of work:

An overview and requirements analysis
Providing a general overview of portals functionality based on shared views of RDN partners. This area of work will:

• Outline the core functionality of the prototype subject portals and identify what is achievable in technical terms based on hub’s needs and limitations (ie BIOME, EEVL and SOSIG)
• Address interoperability on the basis of the DNER architectural study which will describe the broader infrastructure within which the portals development will take place
•  Identify and establish working relationships with other relevant projects, particularly JISC-funded programmes, to be able to better address matters such as collection service description, authentication and business issues and project evaluation

Software options
This area relates closely to the requirements analysis. It will:

•  Establish selection criteria
•  Assess the available software options in terms of how well they address the hub’s specifications
• Make recommendations to hubs

Design and implementation
This area will set up and trial z-portals at the BIOME, EEVL and SOSIG hubs. Each of the 3 hubs will produce a portal development plan identifying the activities required to design, prototype, develop, install and test the portals software. Additional outcomes are:

•  A scoping document that will provide guidelines to assist other RDN subject gateways to develop portals
• Prototype portals to be made available for comment and evaluation

Collection development
A list of the collections/services to be targeted by the hubs during the prototype stage will be compiled. Other elements of this area of work are to:

• Examine the appropriateness of current faculty-type subject approach and feasibility for enhancing multidisciplinary access
• Address technical aspects of the relationship between the DNER, hubs and the component gateway services
• Take into account the implications of collections description work being carried out by the UK Office for Information, Libraries and Networking (UKOLN)

User profiling
An analysis of the requirements of a user profiling service for the portal environment will be carried out taking into account the DNER architectural study

Outcomes

The portals will enable end users to search seamlessly from the RDN hubs across a wider range of information services from an entry point that is tailored to the specific needs of the particular subject community.