Scholars Portal Project Update

ASSOCIATION OF RESEARCH LIBRARIES

Scholars Portal Project Update

Portals in Libraries: A SymposiumLITA Preconference

June 25, 2004

Mary E. JacksonAssociation of Research Libraries

Sarah C. MichalakUniversity of Utah


Scholars Portal ProjectOverview of Presentation

• Background and goals of project• Current status• Implementation benchmarks• Project third year development goals• Some examples


Background

1999: ARL/OCLC Strategic Issues Forum2000: ARL Scholars Portal Working Group 2002: Jerry Campbell White Paper

May 2002: Project With Fretwell Downing Announced


The Scholars Portal Project

3 year collaborative effort (2002-2005)– Implement and test existing Fretwell-Downing

products• ZPORTAL, Z2Web, Z’MBOL, OL2, authentication

– Reach consensus on additional needed functionality

– FD contributing development resources– Test final products against SP vision and user

responses– Explore modes of collaboration in complex

environments


Scholars Portal Project

• Initially– cross-domain searching– aggregation and integration of search

results• Later stages

– linkage to online learning environments, digital reference services, course management


Users will be able to:

• Discover – Scholars Portal discovery tool

• Capture– Harvesting and delivery tools

• Manipulate– Text-processing and citation-management tools

• Distribute– Contribution and publication tools

• Consult– Access to virtual reference services and

electronic scholarly communities


Current Status

All sites have functional implementations:• Campus-wide releases

– Arizona State University – Iowa State University– University of Arizona – University of Utah

• Limited Releases – Dartmouth College– University of California, San Diego – University of Southern California


First Implementation Benchmark

• Version 2.1– ZPortal software loaded for cross domain

searching– Participants learned how to select and

configure Web targets– Organizational structure and

communication channels for collaboration defined and refined (politics are hard)

– Additional development areas adopted


Organization

• Project Management– Project Management Group – IT leaders from each

institution with two co-chairs:• Krisellen Maloney, University of Arizona, co-chair• Fred Gulden, Iowa State University, co-chair

– Meets bi-weekly by conference call

• Project Direction– Project Managers Group, members of Deans/Directors

Group, Fretwell Downing Leadership, ARL liaison. – Meet semi-annually.– Next meeting August 17.


Demonstration Areas

• Individual implementers adopted additional goals– Dartmouth adopted PKI instead of the

vendor-provided LDAP for authentication– USC adopted Shibboleth-compatible

authentication protocols– UCSD and others are exploring

integration of an external URL resolver


Second Benchmark

• Version 3.0 – two years after first implementations– Provides foundation for the development phase – Delivered IP authentication capability– Participants now better understand operating

and interface aspects of meta-searching– Now have critical mass of key Web targets– Vendor learning how to do serial

implementations


Third Year Development Goals

Versions 4.0 and 5.0• Integration with courseware

– Portlets capable of addition to any Web or courseware page

– Permits searching of an existing Scholars Portal profile.



• Intelligent search with increased support for standard targets.– Ability to move between the native

search screen and Scholars Portal.– Bridge between OAI compliant

resources and Scholars Portal.



• Result sets management– Sorting based on date and availability

of full-text– More unified presentation of OpenURL

results and holdings within the bibliographic record

– Integration of OpenURL resolver with ILL and document delivery.


Education and Innovation

• Implementers have identified some of the benefits of this collaborative model– Rich communication among the implementers

regarding technical issues and skills advancement

– A test bed environment in which the IT staffs have a unique opportunity to work with other research library IT departments

– Opportunity to experiment with meta-searching technology











For Additional Information

Scholars Portal Projecthttp://www.arl.org/access/scholarsportal/

The Current Status of Portal Applications in ARL Libraries: ARL Portal Applications Working Group Final Reporthttp://www.arl.org/access/portal/

PAWGfinalrpt.pdf


Any Questions?

Sarah [email protected]

Mary E. [email protected]

Documents

Scholars Portal Project Update