Page 120 - DLIS407_INFORMATION AND LITERATURE SURVEY IN SOCIAL SCIENCES

Unit 13: Web-Based Resources and Services

searching, harvesting, alerting, or combination of these facilities. They are application level interfaces Notes
based on software suites that provide integrated access to information resources and related
services.
“Library portals typically include an online catalogue of materials as well as gateways to collections
of digital resources accessible to the user. Broadcast search tools allow library users to search all these
sources simultaneously with a single query. Portals may include electronic reference services (“ask a
librarian”), personalisation features (“my bookshelf,” custom intelligent searches), and other research
tools. Enriched content, such as author biographies and book reviews, tables of contents, and jacket
images can be provided to supplement the online catalogue. Some libraries have built interactive
features into their portals, allowing development of virtual communities.” (Pasquinelli, 2002).
In contrast to enterprise information portals or university wide academic portals, library portals are
highly specialised with limited range of functionality – such as searching and retrieval of information
and documents relevant to a specific topic from a range of information resources both inside and
outside an organisation. It can be defined as a web based service that allows end users to discover
relevant library related information resources, use a common interface to search one or more of those
resources, and then make use of the content of those resources as directly as possible. A portal can
be mounted either on a dedicated server or on a Web server that supports other applications. The
software is generally described as a portal server product.

Notes In the library community, portals may be defined as an amalgamation of services
to the users where the amalgamation is achieved through seamless integration
of existing services by using binding agents such as customization and
authentication services, search protocols, loan protocols and e-commerce.
There are three kinds of portals; Consumer (or horizontal), Vertical and
Enterprise.
y Consumer portals are aimed at consumer audiences and offer free email,
games, chat etc. Examples are Yahoo!, MSN and AOL.
y Vertical portals, target a specified audience, such as a particular industry,
and offer many of the consumer portal features. Example includes
VerticalNet.
y Enterprise portals on the other hand are similar to consumer portals, but they
are offered only to corporations or similar organizations. Examples include
Epicentric and Corporate Yahoo! These portals can be best understood
as electronic pathfinders for users, pulling together in one place in a web
site selected links to subjects or interest-oriented resources located on the
WWW.

Ron Davies suggests that a library portal solution must provide the following functions:

Resource Discovery

Users are facilitated to browse a series of collections and sub-collections of local and remote information
resources including citation databases, abstracting and indexing services, electronic journal databases,
library catalogues and digital collections according to their information needs. Capability to search
metadata descriptions of the available information resources, either through the subject or category
assigned to the resources.

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