Conference papers

Intranet strategies

Dancing to the Same Tune: A UK Perspective on Portals, Hubs and E-Communities

Terry Morrow
Head of BIDS ingenta plc, University of Bath Bath BA2 7AY UK

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Abstract

This paper reviews both centrally funded and commercial UK developments. It will look at case-studies from ingenta's commercial e-communities work and also at initiatives in the public sector supported by the UK's JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee). The JISC has recently supported a number of developments to help improve the visibility and accessibility of its services. An example portal - SOSIG (the Social Sciences Information Gateway) - will be described, as well as the findings of a related project focussing on awareness-raising. Recent work to provide a national framework for gateway services (the Resource Discovery Network) will also be reviewed.

Introduction

Even before the invention of the World Wide Web, people were using the internet to 'find out stuff'. Sometimes the 'stuff' was itself on the internet, but was hard to find. So indexes were developed pointing to the locations of the material. In other cases the 'stuff' was elsewhere and the net could provide indexes or descriptions of the material which might, for example, only appear in print.

Many places became established on the net containing high quality material, sometimes free, sometimes with controlled access. The author was part of a team that created and launched the UK's BIDS bibliographic database service, initially using telnet to provide network access to a collection of Citation Indexes created by the Institute for Scientific InformationÓ (ISI). This service was extremely popular and successful, providing end-users with facilities to search and browse indexes of articles published in over 7,000 journals.

The BIDS site was developed, and others in the UK followed, each providing access to a range of bibliographic databases, and in recent years, collections of full text articles from some of the indexed journals. BIDS [] became a web site in the mid-90's and became, in modern parlance, an academic publishing portal.

There are now thousands of sites around the world, each with its own character or specialisation. Many of these can be described as 'portals', though with widely differing characteristics.

The rest of this paper will attempt to define and describe what is meant by a 'portal' (or hub or gateway or e-community), describe some of the characteristics that make a portal useful and valued, and then describe some real-world examples. The examples are taken from some commercial projects undertaken by ingenta, and from services developed under the auspices of the UK's Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) [].

What is a portal?

For the purposes of this paper, I consider a portal to be an Internet website that conforms to certain characteristics. These might include some or all of:

• A theme or specialisation for the whole portal
• A collection of primary material related to the theme of the portal
• A searchable catalogue or catalogues of various materials that appear elsewhere either on the web or on other media
• Links to related material elsewhere on the web, possibly evaluated and described
• Facilities for communicating with people of similar interests (bulletin boards, e-mail lists)
• Facilities for personalisation, registration, alerting services

Looking at these in more detail, the first item is really what portal sites are all about, providing a focus on a particular interest, activity or type of material. Sometimes these can be very broad. Many national and international newspapers have websites containing the content of the printed paper, but updated more frequently and with additional features such as the ability to search archived material. For example the London Times website allows free searching of over 5 years worth of material. There are many other examples of national newspaper websites such as the UK's Guardian, the New York Times, the Sydney Morning Herald or even Pravda!

Another example of a specialist type of site is one based on an existing radio or TV company such as the BBC or CNN. In Britain the BBC's website has reputedly become the most visited site in the whole of the UK.

Sometimes the site is much more specialised. Shortly before Christmas I was looking for a very small portable radio to take on my travels. I tried several shops in vain before coming across a site on the web entitled Simply Radios. This had exactly what I was looking for. It had a huge range of different models with descriptions and independent reviews of many of them. I ordered online and it was delivered to my door within 24 hours. We can all think of many similar examples of specialist internet 'stores' of which perhaps the best known is Amazon.

The BIDS site mentioned in the Introduction is an example of a portal that contains both secondary material i.e. searchable catalogues (article indexes) and primary material (full text electronic journals via the ingentaJournals system).

However the last three bullets (links, communication, personalisation) are the features I believe to be important components of the type of service I refer to as in a 'portal' in the context of this paper. The examples described later in this paper all have these sorts of features.

Why portals?

The question arises why do we need portals? For some time now we have had search engines (such as AltaVista, Excite, Google) and directories such as Yahoo. Surely this is all we need to find anything that is 'out there'? Unfortunately not. For a start, there is much material that is accessible over the Web that is completely invisible to search engines. This includes all the material that can only be accessed by a paid-up subscriber. Maybe more significantly, search engines are unable to make value-judgements on the quality, provenance, or relevance of the items they find, and we all know that there is a large amount of material accessible on the web that is of poor quality, out of date, or simply wrong.

A simple analogy might be the difference between, say, an open air market and a shopping mall. Imagine arriving in a strange town and coming across a market place filled with a large number of stalls offering all sorts of different wares. Some of the goods on sale may be clearly identified as low quality and poor value. Others may appear OK, but actually be poorly made or have hidden defects that will only become apparent after you have bought them. Sometimes are there real bargains, good quality goods at a reasonable price but, without a guide, finding and identifying them is a big challenge.

So you may give up and move across town to the central shopping centre or mall. Here you will find rows of shops, many with national or international names associated with them. The shops have built their reputations by having buyers that review goods available to them, and identifying those of suitable quality that their customers will like and which will enhance their reputation. They may offer a wide range of goods (as in a large department store) or they may specialise in particular lines (clothes, hifi, books etc etc). Over a period of time each place will have built up its reputation for choice, quality, and helpfulness of its staff.

So it is with the web. As it grows in size and matures, so it becomes ever more necessary to use intermediary sites who have done some of the quality control for us, and pre-selected material and items that are up-to-date, authoritative, and trustworthy.

What makes a portal successful?

As already stated, there are very many examples of good quality, popular portal sites. But what are the key characteristics of such sites, and what makes them successful?

The first and most important characteristic is quality. The sites must be well-designed and easily navigable. Graphics need to be used in a restrained way, so they download quickly over slow connections. The site must also be well maintained. Links to other resources are notorious for rapidly going out of date, so they must be regularly checked and anomalies fixed.

However quality alone is not sufficient for a site to become well-known. Some sites can benefit from having an existing well-known brand name associated with them. Organisations such as the BBC and CNN are obvious examples. So long as the standards associated with the parent organisation are carried through to the web portal, then it is relatively easy to generate a large user-base, especially when the parent organisation can also use its other outlets to advertise the URL of the associated website.

Sites can also carry some sort of 'stamp of approval' and be listed as a recommended site by an existing well-known organisation. An example in the UK is the Consumer's Association who publish the consumer magazine Which? This publication now reviews and approves trader websites who are then permitted to display the Which? stamp of quality. These sites are then listed and linked to from the Which? website [].

Marketing portals - a case study

In other cases, good quality sites need a comprehensive programme of promotion and marketing to make them successful. In the context of the UK higher education and research communities, a project was launched in November 1998 which became known as the Resource Guide for the Social Sciences []. Its stated aims where twofold:

• To trial a subject-based approach to the promotion of relevant JISC and ESRC-funded resources with the UK HE (and in this case within the social sciences)
• To evaluate promotional activities and distribution methods

The first year consisted of a pilot project, as a result of which the project received additional funding to 31 October 2001. A second Resource Guide Advisor post has now been established (for the Arts and Humanities).

The staffing of the project consisted of one person (Karen Ford - a New Zealander) who spent 80% of her time on the project, plus some secretarial support and a project director. Part of the project's remit included specific promotional activities for the International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS Online - a service now in use by 11 Universities in Australia and New Zealand, as well as over 180 in the UK) []. However a very large number of other resources are also covered by the project.

The project has tried out and tested a number of approaches and activities including:

• A website - http://www.jisc.ac.uk/subject/socsci/
• A printed resource guide flyer containing a summary of all of the centrally funded network resources suitable for this subject area
• Other promotional materials, including postcards, pens, post-it notes, marker pens, 'fridge magnets, etc for giving away at conferences, exhibitions and workshops
• Departmental visits
• 'Taster' workshops
• A presence at various conferences and exhibitions
• Online sets of training materials for downloading

The project also had to liaise closely with all the resource providers scattered around the UK. Although the project has some time still left to run, some conclusions are already becoming apparent. In particular the success of the project appears to be largely due to the multi-pronged approach (as well as the sheer energy of the person carrying out the project!). The website alone, despite its attractive design and easy-to-use layout has only had a modest amount of use. Much more successful has been the printed Resource Guide Flyer, available free of charge and listing and describing a large range of JISC-sponsored resources. The flier has been revised twice, and during the first half of 2000 alone requests were received for 16,000 copies. The flier was revised for the 2000-2001 academic year and a further 30,000 were pre-ordered before printing.

Analysis of feedback from the orders for these flyers showed that while 58% of orders were a result of advertising through the mailbase mailing lists, a substantial number (19%) found out about them through a colleague. Only 5% came via the RGSS website, with a further 6% coming from other websites. The planned distribution of these flyers was fairly evenly divided between staff (faculty), postgraduates and undergraduates. Over 70% were distributed directly at face-to-face events or internal mail.

It is becoming clear from this project that there is no simple magic formula for the promotion and awareness raising of useful portal sites in the academic community. Despite the apparent attractiveness of the approach, creating well-designed websites is not sufficient to guarantee success. If there is any one lesson from the project, it is that paper is still very important as a source of reference information for many people. This is a finding also borne out by the experiences of the BIDS project which also made intensive use of paper-based support and training materials.

Another finding, perhaps not unexpected, was that personal contact was always the most effective mode of communication. However this kind of activity is clearly limited in scope with such a small amount of resource available to support it.

Commercial examples from ingenta

Introduction

In 1998 the University of Bath transferred responsibility for the BIDS collection of services to a new start up company to be called ingenta []. Since that time ingenta has grown rapidly and is now one of the biggest players in the business providing networked information services to users, libraries and publishers. Through expansion and acquisitions (including the UnCover) service, the organisation now has around 180 staff in 6 offices - 4 in the UK and 2 in the USA.

More recently its customer base has broadened to include a range of organisations who want to outsource the development of their websites into portals or, in ingenta parlance, e-communities. This part of the business has grown particularly rapidly with a dozen contracts now signed, some for multiple portals. Customers include Reed Educational Publishing, Macmillan, MCB University Press and the International Society of Neurochemists. In many of these contracts, ingenta's role is largely hidden from the user of the site which largely or exclusively contains the branding of the organisation or professional society which sponsored it. ingenta's revenue typically comes from a mixture of initial set-up fees, content hosting and maintenance, and a revenue share for document delivery, subscriptions etc.

Two examples will be described here, one for an existing professional society - WHATT (World Hospitality and Tourism Trends) and the other a publisher portal - SourceOECD.

WHATT

The World Hospitality and Tourism Trends portal [] is a collaborative publishing venture involving the Hotel and Catering Institute of Management Association (HCIMA), the internet Research Development Council, IRDC, and ingenta plc.

HCIMA has a global membership of around 23 000 divided into 27 regional UK centres and 17 international groups. Membership is drawn from a broad spectrum of people and organisations ranging from multi-national hotel chains to small privately-owned businesses.

Although it is by no means unique, the WHATT portal has many of the characteristics of a typical portal site. WHATT started life as a paper-based abstract publication produced 6 times a year and covering about 60 journals. The WHATT portal includes all this material, but adds a great deal more. The additions include options that are not easy or effective with a printed journal, including, for example, two-way communication.

The portal supports 3 different levels of access for ordinary users:

1. Free to all visitors to the site
2. Free, but with a registration requirement
3. Subscription access, providing 'premium' services

Administration access is also supported, providing the site owner with tools for updating and maintaining the portal.

Registration brings several benefits including access to Community areas. These allow information exchange and discussion on focussed subjects. Members can add their names and e-mail addresses to mailing lists and be kept up to date on topics of interest. Registered users get their own personal homepage from which they can create, for example, customised calendars, and view lists of discussions or newsletters to which they have subscribed.

Premium services, which are charged for, give the subscriber additional benefits including the WHATT journal and searchable databases.

SourceOECD

In common with many smaller publishers, the OECD cannot afford the high costs required to make its publications known widely. Yet the OECD is cited frequently in the national press and in other leading publications. These citations usually appear as simply 'Source: OECD' without any further indication, or help, as to how to find the report or database behind the citation. Hence the name SourceOECD.

The SourceOECD portal [] was developed under contract by ingenta. It is the online publications portal of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Although full-text access is restricted to subscribers and authorised users at subscribing institutions, other access to SourceOECD is free of charge. SourceOECD, comprises 19 Studies by Themes, containing all their monographs and reports; 19 periodicals online; some reference titles online; and the OECD statistical databases online.

It is already a very rich site with many features and links, including features such as My SourceOECD, OECDdirect (alerting service), and an online bookshop.

Studies by theme

Each of these is devoted to a theme, or subject area, drawn from the OECD's work. Within each there is:

• A homepage containing a featured title's summary chapter, an article from The OECD Observer, a figure taken from one of our publications, and a Policy Brief.
• Links to all relevant reports for that theme by publication year.
• Quick links to key titles in the area.

Individual reports and printed statistical publications appear in relevant Themes. Delivery is in the form of PDF files. Subscribers can access full-text of all titles within a Theme by either password or IP address range.

Periodicals

Subscribers to OECD printed publications benefit from online access, via SourceOECD, as part of their subscription. Access is controlled either by password or by IP address. Clicking on the Periodicals button above will bring up a list of all periodical available online via SourceOECD.

Reference works

OECD loose-leaf publications are scheduled to go online in this section during the first quarter of 2001.

Statistics

Users of the site are able to access statistical databases and build their own tables, in real time, online.

UK initiatives supported by JISC

Introduction

The JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) plays a key role in the support and development of the computing and communications infrastructure for the UK's teaching, learning and research environments. Its remit has recently been extended and now covers both Higher Education (degree-level) and Further Education (largely sub-degree level post-16 education). Over 6 million people in the UK have access to the services sponsored by the JISC.

Over the last 10 years a large number of information services have been developed covering a wide and growing range of subject areas and information and data types. Some are very specialist while others cover a broad collection of services.

The service I am responsible for, BIDS, was established 10 years ago. It is now designated a National Data Centre, along with MIMAS (based at the University of Manchester) and EDINA (based at the University of Edinburgh).

Because of the way in which these and other services have developed over the years, they have grown to form a rather heterogeneous set when it comes to style, presentation, navigation, search facilities, branding and so on. Awareness among the target communities of many of the services is often patchy and take-up less than might be expected given their potential usefulness. The JISC is now engaged in a process of exploring effective ways of making this set of services more integrated and more visible to the target communities. Two relevant initiatives are known as the DNER (the Distributed National Electronic Resource) and the RDN (Resource Discovery Network).

The DNER

The Distributed National Electronic Resource - DNER [] - has been a core aim of the JISC since 1996. Its first collection Policy Document was published in 1997. This was followed by the publication of a DNER Vision Document, creation of a DNER programme management team and the award of £12 million in funding for projects and services engaged in tailoring services for use in learning and teaching.

The DNER project aims at greater integration of existing resources and services including

• access through a variety of entry points tailored to appropriate communities rather than to the data owners, data suppliers or even data types.
• cross-searching (breadth versus depth searching)
• linking to value-added services such as ILL, document acquisition transactions, etc
• searching across different media types, curatorial traditions etc
• access to a wide range of sources through non-traditional interfaces

The Resource Discovery Network (RDN)

The Resource Discovery Network [] is described as 'a free Internet service dedicated to providing effective access to high quality Internet resources for the learning, teaching and research community'. The RDN is a co-operative network consisting of a central organisation, the Resource Discovery Network Centre (RDNC) which provides a common support infrastructure and a number of independent service providers called hubs. The Hubs equate to Faculties in university education parlance; there are currently five Hubs designated for the following subject areas:

• BIOME - Health and Life Sciences
• EMC - Engineering, Mathematics and Computing (incorporating EEVL)
• Humbul - Humanities
• PSIgate - Physical Sciences
• SOSIG - Social Sciences, Business and Law

The RDN began work in January 1999 and is funded by JISC, with support from the ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) and the AHRB (Arts and Humanities Research Board). It builds upon the foundations of the subject gateway activity carried out under the JISC's eLib (Electronic Libraries) Programme.

The idea behind the RDN is that it should provide access to a series of Internet resource catalogues containing descriptions of high quality Internet sites, selected and described by specialists from within UK academia and affiliated organisations. In other words resources are not simply identified; subject specialists examine them, evaluate them, and then provide a suitable description. Value-added services such as interactive web tutorials and alerting services are also provided to enable users to make more of their time on the internet.

SOSIG - Social Science Information Gateway

SOSIG [] was first established as a pilot project in 1994 with ESRC funding, making it the longest running UK subject portal. This mature and very rich collection of resources and information now receives co-funding from two organisations; the ESRC and, as a Hub of the Resource Discovery Network (RDN), the JISC. It aims to provide a trusted source of selected high quality Internet information for researchers and practitioners in the social sciences, business and law. More specifically it aims to:

• become an essential research tool for social scientists
• work with other providers of information on social science, business and law to improve the accessibility of networked information
• develop a network of strategic partnerships and collaborative arrangements within the social sciences, business and law to ensure the currency and relevance of information provided to SOSIG's target communities

Features of SOSIG include

• An Internet Catalogue providing search and browse access to over 11 000 high quality internet-accessible resources for social scientists; each resource is described and classified by highly qualified social science academics and information specialists from around the UK.
• The Social Science Search Engine, a database of over 50 000 pages from selected social science Web sites; collected using a 'harvester'.
• The Social Science Grapevine, which allows users to search or browse details of university social science departments, like-minded researchers' CVs or profiles, conferences and courses relevant to their particular research interests.
• My Account, which lets users publish their own information, customise their use of SOSIG and receive e-mail notifications about new information in the social sciences.

Since it was launched the service has become extremely well known and respected. In the academic year (Aug 1999 - Jul 2000) the service delivered 4 250 000 web pages and ran 452 063 searches.

Originally called a 'gateway', SOSIG has now been designated as a Hub as it now incorporates resources for those working in the disciplines of Law and Business. The Business section is known as Biz/ed and describes itself as 'a unique business and economics service for students, teachers and lecturers'. As well as a catalogue of Internet resources, the section also includes company facts, data sets, and a section called Virtual Worlds that contains a Virtual Factory and a Virtual Economy.

The Law gateway 'provides guidance and access to global legal information resources on the internet'. The service aims to identify and evaluate legal resource sites offering primary and secondary materials and other items of legal interest. Descriptive records and links are created for legal service sites and specific documents. It has been developed in association with the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies in London who maintain one of the world's major law libraries.

The politics section has links with the British Library of Politics and Economic Science at the London School of Economics, (also home to the IBSS unit that owns the social sciences bibliographic database that is currently being used by 11 universities in Australia and New Zealand).

SOSIG has become an extremely rich resource for anyone working in these fields and has become a model for other hubs and gateways in the UK's Resource Discovery Network.

Conclusions

Portal sites are clearly playing an increasingly important role in Internet publishing. This seems to apply to a whole range of different activities, including academic research, professional societies or special interest groups.

To be successful, a portal must contain a rich collection of resources, possibly some only available by subscription. These might include some or all of primary periodical content, traditional resource discovery tools, editorial content, interactive services, access to grey literature, and possibly specialised e-commerce services. The site must also be actively maintained and kept up-to-date, with such things as regular checks on the validity of links.

Beyond that, portals need to become known and liked by their target community. This might be achieved by using an association with existing well-known organisations to promote the site. If this is not possible, then a comprehensive, targetted and sustained programme of publicity and promotion will be necessary.

To echo the title of this paper, one tune is no longer enough for a useful and successful information website. The net user now expects to presented with the whole musical, with score, lyrics, commentary and references to critical reviews!