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Portals, Virtual Portals and Information Clumps: Technologies, Issues and Trends

Sally-Anne Leigh

Australian National University

Abstract

This paper will focus on discussions of current technologies and emerging trends in relation to the development and provision of portals, virtual portals and information clumps as they relate to the provision of information within a Library environment.

Libraries and technologists have for many years been working towards the provision of basic access to information in the virtual environment. However, now the need has arisen to move on from this basic level of access to something more individualised and more intuitive. Portals have become emblematic of that push. Forward thinking information managers, such as Stuart Wiebel of OCLC (http://purl.oclc.org/~emiller/talks/www/tutorial/part1) were at the forefront of developing new tools that could provide effective access to information. Portals have become the technologists buzzword for an infrastructure to provide a one-stop-shop, one place to get information and the applications that are needed to maximise the use of that information. Portals are designed to answer the ever-increasing information and knowledge management initiatives.

While knowledge management functions focus on sharing information, portals add a new technology to the mix. Portals function as an electronic doorway into an organisation and into its component parts. They help access appropriate data, collaborate and efficiently distribute information. The new uses of portals allow users to select content and subscribe to information, all of which is presented in a consistent format. Information is delivered and accessed in 'clumps', through these virtual gateways/portals.

The Yankee Group predicts that the worldwide market for business portals will reach $1.2 billion by 2003.

The benefits of the latest types of portals and virtual portals (vortals) have set the stage for the extranet/intranet evolution. The benefits, however far outweigh the hassle of implementing and maintaining the technology. Once the IT infrastructure is in place in many senses it matters little which product you choose; what matters most is that the portals concept is accepted as an integral part of the business and information access flow.

Today's portal solution bear little resemblance to yesterday's islands of information. Information access solutions have done an excellent job of addressing specific business problems but have not been well integrated with complementary operations . They are the outgrowth of data mining and CRM solutions. The portal development market is exponentially increasing with more than 100 vendors already in the market place. Few portals are bought off the shelf or as a turn key systems. Most are developed as a result of work done within the organization to tailor and adjust a customisable solution. Off-the-shelf portals generally start from around US$75,000.

Information portals have three fundamental purposes:

• Provide convenient and effective access to information resources through a single gateway
• Describe resources according to agreed standards of subject and quality control
• Identify information resources to agreed content guidelines

What they don't do however is to assess, select and manage the content and there has been much written recently that this is the role of the 'new age' librarian.

Portals as an access tool

The term 'portal' is relatively new and began to be used by mega-sites such as Yahoo, Excite, Netscape and many other large heavily visited sites. In its raw form it is nothing more than an entry point or a starting gate for web surfing. The term 'search engine' has become inadequate to describe the breadth of the offerings of these leading Internet destinations, although search and navigation are still pivotal to people's online experiences.

In its most simplistic format, portals gather a variety of useful information resources into a unified 'one-stop web shop' helping users to overcome the 'information overload'. Portals can be customized, a futuristic change from the traditional profiling services. A library portal can allow an individual's web experience to be more efficient and make the institution more efficient and productive as a whole.

A good portal or gateway should provide seamless access for non-authenticated users until restricted information is requested. Unlike Internet and intranet sites, most portals are proprietary providing application programming interfaces (API'S).

Underlying technologies such as Web browsers, Java and e-mail solutions are good examples of open standard solutions that are being developed and integrated. Good portals work with existing web technologies and web servers. By using customised HTML tags and Java taglets. Portal developers can add not only security but can dynamically generate the content.

Portals are a way of leveraging a site for communal access of information. Traffick.com's Guide to Portals lists several types of portals:

• Consumer Portals; which offer a wide range of customisation options and functionality including: internet search and navigation, e-mail, customised news, calendars and contact managers, bookmark managers to save favourite web sites, real-time chat, intranet functionality and much more;
• Vertical or Niche Portals; category based web sites that are popular and economically significant, 'subject gateway's' are a type of vertical portal;
• Demographically-focussed portals which cater to specific ethnic group, age groups, alternative lifestyles and other groups are being called Affinity Portals;
• Horizontal Portals are general interest portals covering a wide range of topics and features such as Yahoo and Lycos;
• Enterprise Resource Portals (ERP), Enterprise Information Portals (EIP) or Corporate Portals or once called the 'extranet'; and
• B2B or Industry Portals are those in the corporate sector that can act as real engines for the new economy, particularly those who advocate e-commerce.

No single portal is going to provide access to everything that you and your clients need. Instead of fighting the technology and uses of it - IT executives need to use that enthusiasm to their advantage by seizing the opportunity to be at the forefront of change. IT must not drive the business of libraries but be the enablers. Too often IT professionals see it as their role to determine the needs of a business organization rather than listen and support it.

Tech-savvy executives realise that those applications can help improve their business lines and significantly enhancing their careers. Business model's that give a competitive advantage easy to use convenient services for identifying and borrowing books, for accessing real time information, any-time, any-where and any-place must be the way of the future.

The portal market has recently exploded. The large amounts of offerings along side more traditional portal models include new functions and deployment. 'The onslaught of portal mania and keeping pace with offerings and their capabilities was an arduous task'. Now that the Y2k pressure is off developers are turning their attention to the portal platform to improve efficiency and the effectiveness of an organization.

Information portals or format specific portals have a number of fundamental purposes but primarily are designed to provide convenient and effective access to a wide variety of information resources through a single gateway. Resources can be described and accessed according to agreed upon standards after selection for quality and subject content. The 'information clump' will provide the basis for this dissection and dissemination.

Information portals help collect, filter and deliver information real time and this is where the most benefit is. Users can specify what interests them most and change their personalised profile on a regular on-the-fly basis. Information portals help collect, filter and deliver data in real time. They are in many senses the next generation intranet, a point of aggregation for fragmented data and documentation that has been posted often in a random fashion on the web.

Several portal models have developed quickly, including consumer and enterprise models. The consumer side portals such as Yahoo.com offers end-users fast, centralised access to search engines, e-mail and newsworthy events. Even its sibling, the vertical portal or 'vortal' delivers narrowly targeted niche markets or select demographics with specialised subscriber-based information. Enterprise information portals combine the best of platform based consumer portals by putting mission critical data applications at the users fingertips.

At the very least an effective portal should have inbuilt features such as searching and indexing and unstructured data across repositories both internal and external.

Portals solutions vary from out-of-the box tools to customised solutions that demand a high degree of tailoring to integrate. Those that are easier to implement often cost less initially but limit you to proprietary technologies or limit future extendibility.

Brio.Portal and Hummingbird EIP rely on open standards such as XML to attach to a variety of data sources. A basic EIP solution can cost upwards of $125,000 (US). IPlanet Portal Server offers extensible source access and interaction with other legacy systems. The advantages of greater flexibility however, imply additional budgetary considerations due to additional and often hidden programming and integration requirements. Unfortunately, security options such as LDAP support do not necessarily come as part of the integrated EIP's.

Portals succeed by allowing administrators to push specific information to targeted desktops, ensuring that decision makers are armed with the relevant knowledge. Similarity this capability allows the user to customize his or her portal to show only the data essential for day-to-day productivity .

iPlanet, Sun-Netscape alliance is releasing iPlanet Portal Server 3.0 which will be new an exciting players in this burgeoning market place. Portal servers blend enterprise strength and profiling aptitude with meta data and taxonomy repositories to provide specific access and personalisation. Portal servers offer XML access to back-end data stores and integration of third party applications such as library information systems (LIS).

For Microsoft based infrastructures a corporate portal is being developed from Plumtree software with a range of out-of-the-box features that make customising a user relatively portal seamless. By relying on proprietary standards and Active Server Pages (ASP's), Brio.Portal software offers strong integratory capacity with their software vendors such as Lotus Notes. Microsoft's Biztalk orchestration is another tool that will reside on an XML server and allow portal tailoring and delivery.

The Delphi Group have identified that 60% of portal vendors prefer to build applications using Windows 2000/NT, 28% cross platform and 12% prefer Unix solutions.

Portal vendors

Portal vendor software generally builds on the collaboration capabilities within messaging and groupware products. Databases, content management systems and portal technology will pull all of the functionality together. While LIS vendors often talk the right jargon in relation to portal technology, open architecture standards often need to be applied. Both Innopac and Voyager as well as OCLC are now seeing portal development as an important concept to embrace.

An example of portal vendors that allow the handling of many knowledge management techniques include:

• Brio Technology
• Microstrategies
• Cognos
• DataChannel
• Lotus Development including Domino and its newest flagship 'Raven'
• Plumtree Software
• Portera System
• Sybase
• Viador (formerly InfoSpace); and
• Xerox' Docushare Platform

The newest version of MS Exchange has crafted a knowledge management tool which includes workflow, content-indexing and retrieval capabilities. There are also a full range of data retrieval vendors, database companies and knowledge management companies working on the concept of portal development.

The Sun-Netscape alliance iPlanet portal server 3.0 that is Java enabled and has enhanced features such as web indexing and filtering capabilities will incorporate WAP technology. Most portal servers offer excellent XML access to back-end data stores and integration for many third party applications that are enhanced via a Citrix metaframe client.

Plumtree software for example, is based on Microsoft technology, so it can take data from any compatible application and doesn't require conversion to HTML. Portals technology solutions can rely on proprietary standards such as Microsoft's Active Server Pages or use more open architecture and integration standards.

Information clumps and information provision

While many libraries accept the need for an online, interactive window to their information, few are prepared to bite the bullet. They see the myriad of information as merely a 'clump' of data held together by a common thread. What libraries must realise is that library users are now information rich but time poor and do not care nor need to know the data source, what they want is to shift out the information in real time from the clump.

Clumps are designed to gather information but not to filter it appropriately, nor to generate a series of meaningful search results. This is the task of a portal, the virtual portal that parses the data for relevant information and achieves value-added results

In developing portals, discussions get bogged down in the internal politics and bureaucracy of the institutions. The use and design of a corporate web interfaces often cost libraries millions of dollars in human resources to develop, support and maintain. Roles and relationships between staff within the organisations supporting these products need to be addressed. Clear guidelines that set boundaries around which resources will be made accessible also must be established.

Functionality and useability is the key rather than aesthetics. Too often we all try to reinvent the wheel where there is already something developed that we might utilise, even by purchasing the systems code and customising it. The development of portal like interfaces gives us an opportunity to collaborate, share knowledge and experiences with other institutions who have been there or who are also travelling down the same path. Libraries must not be afraid to invest R&D money if that is what is required, even if it means sharing the costs with another institution

Organisations who choose to partner with external consulting firms or portal vendors for initial development and installation certainly seem to move faster along the continuum. Virtually all of the developed systems can be maintained and upgraded within the existing development infrastructure using the portals' own tool suites.

Technical support requirements, hardware, software and staff skills sets and expertise need to be considered and reconsidered. Interoperability standards and the use of metadata, XML and/or SGML also need to be thought through. We shouldnot forget that technology is simply the enabler and not the driver.

Integration not only with the existing infrastructure is crucial but so is the integration of legacy systems and the need for LDAP support, which could hamper the future extensibility of applications.

The portal development program at the Australian National University for scholarly information

A portal development program has been established within the Information Division at the Australian National University (ANU), as a three-year staged program to facilitate improved access to scholarly information. By providing timely access to electronic information delivered to the desktop rather than the traditional print based materials, the scholarly information paradigm will change dramatically. Information access will be provided through generic and specific portals and supported by local and distributed physical facilities and training programs.

The Web of Science will provide a major information source and gateway. Subject based portals/gateways to the web will be developed within the following categories: Science (Physics, Maths, Chemistry, Engineering/IT and BioMed), Humanities and Social Sciences Portal - General, Music and Art Portal, Economics and Business Management Portal (Social Sciences - Asia Pacific) and Law. These portals will be developed to provide easy access and to build sustainability of access to electronic information in the process.

The program has been designed to facilitate a change to scholarly communication with an emphasis on access and usage rather than ownership. The program will be a change agent for user behaviour. As users already have an expectation of 24x7 service and information access delivery to the desktop, libraries must respond to the challenge. There will be a move from the provision of traditional print based resources to the provision of electronic resources. Bridging funding has been allocated to facilitate this change mechanism. The implementation process will be informed by user needs and a major facet of the program is the determination of the value and priority placed on particular sources of scholarly information by the academic community.

A Portals Implementation Team was established to manage and coordinate this change. The team consisted of a Project Manager, a Portal Development Coordinator, a Web Developer, a User Interface Coordinator, Technical Support, and an Electronic Services Coordinator.

By evaluating what other institutions are doing and/or what is available in the marketplace a decision is being made whether to develop an in-house solution or to utilise and customise and existing solutions. By far the most common type of portals developed by universities appears to be campus-wide solutions rather than those simply focussing on access to library resources. There are quite a number of examples including Monash University, University of Minnesota, California Institute of Technology, and the University of Michigan who as part of their campus-wide portal have integrated their library resources into a single database.

Good examples of university wide portals include: Monash University http://my.monash.edu.au, University of Minnesota http://onestop.umn.edu, California Institute of Technology http://my.caltech.edu/portals, University of Michigan http://www.umich.edu/gateway.html and the UCLA http://my.ucla.edu.

Good examples of Library wide portals include:

• University of Washington - "My Gateway"
• University of Melbourne - "Buddy"
• University of Arizona - "SABIO"

One option for ANU has been to develop its own product based sourcing data from a wide range of sources including the catalogue, subject specific web pages and electronic database services. The following is a schematic representation of the way the database structure may develop .

There are two main database tables featuring categories and links. Perl scripts parse the data sources and load the base level information into the database tables. Using pattern-matching lists are systematically generated and then imported. The display database accesses the authority data thru the Library catalogue and is accessed by a regular data dump. A form-based interface has been created for data entry. Resource types build upon existing headings. Resources would be accessed through all the resource pages, the catalogue and the relevant subject pages. Many of the existing web pages would no longer be available to clients in their current format but the data would be available incorporated into the customised portal. While what has been done already should be considered a prototype, it provides valuable information on the variety of data sources and the linkages necessary and the myriad of variations required.

Future challenges

The portal concept to manage 'information clumps' is rapidly being embraced by vendors because they see the opportunity for online integration with business partners, internal staff and consumers. It is one way of ensuring a continuing presence.

A web based portal user interface, reaches out to web content and enables real time responsiveness to that content. Portals allow the type of personalisation that users demand, but with technology moving so fast, libraries need to act fast.

Universities as well as libraries must begin to think more strategically about their use of the web and interactive portals within. The library must now provide access and service to users who do not ever come to campus, it must create a brand image that is easily recognisable not only part of the institution as a whole but as a recognisable library service point. A questions that needs to be asked is whether administrative costs be reduced by building more interactive modes of access to data, information and services or whether the portals is simply a value-added service.

Interactive portals and a strong library web presence are vital to strengthen the role of the Library as a point for resource discovery. While the value of a library as a physical space is now questionable, the value of the 'hybrid' library as a value added provider of information is unquestionable. By realising that the development, adoption and integration of knowledge through a sharing interface such an interactive portal and a strong web presence, libraries can increase the availability and usability of their services and continue to increase their value and viability in an information rich but time poor society.