Portals: People, Processes and Technology

In the Introductory Preface to this work, Andrew Cox, a Lecturer in the Department of Information Studies at the University of Sheffield states that the purpose of the book is to “draw together authors from multiple perspectives to explore themes and sectoral experiences as a way of increasing our general understanding of how the concept of the portal is being realized in different contexts.” Cox has been interested in the concept of portals for some years. In 2003, whilst Editor of VINE, he brought together a number of authors who contributed to a special issue on portals and he contributed a paper himself on choosing a library portal system (Cox, 2003). This book can be seen as a development of that special issue as it brings together 16 papers, structured into five themes, from a variety of authors.

The first contribution in the first section (on generic aspects) is a paper by Cox on “Definitions and Debates”. He notes that when writing the chapter the top hit on the UK web in Google for the single term “portal” was the UK Government's Directgov web site (www.direct.gov.uk). Interestingly, when I repeated the search (October 2006) the top hits were for Portal software (a product for billing and revenue management), the British Academy's portal of online resources in humanities and social sciences, Planning Portal (a government gateway to planning information throughout the UK) and then a restaurant called Portal. All this emphasises Cox's comments in this first chapter on the “haziness of the meaning of the term portal”. A colleague of Cox's at Sheffield, Andrew Madden contributed the second chapter, “Portals or filters? Identifying quality on the net”, which explores the changing role of portals and what functions they might serve in the future. A consultant who specialises in the area of virtual learning environments and their links with portals, Tom Franklin, provides the third chapter, “Portal architectures”, which includes a number of clear diagrams outlining possibilities. Colleagues (Mark Hepworth, Steve Probets, Fadi Qutaishat and Geoff Walton) from Cox's previous place of study (Loughborough University) co‐operated in writing the fourth chapter, “Personalization initiatives in the public and private domains” – a key development in the e‐learning and information management area and which links in with portals. The next chapter, “User needs analysis and evaluation of portals”, is written by Panayoutis Zaphiris, Aspasia Dellaporta and Dean Mohamedally who are (or have been) part of the Centre for Human‐Computer Interaction Design at City University in London. The final chapter in the first section is on “Managing portal services” and is written by Stephen Emmott, Head of Web Services at the London School of Economics.

The second section covers three contributions on the library and the portal. Ian Winship, recently retired from the library at the University of Northumbria provides an overview of “ready to use” portals (including a range of consumer portals as well as the academic portals accessed via the Research Discovery Network (which was re‐launched as Intute in mid‐2006)). John MacColl, Head of the Digital Library Division at Edinburgh University writes on portals and university libraries – which includes relevant and useful screenshots from Edinburgh and other libraries, and Ron Davies, an independent consultant based in Brussels, completed this section with a contribution on library portals.

In the introductory “piece” to the third section, “The Portal in the Corporate Sector”, the editor writes that finding out what is really happening with respect to portals in the corporate sector is difficult to gauge. There are two chapters in this section. The first, “Information at your fingertips: B2E portal as a strategic tool for today's workforce”, by Ly Fie Sugianto and Dewi Rooslani Tojib, of Monash University in Australia, provides an overview of the case study literature, whilst the second, “Enterprise information portals”, by the UK information and knowledge management “guru”, Martin White, provides, in Cox's words “an authoritative chapter which “dissolves much of the hype with a refreshing dose of good common sense”.

The fourth section covers portals in the public sector with contributions from Stephen Musgrave (IT Manager at Blackpool and The Fylde College) on “Community portals and the e‐confluence zone”, Yvonne Klein (Portal consultant with the University of East London) reporting on the results of a survey of the implementation of portals in UK Higher Education Institutions in 2003/4 and Peter Schellemann (of Utrecht University (UU) in the Netherlands) providing a case study on the development of the MyUU portal.

The fifth and final section covers the future, with chapters written by Balviar Notay (Programme Manager for Resource Discovery, Portals and Presentation for the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) in the UK), Jared Bryson (a researcher on the Research Portals in the Arts and Humanities project) and finally Chris Awre (an Integration Architect at the University of Hull) on portals and Web 2.0.

So, it can be seen that Cox has succeeded in bringing together a wide range of authors who have contributed a wealth of material on matters related to portals and he should be congratulated for this. Encouraging busy practitioners to put “pen to paper” (or “finger to keyboard”) is not always easy. The authors are predominantly from a UK background – although an international “flavour” is provided with contributions from Europe and Australia. Each chapter is clearly structured with relevant subheadings and most (but not quite all) have an Introduction and a Conclusion section. References (or a Bibliography or Notes) appear at the end of each chapter. In the main these are presented in a standardised format – although some web sites have dates of access (some of which go back some years (e.g. to 2002 on p. 137)), others don't.

The speed of production is impressive. Figure 5.2 shows a screenshot dated May 2006 and I received my copy for review in July 2006. However, I guess such speed inevitably is the cause of the odd “typo” appearing … I noticed Nielsen spelt accurately on p. 4 – but inaccurately (as Neilsen) on pages 38 and 51, and Breeding's paper in Computers in Libraries noted as being in Issue 25, rather than Issue 2, of Vol. 25 on p. 80.

There is a good index and a detailed description of each contributor highlighting their particular experiences related to portals.

I believe this work is useful in bringing together a variety of perspectives related to portals which will be of value to both students and practitioners as well as providing a “snapshot” of the situation related to portals in the mid‐2000s.