Notes

Outline

The Power of Resource Sharing:  The RDN Subject Portals Project Ruth Martin Subject Portals Project Manager UKOLN

The Subject Portals Project (SPP) 2 year project, ending August 2003 Funded by JISC as part of its 5/99 DNER Enhancement call Started life as “Subject Access to the DNER” – acronym SAD! Now known as SPP (mercifully)

RDN partners

Two other partners

So, what is a subject   portal? Tailored view of the web within a particular subject area Ability to cross-search specially selected resources Single authentication/authorisation at log-on

Subject portals continued... Storage of user profiles Alerting service Newsfeeds Additional services: jobs listings; web resource catalogues; e-journal search engine etc.

The aim?

Modular development Development of portlets, not portals Gives hubs choice of which functions to install Non-framework specific, freeing us to embed portlets in other portal environments Currently using Jetspeed but interested in uPortal

Slide 9

The architecture Core Portal framework Authentication User profiling Storage for user data Available to all portlets Portlets Framework provides portlet API

Portal framework Jetspeed Apache open source java portal framework Provides user interface layer and routes user interactions to portlets Provides tools for personalising layout, portlet selection etc. Design allows for other portal frameworks Bridge code hides framework specifics Java Community Process portal standards

Account management SPP authentication module: Replaces framework’s system Provides 1) national authentication e.g. Athens Single Sign-On 2) local authentication e.g. LDAP Provides a profile of users’ access rights to various resources

Slide 13

Work with Athens Athens Single Sign-On (SSO) allows publishers to implement the Athens agent to allow users to log on once and move between Athens-protected resources Athens Devolved Authentication (DA) allows an institution to use its local authentication system to authorise access to Athens-protected resources

Work with Athens SPP team collaborating with Athens to upgrade its API to ensure that both mechanisms work in a portal environment The power of resource sharing! But, flexible approach having to be taken.

Account management Aim for portal to act as broker between user and the authentication service on behalf of the resource provider And thus enable users to enter credentials only once, at log-on, for every resource they are authorised to use A relationship of trust

Cross-searching Resources selected by the hubs to reflect subject interests “Wish-list” of 140 resources – work on-going to include as many as possible Most, but not all are JISC IE resources Supporting Z39.50 compliant targets at present – but hope to extend this to other protocols such as XML, OAI, SOAP etc.

More on cross-searching Work has involved negotiating with resource providers for access to resources Advantage of increased visibility of resources On-going support from resource providers crucial

The future Movement from project to service (watch this space between September-December 2003) Continuing technical development - exploring feasibility of embedding portal functions into institutional portals, VLEs etc - offering portlets as open source developments A great team!

Contacts:

And don’t forget…  “The Subject Portals Project: Features and Functionality” Richard Young, Malcolm Moffat, Francisco Pinto and Michael Fraser Thursday, 4pm, under Track B Don’t miss it!