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Subject Portals Project Phase II Links
Related JISC-funded projectsSome of the projects identified here are currently underway, some have been completed, and others are yet to begin. Portals ProgrammeThe PORTALS Programme as been initiated to inform and develop the use of portals within further and higher education in the UK.
Focus on Access to Institutional Resources (FAIR) ProgrammeThe FAIR programme aims to evaluate and explore different mechanisms for the disclosure and sharing of content (and the related challenges) to fulfil the vision of a web of resources built by groups with a long term stake in the future of those resources, but made available to the whole community of learning.
JOIN-UP ProgrammeThe JOIN-UP projects address the linkages between references found in discovery databases and the services that provide the full-text material (typically journal articles), in printed or electronic form. Project Xgrain will develop a Z39.50-compliant broker for use by the Resource Discovery Network (RDN) subject portals and by local portals serving the specific universities. This broker will carry out cross-searching of specialist Abstract and Indexing (A&I) Z39.50-compliant databases which are hosted at the JISC national datacentres. Xgrain will also develop a Web-based portal, which will offer cross-searching of these specialist A&I databases, together with the ability to transfer the user to a native user interface for in-depth searching of a particular database. The project will also include prototyping of an A&I portal for learning and teaching. This work will be carried out by EDINA. The ZBLSA project, also run by EDINA, will develop a Z39.50 broker which will help connect a journal article citation (found, for example, in any of the A&I databases hosted by the JISC datacentres) to services giving access to the whole text of that article, whether in a printed issue of the journal or in electronic form. ZBLSA will be of utility to the A&I database services run at the JISC datacentres, and to the RDN subject portals. Docusend is led from King's College London, and addresses aspects of location of resources. It will provide the request and deliver options and associated payment services to enable interlibrary loans. ZETOC is run by the British Library and MIMAS. ZETOCis a MIMAS service providing Z39.50-compliant access to the British Library's Electronic Table of Contents (ETOC). The database contains almost 15 million article and conference records. Z ProjectsThe DNER is concurrently supporting several projects known collectively as the Z Projects. These are Gate-Z, led by the RDN; Z39.50 Authentication/Development, based at MIMAS; and JAFER, from Oxford University. The DNER has in place a development structure to ensure that these projects learn from each other and do not replicate effort unnecessarily. Gate-Z will
Z39.50: Authentication and Development projects aims to
JAFER will develop an easy to use "open source" Java tool kit to
Interoperability FocusInteroperability Focus is working on a range of issues that are relevant to this project, including metadata, distributed library systems and public library networking. Work in this area is critical to developing subject portals that can encompass resources from beyond the library sphere, for example, from museums, archives, and other aspects of the cultural heritage, as well as Government and community information. HILTHILT is the High-Level Thesaurus project, which aims to research, report, and make recommendations on the problems of cross-searching and browsing by subject across a range of communities, services, and service or resource types. The findings of this project will inform the development of browse functionality for subject portals. Hybrid Library ProjectsHybrid Library Projects. A particular set of JISC-funded projects have already modelled aspects of the functionality required of the Subject Portals, but at the level of the institution rather than at the national level. A good overview of the 5 hybrid library projects is available in a D-Lib article written in 1998. For background as how the concept of the hybrid library relates to the DNER in general and why these projects are so important for the Subject Portals Project, refer to the Ariadne Issue 6 2001 article by Stephen Pinfield and Lorcan Dempsey, 'The Distributed National Electronic Resource and the Hybrid Library'. The 5 Hybrid Library projects were: BUILDER - Birmingham University Integrated Library Development and Electronic Resource: One of Builder's outcomes is a cross-search facility that operates across the 5 hybrid library sites ('portal OR portals' retrieved 48 records). HYLIFE - Hybrid Libraries of the Future: Several implementations can be viewed at partner sites, eg. University of Northumbria, HyLife for Geographers. The HYLIFE Library Toolkit offers a practical guide and information resource for those in universities creating, implementing and managing Hybrid Library services in their organisations. AGORA - About the project... MALIBU - Managing the Hybrid Library for the Benefit of Users: To review the Malibu demonstration search, you may use the guest access provided at King's College London, http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/malibu/choosite.html< /p> HEADLINE - Hybrid Electronic Access and Delivery in the Library Networked Environment:
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