Portals

Last week, my colleagues Susan and Ben and I presented our recent findings in the area of portal technology as applied to the higher education enterprise at the perennially outstanding Portal Conference at Gettysburg College. Ben focused primarily on technical issues while Susan and I focused on strategy -- there was plenty of crossover between us, though. Our presentation is available below on slideshare.

In this podcast, we feature an eleven minute interview with Albert DeSimone, Commuications Director for the University of Georgia. As a Communications Officer at the University of Georgia specializing in Information Technology, Mr. DeSimone assists students, faculty, and staff with Web-related projects. He was interviewed at the EDUCAUSE 2007 Southeast Regional Conference regarding his presentation entitled, "Assessing "Portalness: A Guide for CIOs and Other Decision Makers".

The abstract:

Assessing the effectiveness of a portal solution requires more than statistical analysis. In this presentation we will go beyond simple quantitative analysis (number of "hits" or visits) to assess the effectiveness of a portal based on qualitative attributes (integration, personalization, and customization) to assist in the evaluation of a current or future portal implementation.

 

This week I am attending "Portal 2007:  Up and Running" at Gettysburg College.  The keynote speaker (Dennis Trinkle, CIO of Valparasio University) challenged attendees to think strategically about the future of the Portal -- what it would look like and what needs are addressed by it.  Throughout his presentation, I kept thinking of my obsession with a portal that disappears.  The traditional belief that a portal is composed of pagelets or channels; of it being a CMS; of it being an institutional communication system; of it being tied to ERP systems is becoming irrelevant. 

Which IT issues have the greatest strategic importance to higher education institutions today and which ones are likely to be important in the future? Find answers to these questions and learn about other current trends in the 2007 EDUCAUSE Current IT Issues Survey report, published in the current issue of EDUCAUSE Quarterly.

The 2007 survey gathered responses from 591 primary representatives (typcially CIOs) of EDUCAUSE member institutions, representing public and private and associate- through doctorate-granting institutions of all sizes.

Among this year's key findings:

• Funding IT re-emerges as a top challenge.
• Security and identity/access management split as separate issues.
• Course/learning management systems move into the top ten for the first time.
• Among issues expected to be more significant in the future, portals drop in rank from fifth to ninth.

In this 17 minute recording, Marliu Goodyear sits down with Lehigh University's Bruce Taggart to cover a range of topics including professional development, accessibility and portals. 

Sun have announced that their Sun Java System Portal Server (jsr168) system, is to be released as open source. They've already released some of the more minor components, a few portlets.

I'd like to put this down to high ideals on the part of Sun, but I find it hard. They've seen that the portal market is being consolidated by merges, both planned and in progress and they don't want to be left out in the cold. By open sourcing their portal server they place themselves to merge with the other contenders and greatly reduce the cost of supporting and maintaining the software going forward.

My topic is my work on our online catalog, and my attempts to make it more useful and interesting for the library public atCreightonUniversity . CreightonUniversity uses the Hyperion & Unicorn products from SirsiDynix, Inc.  We are on version 2003.1.4.3.

Like my "official" blog, hosted by my employer, I want my writing here to be helpful to and useful for others.  I also want to bring credit to myself and the University.  To this end I publicly commit myself toCreightonUniversity 's acceptable use policy and the EDUCAUSE acceptable use policy.  I value my personal and professional relationship with our vendor, SirsiDynix, and the many libraries using SirsiDynix products; I won't knowingly post anything here that would harm or hinder those relationships.  Public information is welcome here, as is informed, respectful speculation based on public information.  Conversely, the appearance of potentially proprietary information and/or inflammatory or offensive comments is not welcome or permitted here.

The impetus for this web log is my hope for (not yet the certainty of) an upgrade to a newer version of our public access catalog of library resources - in this matter I defer to my managers.  If the upgrade comes to pass that is great; if not, I will work with the resources available to me.

To begin, it is helpful to take an inventory of our own catalog, and the associated electronic and web-based resources of Creighton's libraries.  Additionally, it is also helpful to have some sense of what is possible, based on the work other libraries are doing.  I will use this site to catalog and document various WebCat, iLink, iBistro and EPS sites across the Unicorn customer base.  My main source of information is the Internet itself, through Google.  If a library would like to be added to any list I create, I'd be glad to do so.  However, if a library is on this list and wants to be removed, I am also glad to do that.  Either request must come from an authorized representative of a given library.  You don't have to give a reason, either - it is enough to say "Put us on the list" and I'll add you or "Take us off the list" and I'll remove your entry, it’s that simple.

Two final points of information:  First, I am going to focus on how the catalog is customized, not necessarily the preceding or surrounding web pages on a library's web site.  Second, I am not quite sure how to organize this list of catalogs.  It is not desirable, necessary or possible to catalog each and ever instance of WebCat, iLink, iBistro or EPS.  My particular interest is in academic libraries, so I'll focus there, but that doesn't mean the work of corporate, government, laboratory, military, national, public, special, school and other libraries (have I missed any?) is not also applicable and interesting.  I will include links to the catalogs of the other-than-academic-libraries, too.

The latest issue of EDUCAUSE Quarterly is now online. Among the issue's features are:

• Annie Stunden on policies and portal implementation
• Marc Eichen on aligning IT with institutional value disciplines
• Jonathan D. Mott and Garin Granata on determining the "value on investment" for teaching and learning technologies
• Complete findings from the 2006 EDUCAUSE Current IT Issues Survey

This 41 minute recording provides coverage of the 2005 EDUCAUSE Annual Conference Session entitled Portal Growing Pains: Aligning to Your Institutional Goals.

One wonders how much mindshare will be available for university e-portals, such as  Blackboard's.  In addition to old standards like My Yahoo, a couple of Ajax-based personal portal tools are really sharp and intuitive, especially for the blog-savvy feedster:

• Pageflakes
  
• Netvibes

The latter appeals to me more, though the former has a tabbed interface like Blackboard's.

And of course, both easily allow you to show del.icio.us bookmarks and tag clouds, as well as your latest Flickr pix.