Library Portal

The wide use of Internet by the users has made it imperative for the libraries to have a presence there. There can be three types of content in a library website according to Morgan (2003):

1. Information about the library: staff directories, departmental descriptions, maps of the building, hours, etc.

2. Electronic versions of traditional library services: online tutorials, book renewals, interlibrary loan requests and status reports, requests for purchase, online chat/reference, virtual tours of the building(s), etc.

3. Access to library content: catalogs, indexes, full-text magazines and journals, digitized special collections, free and commercial ebooks, government documents, freely accessible Internet resources, electronic encyclopedias and dictionaries, licensed content from vendors, etc.

Simple websites are fairly easy to maintain with little knowledge of HTML editors. But as the size of the website grows the one needs to have better searching and browsing interface. One must follow the usability guidelines in creating and maintaining the websites so that users are not lost while navigating the site.

1.1 MyLibrary

Description: MyLibrary is a user-driven, customizable interface to collections of Internet resources -- a portal. Primarily designed for libraries, the system's purpose is to reduce information overload by allowing patrons to select as little or as much information as they so desire for their personal pages.

Special Features: Some of the important features are:

• Web-based administration to add, delete, modify user access • Web-based report generation

• Search engine support based on Swish-E History: Unknown

Project Sponsors/Administrators: Eric Lease Morgan Dependency: Apache, Perl, MySQL/PostgreSQL Supported Platforms: UNIX, Linux

License: GNU General Public License

Availability: http://dewey.library.nd.edu/mylibrary/download/

Further Information: Project Home Page: http://dewey.library.nd.edu/mylibrary/

1.2 The Scout Portal Toolkit

Description: The Scout Portal Toolkit (SPT) allows groups or organizations that have a collection of knowledge or resources they want to share via the World Wide Web to put that collection online without making a big investment in technical resources or expertise.

Special Features: The portal interface has a number of useful features including • Cross-Field Searching

• Resource Annotations by Users • Intelligent User Agents

• Resource Quality Ratings by Users

• Suggested Resource Referrals (Recommender System)

Go to http://scout.wisc.edu/research/SPT/features.html to get a detailed description of the above features.

The Scout Portal Toolkit also provides the Intelligent Metadata Tool (IMT). The IMT is a web-based tool for the entry and editing of resource information. Although only accessible to portal site administrators and designated users, the IMT is an integrated part of the portal site, providing ready access to portal

facilities and information collected by the portal for discipline experts while they are working on resource entries.

History: Unknown

Project Sponsors/Administrators: Internet Scout Project Dependency: Apache, PHP, MySQL

Supported Platforms: Platform Independent (But installer work only in shell environment)

License: GNU GPL

Availability: http://scout.wisc.edu/research/SPT/download.html

Further Information: Project Home Page: http://scout.wisc.edu/research/SPT/

1.3 Research Guide

Description: Research Guide is a web-based management of subject guides for academic libraries.

Special Features: Some of the features are:

• Support for creating specialist pages with contact information and other background information on subject specialists in the library

• Web-based interface for creating and editing guides and specialist pages • Database back-end

History: This application was written for use at the University of Michigan Graduate Library. It is currently being used to serve research guides there (http://www.lib.umich.edu/grad/guide/).

Project Sponsors/Administrators: Kelsey Libner Dependency: Apache, MySQL, PHP

License: MIT License

Availability: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=63006 Further Information: Project Home Page: http://researchguide.sourceforge.net/

1.4 PostNuke Content Management System

Description: PostNuke is the most powerful and popular open source content management system on the Internet. It is easy to install, easy to understand/use, and easy to administer.

Special Features: It is full of features including: • Complete web-based administration

• Support for additional modules with PostNuke API • Strong community support

History: Based on PHP-Nuke (http://www.phpnuke.org/).

Project Sponsors/Administrators: PostNuke Development Team Dependency: Apache, MySQL, PHP, ADOdb

Supported Platforms: Platform Independent License: GNU GPL

Availability: http://download.postnuke.com/

Further Information: Project Home Page: http://www.postnuke.com/

1.5 Cascade

Description: Cascade is a Perl driven, web-based content management system. It's based on a community model of managing of a large directory resource. Cascade allows one to easily maintain a web-based Yahoo-like directory of resources using web-based forms.

Special Features: Some of the features are:

• Supports Related Categories and Virtual Subcategories (what you see in yahoo directory with an @ next to them)

• Designed to integrate with static content on your website • Supports basic ratings of content

(Go to http://summersault.com/software/cascade/#features for detailed features) History: Unknown

Project Sponsors/Administrators: Mark Stosberg

Dependency: Apache, Perl, RDBMS (MySQL/PostgreSQL)

Supported Platforms: Unix, Linux License: GNU General Public License

Availability: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=6582 Further Information: Project Home Page:

http://summersault.com/software/cascade/