Future Directions in Portal Technology: A Large Scale Emerging Case

Speaker
David B. Robins
Assistant Professor, Department of Library and Information Science, School of Information Sciences, University of Pittsburgh

When
-

Where
Newell-Simon Hall 1305 (Michael Mauldin Auditorium)

Description

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently called for proposals for a portal that would be a mechanism to support public librarians in the United States. Within two years, these librarians will be supporting over 40,000 networked computers provided by the Gates Foundation to every public library building in the United States. In all but a few cases, these librarians have no formal training in information technology, and their various responsibilities include tasks such as: troubleshooting, maintenance, instructing library users, router configuration, and policing pornography consumers. The challenge to the recipient(s) of this grant will be to create a resource that is more than a passive web site. This portal will need to, at minimum, provide users access to a number of resources, opportunities and facilities such as:

• The ability to communicate with one another
• The ability to retrieve information and transfer knowledge
• The ability to create information and share knowledge
• The ability to collaborate with one another on specific projects
• The ability to build communities
• The ability to customize the interface to suit individual needs
• Seamless use of multiple applications
• The ability to “push” information to users
• The ability to actively monitor users’ systems, detect problems, and fix them
• The ability to be an indispensable resource to a user—i.e. the portal is the central base of operations any time users are sitting at their computers, using a cell phone, PDA, or pager
• The ability to provide synchronous help desk operations.

The presentation will outline what is known about the users so far. In addition, there will be discussion of plans for building the portal.

Speaker's Bio

David Robins received Ph.D. in the Interdisciplinary Program in Information Sciences at the University of North Texas in 1998. He has an undergraduate degree in Fine Arts from Colorado State University. He taught for two years at Louisiana State University before relocating to the University of Pittsburgh (School of Information Sciences, Department of Library and Information Science) in the fall of 2000. His research interests are: information architecture, interactive information retrieval, and digital libraries. He is currently a researcher in the Visual Information Systems Center in the School of Information Sciences, and has taught courses in data communication networks, indexing and abstracting, information retrieval, and information architecture.

Much of the talk will be based on a paper I presented at the Information Resources Management Association annual conference this past summer.