Scholars Portal: Next Steps

Presented at the 137th ARL Membership Meeting, Washington, DC, October 17-20, 2000

A Summary of ARL Member Discussion

ARL President Ken Frazier convened an open forum of approximately 45 ARL member leaders to discuss a proposal for a Scholars Portal. He began by inviting Sarah Pritchard to summarize the background. In September 1999, ARL and OCLC hosted a meeting attended by 80 academic librarians to discuss Strategic Issues for Academic Library Directors. Held in Keystone, Colorado, the meeting produced consensus that in the World Wide Web environment, the library faces the real possibility of losing its natural constituencies to commercial information services. As a result, there was a sense that the library world needed to stake out a stronger presence on the Web in ways that are targeted to serve the special interests of the scholarly community. Discussion among Keystone attendees at and after the meeting sketched an ambitious concept of a web environment that could provide significant content and also support services such as reference, ILL and document delivery, maps to libraries, and customized capabilities such as subject filtering and cross-resource searching. The ambitious scope of the concept quickly led to discussion of the need for libraries to pursue this together by building on local strengths and avoiding duplication of efforts. Unresolved issues include whether this "portal" should be a central site, an adaptable front-end, or a common suite of tools and resources. By April 2000, the concept was more fully articulated by Jerry Campbell in "The Case for Creating a Scholars Portal to the Web: A White Paper," [View PDF] and in a presentation to the ARL Membership in May.

A wide-ranging discussion followed. This summary tries to capture the main points raised in the discussion giving equal weight to different points of view.

Relationship of a Scholars Portal to an online integrated catalog. The online catalog provides a foundation to build a scholars portal. However, the labor-intensiveness of a (traditional) catalog is an unrealistic model, especially for a portal with the desired scope. There is a need to combine the dependabily of the library catalog with the exciting aspects of a portal and create a new tool.

Role of CORC. What role could OCLC's CORC project to catalog web resources play in developing a scholars portal? Some felt that the CORC project was too labor intensive an approach for the scale of the portal being considered. Another felt that the CORC project was an entirely different approach representing 'data harvesting' rather than 'intellectual harvesting'. For example, even if CORC linked to content or embraced the full text of the resources being described, there are other features needed such as customized tools.

Search software. The discussion moved to the importance of customized tools, not "just" a search engine. Overall, there was agreement that the tools must allow a user to search across resources that are licensed by libraries (as well as across the no-fee resources available elsewhere on the web). The search results need to have considerably more granularity than that provided by a subject catalog. It should also allow a user to limit searches to certain kinds of web domains.Exclusivity of content. A point was made several times that the value libraries bring to a portal for scholars or higher education in general is the exclusivity or selectivity of including (only) quality content, and evaluative or descriptive augmentation. This is not the business of a commercial provider; it is the business of libraries. Allowing a stamp of quality on web resources is a key goal.

Value = quality and traffic. A point was made that the value of such a portal service will be derived from a combination of quality and traffic of use. Quality = relevant content plus functionality. Traffic = potential use by higher educational environment, life long learners, and K-12.

Audience. There was agreement that the primary audience for such a portal was higher education but a range of opinions about its potential value for scholars. Some faculty have rejected the value of such a service but suggested it may be useful for undergraduates. Another point raised is that scholars with a sophisticated grasp of resources in their field may be less interested in such a service until they venture into interdisciplinary research that takes them outside their own field. There seemed to also be agreement among discussants that the potential audience was international and that multilingual services and access to global resources were important to keep in scope. Parallels between the goals of the Scholars Portal concept and those of the AAU/ARL Global Resources Projects were acknowledged. In fact, there was brief discussion around the value of a different name and a suggestion that Global Portal may be a more accurate descriptor of what we seek to achieve.

Research on the Use & Effectiveness of a Portal. A question was raised about the expressed desire of some users to go direct to the web for resources, bypassing the library or any other aggregator. In fact, some commercial portal services have failed (The Disney Co. and Oxygen were cited as examples) Why? Most of our campuses has some kind of portal: Can we learn anything about how they are used and by whom? There was agreement that academic libraries would benefit from research into how people use portals or portal-like services on the web, and how effective they are. There was enthusiasm to the suggestion that OCLC/RLAC members urge OCLC's Office of Research to take on this assessment. There was also great interest in work now underway at NCSU to study use of their campus portal.If this is such a good idea, asked Mr. Frazier, why aren't we doing it? Or, are we?

One response was that it is such a good idea we are all doing it and as a result, duplicating our efforts. However, merely aggregating such web sites would likely fail, much as the Farmington Plan ultimately failed.

Partners were discussed: Intel, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, the Open Archives Initiative, the Library of Congress, OCLC, the Community of Science, campus experts, the San Diego Supercomputer Lab, NSF, and Liber, were all proposed as potential partners. Each brings different important resources: developmental money, staff talent, and organizational experience were cited as the kinds of resources a partner might contribute. Trade-offs over content and control could be complex.

How to get started? Several ideas were suggested.

• Identify, by trusted peers, the best subject portals and then created a scholars portal with links to these best sites.
  
• Another speaker rejected the above approach as unsustainable; likening it to the Farmington Plan that floundered when changing local interests weaken commitments to sustain a collection/service and undermined the trust needed for shared reliance on another institution. As an alternative, the suggestion was to create a virtual subject portal by aggregating all the portals on a single subject or discipline, and de-duping them. This would result in a showcase of a comprehensive portal in that one area. This approach would not be dependent on sustaining local interest and also keep the metasite growing from many contributors.
  
• Consortia on a regional basis are key places to have conversations on how to start to develop a prototype. It seems easier to get a test rolling among a smaller number of libraries and then move it to a North American basis.
  
• Don't wait to have a perfect plan; start experimenting now; implement the idea of a portal for library e-exhibits.
  
• Seek buy-in from as many as possible; formalize partnerships.Mr. Frazier thanked the group for a lively 45-minute discussion of the Scholars Portal and said the points raised would be the initial input for the Board and the ARL Scholars Portal Working Group as they develop recommendations for next steps for ARL in addressing this issue.

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