Institutional Portals: a Review of Outputs

This literature review was undertaken as part of the Presenting natiOnal Resources To Audiences Locally (PORTAL) project( which is funded to explore issues around the deployment and use of portals within the higher and further education community. The project is partnership between Academic Services at the University of Hull and UKOLN at the University of Bath. The aim of this review is to provide readers new to institutional portals with an introduction to the topic and an overview of the outputs from a number of institutional portal activities. The paper looks at the factors motivating the deployment of portal solutions in the education sector, at the outputs of existing deployments and at the potential outcomes of such developments. The outputs are considered under the three areas of development outlined in the Joint Information Systems Committee's (JISC) definition of an institutional portal: information resources, transactional services and collaborative tools. The review provides examples of developments from a range of institutional portal projects in the UK and North America. Information on the PORTAL project is available at http://www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/index.html or from Ian Dolphin, Director, PORTAL Project, University of Hull, United Kingdom (i.dolphin@hull.ac.uk)