Delivering Individualized Library Content: Portals & The Future of Library Web Sites Tom Ipri Media Services Librarian Connelly Library Philadelphia, PA

Tom Ipri - Wide Open Portals La Salle University Founded in 1863 Philadelphia, PA 6200 students Main campus and 2 satellites

Tom Ipri - Wide Open Portals Connelly Library 9 Full time librarians 1 Part-time at satellite No dedicated Web person No dedicated Portal person

Tom Ipri - Wide Open Portals mylasalle Luminis/Campus Pipeline University Wide Live Summer 2003 Cradle to Grave

Tom Ipri - Wide Open Portals Why Library Services in mylasalle? The largest source of information on campus Best opportunity to segment information from a vast collection and direct it to specific populations Only way to get Registration, housing, grades

Tom Ipri - Wide Open Portals Brief History On development committee Ensure library presence Library “tab”

Tom Ipri - Wide Open Portals Original Look

Tom Ipri - Wide Open Portals First Version Basically a “dumbed-down” version of home page Not taking advantage of potential Director of Portal Communications hired 2004

Tom Ipri - Wide Open Portals Second Version This time it’s personal Campus and Targeted Announcements myConnellyLibrary myResources

Tom Ipri - Wide Open Portals

myResources Library subject guide + Resources from departments –Forms, procedures, job ads, etc. Education, Social Work, Grad Psych, SLH

Tom Ipri - Wide Open Portals

New Developments Assignment Calculator Use of RSS feeds Federated search WebPac Pro

Tom Ipri - Wide Open Portals

RSS Feeds Simple XML code Library news Databases Electronic Journals Library Links Basically anything

Tom Ipri - Wide Open Portals

Snags Director of Portal Communication leaves –Change of priorities –Uncertain future New Web team –PHP/MySQL –Code to read database output

Tom Ipri - Wide Open Portals

Back on Track A lot of bits and pieces –Adding hand-coded & RSS channels –Converting database info to feeds Can be aggregated on one “Tab” Tab – channels – tab Marketing Training

Tom Ipri - Wide Open Portals

What’s Next Federated search SSO for databases WebPAC Pro –Circulation info in channel More use of CSS

Tom Ipri - Wide Open Portals Is it a mash-up? Darlene Fichter –Web site or web application that uses context from one or more sources to create a completely new service –Building blocks

Tom Ipri - Wide Open Portals Portals and Library 2.0 Paul Miller –Push the library everywhere –Disaggregate library systems –Liberate the data –Get the data to the user, not the user to the data

Tom Ipri - Wide Open Portals Impact Rethinking library services with the portal in mind Portal is designed to be dynamic and customizable Bring information closer to user Portal roles

Tom Ipri - Wide Open Portals Impact Not a huge entity parsed into smaller bits But smaller bits that are greater than the whole Don’t add up to one thing, but different things for different people Future of library web sites?

Delivering Individualized Library Content: Portals & The Future of Library Web Sites Tom Ipri Media Services Librarian Connelly Library Philadelphia, PA