1. Of Patrons, Portals, Partners and Pedagogues
What might a true Law Sources Portal look like?

2. A gateway? A catalogue? Bookmarks? A tutorial?
Or, how does a librarian (blinded by a variety of patron needs) describe an information elephant?
A gateway?
A catalogue?
Bookmarks?
A tutorial?

3. What will a portal provide?
Hypertext guides?
Metadata for texts?
Intelligent links?

4. Examples of Hypertext Guides
LLRX
GlobaLex (NYU)
Academic law school guides
Some law review articles as viewed on electronic databases
Some research guides of International Organizations, e.g., EU, WTO, UN

5. Examples of Metadata for Texts
EISIL (ASIL)
U of Toronto Women’s Human Rights Resources
UMinn Human Rights
Constitutions, cases, statutes at government sites

6. Examples of Intelligent Links
British Academy Portal,
My.library software,
Courseware-based course pages
Topical and source portals, such as FindLaw and WorldLII and scholars’ portals such as Yale UN Scholar’s Workstation (not to be confused with software of that name)

7. British Academy Portal

9. Super Tutorials become Portals
University of Melbourne Legal Resource Centre’s Legal Information Skills Tutorial
Training, tutorials and workbook section of Law Gateway at SOSIG project of Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, London,

12. Gateways to texts, sites, databases
Droit.org for France,
Pace CISG, Worldtradelaw.net
Transnational Law Database,

13. Metadata itself is customized and categorized for the user (think: Amazon); Georgetown’s “Find It Fast” project shown below)

14. Catalogues and Aggregators
Bibliographic utilities
TD Net and other e-journal finders
Google Scholar and Print
Feeds and Blogs, new Yale Law Library/Innovative project to integrate user account with new information or titles in catalogue and web site

15. Always comes back to My Library
Intelligent links are those that appear in a hypertext guide or gathered by librarian, and
Are then selected by the researcher, along with shortcuts to folders and PDF briefcase-style documents
All are based on context and user profile, e.g., a page is set up for links to paid and free electronic databases or specific texts created by the user and also fed by the new information on the site/catalogue: voilà- the true portal.