Library Portals: A Report

Abstract

With the growing acceptance of web portals on university campuses, many librarians are considering building library portals to make their collections accessible to users who expect all knowledge to be obtainable with just a few clicks from inside a web browser. After all, the World Wide Web has become the marketplace for documents, goods, services, and ideas. For many people, especially students, if something is not on the web, it does not exist. This trend is especially challenging for libraries, which are the traditional keepers of knowledge but whose knowledge is largely kept in many millions of books and journalsnot on the web. The idea of a library portal is misdirected. While it is vital that libraries have a presence on university enterprise portals, libraries should build portal pages, portal channels, and portal cameos rather than entire library portals.