Abstract

Wolfram Neubauer
The Knowledge Portal or the Vision of Easy Access to Information


From a quantitative and qualitative point of view the ETH Library is offering its users an extensive choice of information services. In this respect all researchers, all scientists and also all students have access to nearly all relevant information. This is one side of the coin. On the other hand, this broad, but also heterogeneous bundle of information sources has disadvantages, which should not be underestimated: The more information services and information channels you have, the more complex is it to find what you want to get for your scientific work. A portal-like integration of all the different information resources is still missing.

The vision, the main goal of the project "Knowledge Portal" is, to develop a central access system in terms of a "single-point-of-access" for all electronic information services. This means, that all these sources - from the library's catalogue and the fulltext inhouse applications to external, licensed sources - should be accessible via one central Web service.

Although the primary target group for this vision is the science community of the ETH Zurich, the interested public should also be taken into account, for the library has also a nation-wide responsibility.The general idea to launch a complex project like that comes from a survey the library did one and a half years ago. We asked a defined sample of scientists what they expected to get from their library and one constant answer was, that they wanted to have one point of access to all the electronic library services and besides this, the search processes should be as simple as possible. We accepted this demand as an order to develop a "single-point-of-access" to all electronic services the library provides.

The presentation gives an overview about the general idea of the project and describes the current status.



Bielefeld University Library - last update: 12/12/2008