The recombinant library: portals and people

http://www.oclc.org/research/staff/dempsey/
dempsey_recombinant_library.pdf

I love papers on portals that begin by thoroughly trashing the word ‘portal,’ as my experience has been that it is one of the most unuseful pieces of modern tech jargon.

But this paper takes the conflation of the meanings of the word portal as its starting point and explores it to rich effect. Although it’s written by and for librarians, one of the reason the paper’s so effective is in arguing that approaching portals from the library’s perspective is precisely the wrong end to come at it; you need to approach it from the user’s perspective. Well worth reading for anyone involved in campus-wide portal initiatives. – SWL

- via [ResourceShelf]