Scholars Portal

Overview

The overall objective of the Scholar's Portal Project is to enable researchers at NYU's Global Network University to find, get, use and share digital content with fluidity and functionality in a seamlessly and transparently integrated environment by 31 December 2012. The Scholar's Portal Project does not seek to deploy a portal in the traditional sense, but rather to establish an online environment in which an ever-changing set of services and tools are integrated by a common authentication framework, a user profile system, and tools that expose a user's content in such a way that it is relatively easy to reuse that content.

Currently Deployed Scholar's Portal Initiatives

• BobCat provides scholars with a next generation discovery tool for finding books, journals and other print materials, videos, sound recordings, e-books, e-journals, databases, indexes, articles in our local libraries, special collections, and licensed databases.
• The Digital Tool Finder provides researchers with a central repository of online resources aimed at helping them manage and share their digital scholarship.
• Xerxes (The Arch) provides federated search capabilities, organized by category, to many of NYU's licensed databases. Users will also be able to create, search and share their own favorite databases.
• Umlaut will extend the "Get It" capabilities of BobCat by presenting resources from Google Books, Internet Archive, Amazon and a number of other delivery services in the same context as locally held materials for a full view of available options.

Further Reading

• Report of the New Generation Working Group
• Scholar's Portal Project Overview
• PowerPoint presentation on Scholar's Portal infrastructure
• A vision of the near future
• ITS Strategic Initiative Presentation