Subject Guides Prepared by the Swain Library
General Guide |
Analytical Chemistry |
Biotechnology |
Chemical Laboratory Safety |
Crystallography |
Drug Information |
Inorganic Chemistry |
Life Scientists |
Physical Chemistry |
Polymer Chemistry |
Searching the Internet |
Spectral Information
Searching the Internet
Search Engines |
Directories |
Portals |
General Info. |
Links
Web Portals
"A new knowledge age is emerging. In this era, application service
providers are building information portals that deliver specialized,
relevant data in real time."
A portal is designed to be the first page or your "home page" when
you log onto the Internet. Examples include
Yahoo!,
Google,
AOL,
MSN,
Netscape Netcenter,
MyStanford, and
chemistry.org.
Portals offer a wide range of customization options and
functionality including:
- Internet search and navigation
- email
- customized news
- weather
- sports
- horoscopes
- planners
- calendars
- contact managers
- bookmark managers to save favorite web sites
- real-time chat
- message boards
- original content on every imaginable topic
- shopping
- free home pages
- "clubs" which function as makeshift intranets
- small business services
- Increasingly, major portals are making vital content such as news,
stock prices, and messages available via wireless devices and
phones
For academic users, portals may include:
- educational resources
- meetings and seminars
- jobs and career information
- professional organizations
- alerting services
- specialized databases
The next evolutionary step beyond Web Portals is a Knowledge
Environment (KE) where information and services are integrated into
a seamless environment. For an example of a KE, see Science Magazine's
Signal Transduction Knowledge Environment.
