Using heterogeneous components to construct online library portals

History shows that libraries have always functioned as physical portals to stored information. In the past, the physical library has consisted of reference and subject specific areas, card catalogs, and book stacks, all available during operating hours and confined to the library’s physical space within a building or room. However, with the explosive development of the Internet and the implementation of OPACs, libraries need to reinvent their environments as physical portals while establishing a virtual online portal presence. The Health Sciences Center Library at Stony Brook University has begun deploying several technologies to develop a virtual portal of online information and services, making the library and its resources available both inside and outside the confines of the physical library. The goal of this portal is two‐fold: provide the library’s patrons – particularly the students and faculty of the University’s Medical School – with personalized access to information, and to enable the library to gather statistics on the use of electronically‐based resources. What makes this library’s portal unique is its ability to deliver, over the Internet, desktop applications specific to certain academic programs in addition to traditional library resources, such as full‐text e‐journals and databases along with a Web‐based OPAC. The technology behind this portal incorporates centralized computing and client‐server architectures with recent thin‐client and operating system technologies, such as the Independent Computing Architecture, Windows 2000, and Linux. This portal demonstrates how academic libraries can improve individualized service by integrating existing systems of information delivery and retrieval with newer computing paradigms.