AZLA Conference: Library Portals

We had a great session on library portals! The president of Polaris Library Systems, Bill Schickling, spoke about portals in libraries and Polaris Powerpac. After Bill I spoke briefly about the Virtual Reference project and how live chat operates in a portal environment--how that differs from offering the service from your site. Brad Whittle, VP of Sales, from SirsiDynix gave an excellent background on the development of portals and how they came about ad how the SirsiDynix portal works. Lastly, Jesse Haro gave a very interesting presentation on how the Phoenix Public Library created their very own portal. I am so impressed with what they have accomplished at their site and I'm interested to see how their site develops.

We did all of this in a one-hour time frame so none of us were good with the details, but I think throughout the hour the attendees got a varied look at portal development and how that differs from the typical web site and link out to the library OPAC.

More tomorrow...and onto Promoting Your Library's Electronic Resources (my favorite)...