Bunte Blumenwiese versus Nutzbarkeit - Virtuelle Fachbibliotheken und andere Fachportale im Kontext von vascoda und Möglichkeiten der Homogenisierung

Abstract

The German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Federal Ministry for Education and Research have funded the establishment of subject-specific portals since the end of the 1990s. Currently, there exist at about 40 portals for each academic field. These subject portals are aligned to the specific user needs in research and teaching. This means that each portal has its own characteristics, but all of them offer the same core of services, e.g., literature search, catalogue of internet resources, etc. All portals can be searched via vascoda.de that offers a meta-search. The German National Library of Economics (ZBW) is engaged in two projects related to these portals: First, the project "Knowledge Transfer for Subject Portals" organises workshops and provides support for new portals. The main objective is to achieve a better homogenisation of the individual portals. Second, the ZBW is participating in an external study that assesses the relevance of the portals for the target group. This paper reports on the status quo of the portals in the light of these two projects. Finally, possible further developments are outlined.