The Scout Portal Toolkit from the Internet Scout Project

[David Sleasman]

Internet Scout Project would like to invite potential portal
developers to investigate the Scout Portal Toolkit (SPT). This
open source software package, funded by the Mellon Foundation,
allows groups or organizations to develop a portal online without
making a big investment in technical resources or expertise.

The SPT package features include (as of the October 17, 2002
release of beta version 0.9.7):

     	-Metadata field editor, which allows portal
      	administrators the ability to add, delete, or disable
      	a variety of metadata fields;
     	-Shipped with Dublin Core compliant metadata
      	field set;
     	-Cross-Field Searching;
     	-Resource Annotations by Users;
     	-Intelligent User Agents;
     	-Resource Quality Ratings by Users;
     	-Suggested Resource Referrals (Recommender
      	System);
     	-Accessible to users with disabilities; and
     	-RSS channel export;

For more information on SPT and its features, to explore a demo
installation, beta testing, or to download the software go to

     	http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/research/SPT/

The Scout Portal Toolkit is packaged in standard tar/gzip
format and installed with a single command. In most cases you
will literally have the SPT installed and running in less
than five minutes.

Beta testers for the Scout Portal Toolkit need to have the
following:

	-Access to a Linux web server running Apache
       	with PHP 4.x and MySQL 3.23 support (preferably
       	RedHat Linux);
     	-Access to a database server running MySQL 3.23
      	or later (the database server and web server can
      	be the same machine)
     	-A staff member (or consultant) with some
      	experience using Linux or Unix

Any questions regarding SPT can be sent to David J.
Sleasman at sleasman at scout.wisc.edu. Comments and bug
reports can be sent to SPTSupport at scout.wisc.edu .

The development team looks forward to hearing your feedback!

Thanks,
-- 
David J. Sleasman
Metadata and Cataloging Services Coordinator
Internet Scout Project
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Phone: 608-263-2674
http://scout.cs.wisc.edu