The Knowledge Portal, or the vision of easy access to information

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to show that the development of the "Knowledge Portal" is an attempt to develop a central access system in terms of a "single point of access" for all electronic information services. This means that all these sources - from the library's catalogue and full-text in-house applications to external, licensed sources - should be accessible via one central web service. Design/methodology/approach - The Knowledge Portal is a piece of software and a real library application, based on Primo, a commercial product, which has been enhanced through a cooperative project from ETH Libraries (Libraries of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich) and ExLibris. The new portal will be the result of integrating this new metasearch and the library's homepage. Findings - The paper gives an overview of the general idea behind this complex and clearly user-oriented project and shows which steps are necessary for its launch. Originality/value - The paper gives an example of how to organize cooperation between quite different project partners and shows the complexity of setting up a portal as the single point of access.