Karst Information Portal - A New Look

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Karst Information Portal - A New Look

Postby Cheryl Jones » Apr 19, 2010 2:15 pm

Dear Friends,

If you haven’t checked recently, the Karst Information Portal (http://www.karstportal.org) has a new look. The Portal team, especially those at the University of South Florida, has analyzed how you have been using the Portal for the past 30 months and listened to your comments and suggestions.

The Karst Information Portal is a digital library linking scientists, managers, and explorers with quality information and resources concerning caves and karst environments. Currently, nearly 5,000 documents are stored in the library and are searchable by over 30,000 keywords. The Portal is designed for the documents to be full text-searchable, rather than depending on keywords assigned to each document, and that capability will be added later this year. While the entire library collection is not yet fully searchable, many of the individual documents are fully searchable.

In addition to serving as a library, the Karst Information Portal has several tools and features to assist with cave and karst research, such as databases, oral histories, reference tools, scanning electron microscopy microbiological photos, GIS links, meeting announcements, etc.

Some of you were using the RSS feeds to receive updates on material added to the Portal. We apologize but programming changes to improve the Portal do not support the original RSS programming and you need to register again. You can do so using the RSS icon in the URL address bar at the top of the Portal page or go to http://www.karstportal.org/index.php?P=RSS to subscribe. There is no cost for this service, however, RSS feeds and links will not be fully function until this summer when a new server is installed.

Many programming changes have been added that you can’t directly see but which make the Portal more efficient, effective, and to raise the profile of cave and karst research. The new CWIS interface makes it possible for the Portal to feed into the National Science Digital Library, a long-standing National Science Foundation funded project. Another development is the advanced search tool, which supports all of the fields and can limit retrievals by audience, language, format, digital accessibility, etc. Registered users also have the advantage of a “Recent Searches” list that allows them to quickly repeat up to five recent searches. Registered users can also save searches and have the results e-mailed to them as new materials are added they fit the saved search criteria.

Other improvements include the ability to browse resources, access accessibility options for people with disabilities or who want larger fonts, and improvements in the tagging and quality of data.

If you are interested in creating a tool on the Portal that will enhance research for you and your colleagues, or have other questions or interest, please contact me or the Portal staff directly via the “Leave Feedback” link at the bottom of each page.

George

***********************
George Veni, Ph.D.
Executive Director
National Cave and Karst Research Institute
1400 Commerce Dr.
Carlsbad, New Mexico 88220 USA
gveni@nckri.org
http://www.nckri.org
001-575-887-5517 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              001-575-887-5517      end_of_the_skype_highlighting (office)
001-210-863-5919 (mobile)
001-413-383-2276 (fax)
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Cheryl Jones
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Name: Cheryl Jones
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