The document discusses the differences between portals and platforms. Portals act as gateways for searching but constrain user experience, while platforms provide tools and APIs for users to build their own applications and interfaces without predetermined design. Thinking like a platform means enabling opportunities and experiences that have yet to be imagined by putting design decisions into users' hands and opening up access to everything through ubiquitous and unpredictable infrastructure.

1. Digital Libraries & Labs -
from portals to platforms
@cneudecker

2. "Portals are for visiting,
platforms are for building on"
Tim Sherratt
http://www.nla.gov.au/our-publications/staff-papers/from-portal-
to-platform

3. Portal =
web gateway
or
starting point
for
search

4. but there are
innumerable ways
of
interacting
with data

5. the
prison
of
portals?

6. in a portal,
the experience is
always
constrained

7. pre-determined
by a set of
design decisions
about what
is necessary,
relevant and useful

8. Platform =
not just
a database
or
a website

9. …moving
beyond discovery
as the primary mode
of online interaction
with cultural collections

10. provide a set of
tools and APIs that
anyone can
use to build
their own
application or interface

11. "infrastructure that is
as ubiquitous and persistent
as the streets and sidewalks
of a town"
david weinberger
http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2012/09/future-of-libraries/
by-david-weinberger/

12. what
makes
innovation
work?

13. put the
design decisions
back intothe
hands of the users

14. work with
the grain of the web
- not against it

15. open up online
access to
everything,
everywhere,
anytime

16. give up the ability
to control,
or even predict,
what will be
constructed using
this infrastructure

17. "exhaustibles"
vs.
"possibility engines"

18. repeat:

19. By exploring these two characteristics
– ubiquity and unpredictability –
we can move beyond the platform as a
set of methods, or a technical framework,
to conceive of it more broadly as an open,
creative space full of possibilities.
David Weinberger

20. Thinking like a platform,
not a portal, or a website,
means enabling a set of
opportunities, experiences
and emotions,
that are yet to be known,
or even imagined.
Tim Sherratt