| Summary: | D. Litt. et Phil. === Today, more and more organisations are adopting the use of the Internet and webbased technologies in the management of and provision of access to information and knowledge resources and services in digital formats. However, it appears that innovative use of the web is more pronounced in corporate organisations. For example, corporate organisations are using portals or sophisticated websites to conduct electronic commerce via the web and provide access to both internal and external information resources and services, accessed via the Internet, intranets, and extranets. The view of the researcher is that innovative use of the Internet and web-based technologies, such as portals, should not be the domain of the corporate world alone. The focus of this thesis is, therefore, to establish the potential application possibilities of portals in other types of organisations, especially agricultural research organisations in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. The main research problem addressed in this thesis was What is the nature and application possibility of agricultural information portals in the provision of webbased, value-added information services for researchers? To address the above research problem, literature relating to the historical development of the Internet and the World Wide Web, intranet and extranet applications in organisations, as well as portals and their applications, was reviewed. In addition, a study was made of international trends regarding the provision of access to digital agricultural information resources and services via the web, and a questionnaire survey was conducted to establish whether it was necessary to use portals to provide access to digital-based agricultural information resources and services in agricultural research organisations in the SADC region. ii Resulting from the literature reviews, the study of websites of international agricultural organisations, and the survey on the need for portals in agricultural research organisations in the SADC region, the study established that: · There are several potential applications of portals in agricultural research organisations. This led to the definition of the nature and major components of the type of portal that could serve the needs of researchers in agricultural research organisations. · There is a need for portals in agricultural research organisations in the SADC region. The current use of the web in these organisations in the region is largely limited to the development of brochureware types of websites, providing access to information contained in the organisations’ brochures. Therefore, there is need to upgrade from basic Web sites to advanced sites or portals, and the study concluded that in this regard there is a need for clear guidelines to assist agricultural research organisations to plan the deployment of their information portals. Currently, most organisations are using ad hoc approaches when developing their Web sites. The dissertation, furthermore, develops the definition of an agricultural information portal as a web-based application that is accessed via the intranet or extranet and provides a personalised and adaptive interface that enables agricultural researchers to discover, track, and interact with colleagues and other people, software applications, information resources, services and tools relevant to their research interests and work. Taking into account the major components and definition of an agricultural information portal, the study proposes guidelines for use in planning the deployment of portals in agricultural research organisations. The proposed guidelines are independent of specific portal design or development methodology, application domains, and techniques.
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