Citation
O’Beirne, R. (2002), "PORT – The Maritime Information Gateway", Online Information Review, Vol. 26 No. 5, pp. 356-357. https://doi.org/10.1108/oir.2002.26.5.356.10
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
As an island, and indeed as a colonial power that gained its ascendancy through ruling the waves, Britain has a rich maritime heritage. The central focus for its feats of seamanship is the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich. The Museum’s Web site has the strap line “Welcome to the largest maritime museum in the world” and, apart from English, is available in six languages: French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian and Spanish.
PORT, which is an important part of the Museum’s We site, has recently been relaunched. All credit to the marketing people for resisting the temptation to call it a “port‐al”. In Internet terms, however, PORT is indeed a portal, because it provides access to over 2,800 Web sites, ranging in topic from navigation techniques to listings of sea battles.
The site is clearly comprehensive in its coverage. Furthermore, the whole venture has the authority not only of the Maritime Museum but also of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. A lot of work has gone into the structure of the site, and as a consequence it is easy to navigate. The design is well thought out and avoids the over‐use of images, while at the same time not appearing overly wordy. A team of subject specialists and librarians maintains the database of linked resources. These are classified and provide a subject‐based retrieval system. Subject areas that can be browsed include: art, military affairs and naval forces, fishing, biography and trade. It is also possible to browse through the resources using headings from a historical period index.
There are two search facilities, a simple search option which includes Boolean, whole phrase and specific field searching, and a more advanced search option that includes many useful features such as case sensitivity, ranking, stemming and the ability to restrict the search to a particular type of resource. By type the site creators mean bibliography, collections of papers or governmental organisations, etc. Finally, if all else fails, there is the facility to conduct a search using the PORT search engine – a robot‐generated index of maritime Web sites. As well as providing this resources base, PORT carries listings of events and conferences, and there is a link to the Museum’s Journal for Maritime Research, which is available online.
This site has a wide and varied appeal to students and academics and to the general tourist. It might also serve as a starting point for those with a general enquiry concerning subjects as broad as underwater archaeology and military history. The clear design and well‐organised subject areas make this PORT well worth a call.
This review was first published in Reference Reviews Volume 16 Number 5 2002.