Abstract:

A federal educational portal named "Single-Entry Window" (http://window.edu.ru) was launched in 2006 with support of the Ministry for Education and Science of the Russian Federation. The portal integrates resources from websites of universities and other educational institutions, specialized educational projects and individual teachers. The portal includes a catalogue of Internet resources, a digital library, educational news, a feedback subsystem.

A significant part of resources included in the catalogue (over 10,000) are educational websites: sites of universities and its faculties and departments, research institutes, vocational schools, libraries, publishing houses, non-profit organizations, research and educational Internet projects, electronic periodicals, websites providing information support to exhibitions, conferences, contests and olympiads. Another well-represented educational Internet resources are digital books, databases, encyclopedias, lecture courses, virtual workshops, etc. published at different websites.

The catalogue is enabled by advanced tools which ensure search according to specific sections together with context search in descriptions of resources, in particular: by title, author name, keywords, words in abstracts, URL, year of publication. The portal provides also an option of contextual search using the tools of adjustable Google search service. It provides useful results for search in full texts of publications (PDF-files) in the digital library.

The digital library is the largest repository of open-access full-text learning materials in the Russian Internet. The digital fund contains over 30,000 materials developed in more than 300 Russian universities and research and educational institutions. The library contains textbooks, course materials, workbooks, methodological materials, learning materials for practical trainings and labs, monographs, conferences proceedings etc. The key task of the project is to integrate the resources, which are of interest to a broad range of participants of educational process, but are dispersed among hundreds of websites.

Original materials stored in various formats were converted into PDF, described and classified under certain rubrics on the basis of the metadata model adopted for the portal. Description of full-text digital publications includes the following attributes: publication title, full list of authors, subject field/discipline, abstract, keywords, year of publication, bibliographic description, source/owner (university / faculty / department, library, publishing house), resource type, level of education.

Nowadays, the portal is one of the most popular and requested educational projects of the Russian Internet (about 60,000 unique visitors per day). The project contributes to the preservation of the teaching and methodological potential of Russian education institutions, facilitates the dissemination of pedagogical experience and promotes wide-sharing of educational resources.

The paper describes the conceptual aspects of the project, the software functionality, the informational components, the structure of metadata, the questions of content management including the approach for resources collecting and evaluating, relations with authors and rightholders, the principal achievements and the problems to be solved.

Keywords:

Educational portal, digital library, open educational resources.