The Northbrook Community Portal is a project of the Northbrook Public Library. It was conceived as a way of unifying information about the village and making it easier for residents to find out about local news and resources, and for those outside of the village to learn about us. In late fall of 2002 the library won a grant to develop the portal. Funding for this grant was awarded by the Illinois State Library (ISL), a Division of the Office of the Secretary of State, using funds provided by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), under the federal Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA). Two of the grant requirements from the state were that the project funds must be spent by June 30, 2003 and that a final report on the project would be delivered by August 29, 2003.

In January of 2003 the library contracted with DEVdirection, Inc. to act as a web and database developer. DEVdirection had a track record of working with not-for-profit organizations and was excited about the ambitious reach of the project.

From the beginning of the project, the library wanted to provide users with a spectrum of information that extended from the very local to around the world. It sought to key create partnerships with organizations within the community to provide vital local news and information. These were the Village, including the Fire Department, Police Department and Park District; the Chamber of Commerce; Glenbrook North High School and the Northbrook Historical Society. Other organizations, including the local school districts were invited to participate after the launch. While the library is the originator and owner of the portal, all the partners were provided with the opportunity for equal visibility through the site.

The library also contracted with news and financial information vendors to supply regularly updating streams of news. The library sought to create a portal site that would both provide vital information and change often enough so that the Northbrook residents would want to keep coming back. We want to be the homepage for the community.

A critical function for the site is providing emergency information and notices. In case of a local emergency – anything from schools closing for a snow day to a train derailment, weather disaster or terrorist attack, the webpage headers convert to show information about the event. Only a few organizations are granted rights to post these emergency notices.

The domain name of www.northbrook.info was owned by the Allstate Insurance Corp., who generously donated it to the library after hearing about the project.

Part of the goal of the project is to work with as much open source software as possible so that other libraries can economically adopt it for their own communities. It also has to be scalable, so that it can easily accommodate participation from a multitude of local of organizations and the addition of new information tools.

The site goes live on July 4, 2003. A number of refinements are already planned for the site. Watch us as we grow and explore more ways to deliver information to, and about our community of Northbrook.

If you have questions or comments concerning the portal in general or the Northbrook Public Library, please go to our Contact Page.