Fountain
Fountain is our off-the-shelf Local Information System (LIS).
Informed by over 30 man years' of experience of specifying, designing and developing LISes, it is designed for organisations and networks
of professionals who want to share data, documents, knowledge, expertise and other information with
colleagues, partners and/or the public without any fuss.
Fountain is customisable and modular, and is offered as a "complete package", including hosting,
so it is a snap to get up and running.
We believe Fountain is the most cost-effective way to deliver a standards-compliant
Local Information System as part of your Local Information Service strategy.
For Users
Fountain provides a broad range of publishing and collaboration tools for end users.
Tools can be enabled/disabled for different groups of users to tailor their experience to their role and level of expertise.
- Discover - Discover and access resources on local and remote sites via seamless interoperability.
- Publish and share - Publish datasets, documents, images, bookmarks, etc, and share with individuals, groups or the public.
- Explore datasets - Explore datasets via charts and maps.
- Coordinate - Share details of events and meetings via the online calendar, and link agendas, minutes, presentations and other outputs to them.
- Add context - Add insight, structure and context to information by creating themed collections, with metadata and links between content.
- Discuss - Discuss issues in the forum to avoid decisions being lost in closed "email silos".
- Blog - Subscribe to blogs and/or run your own blog.
- Share expertise - Publish and access know-how via the knowledge base, or add and contribute to FAQs using the Content Management System and wiki tools.
- Network - Share contact information and manage your own profile.
- Single Sign On - To support knowledge workers involved in projects that span organisational boundaries,
a single user account can be used to access and search all of a user's workspaces.
For Organisations
Fountain is designed to help organisations take control of their information and knowledge.
- Partnership working - Improve partnership working through a single, shared workspace or through controlled access to each other’s workspaces.
- Continuity and Efficiency - Capture and share tacit knowledge through the built-in knowledge base and forum.
- Organisation - Organise and contextualise content through the use of metadata, e.g.
e-GMS/Dublin Core metadata and classification
schemes such as the IPSV.
- Syndication - Publicise new content through automatic news/RSS feeds and through blogging tools.
- Consolidation - Establish a single, branded presence for your organisation’s news, publications, contact information, blogs, forum, etc.
- Content Management - Empower selected users to add web pages using the built-in content management system (CMS) and wiki tools.
- Standards - Address the requirements of the e-GIF, the e-GMS and the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA).
Customisation
- Branding - Fountain allows each site to use its own colour scheme, logos and other assets to tie in with your branding needs.
- Portal pages - Individual portal pages can be created and customised to meet the needs of specific users, groups and partner organisations.
- Metadata model - The types of resource, and the richness of the metadata model can be customised.
- Modules - Modules such as the forum and blogging tools can be enabled/disabled as necessary.
The adjacent screen shots show a variety of colour schemes and layouts in use by existing sites.
New Features Coming Soon
We are continually improving and extending Fountain. In addition to the support for datasets, charts and maps due for release in November 2008,
the following developments are currently in the pipeline:
- Personalisation - Allowing users to design their own home pages.
- Notifications - Allowing users to request email notification of new or modified content.
Want More Information?
You can find out more about Fountain by following these links: