Rating: 
Summary: Must-Read for Businesspeople and IT alike
Review: I am an IT Manager responsible for knowledge management initiatives. I have found "Enterprise Knowledge Portals" to be an invaluable and one-of-a-kind reference. The book is a comprehensive reference for developing a portal initiative and the prerequisite elements of a knowledge management program. Two infrastructure layers of particular interest to me are content-based retrieval and related taxonomy-categorization systems, and this book makes these subjects understandable to technician and business user alike. I was also pleased to find Collins' emphasis of a subject that is often ignored in KM initiatives: Usability. Her chapter on support and competency centers provides guidance about usability, the magic ingredient helping assure success in KM projects and one that is often overlooked on technical requirements short lists. I found Collins' description of all these subjects succinct, readable and comprehensive. The book is a must-read for both IT staff and businesspeople assigned to portal and KM projects.
Rating: 
Summary: Not so great
Review: I seleected this as a textbook for a college course on portal design. My students hated it, and I don't blame them.
The writing is very hard to understand. The examples and processes are for very large, very complex IS shops and do not readily translate to other contexts.
I based my selection in large part on the positive reviews I had read here, so I am left wondering who those reviewers are and what book they read...
I would not recommend this book to anyone unless you are a CIO or senior IS manager at a large company, in which case you probably don't need it anyway.
Rating: 
Summary: Strong Project Implementation Guide
Review: If you are looking for a framework and case study to guide your portal implementation project, this is an excellent book. It contains many question sets, forms, and lists that could be easily adapted to fit many portal project scenarios. That being said, the author gives scant attention to several elements that are crucial to portals providing ongoing long term business value including: the development and maintenance of content categorization schemas (taxonomies), and the corresponding classification of content; content publishing and management; and collaboration support. In summary, the book is very strong on "how" to plan the implementation of a portal, but is less complete in other areas.
Rating:
Summary: The Knowledge Transformation point of view
Review: In this book Heidi presents the challenges of developing and implementing knowledge portals in organizations in a very articulate yet simple way. The book walks you through the phases and the challenges associated with implementing both knowledge management practices and systems. You will get insights to what others have experienced and what you could expect. "If you just build it, they might not come" you have to get the culture and the people involved in the process.
Rating:
Summary: The Knowledge Transformation point of view
Review: In this book Heidi presents the challenges of developing and implementing knowledge portals in organizations in a very articulate yet simple way. The book walks you through the phases and the challenges associated with implementing both knowledge management practices and systems. You will get insights to what others have experienced and what you could expect. "If you just build it, they might not come" you have to get the culture and the people involved in the process.
Rating:
Summary: Collins has done the research so you don't have to.
Review: Pragmatic and articulate! Collins embodies a rich understanding of organizational visioning, business architecture and intellectual capital management within her portal framework. Today's gap between knowledge management theory and practical implementation is huge. Collins bridges that gap with Enterprise Knowledge Portals, providing synergy between people, process, technology and content.
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