Access the portal
The Knowledge Portal brings together research and information on the voluntary, community and social enterprise sectors.
It is a free to use online library, bringing together reports from third sector organisations, academic research, and government studies in one easy to use collection. It helps voluntary organisations, government departments, academics and others to access evidence on a broad range of topics related to the sector.
A unique ‘third sector’ thesaurus has been designed to help people identify the most appropriate material to inform their work.
The Portal has been created by TSRC in partnership with the British Library. It is funded by the Big Lottery Fund.
What’s in the portal?
The Portal includes material on every aspect of the sector, including commissioning, impact measurment, economic and political analysis, social enterprise, service delivery and much more.
Content will be drawn from a broad range of sources, including:
- Academic research collections;
- reports and research produced within the sector locally, nationally and internationally;
- government publications and consultations;
- abstracts for books and journal articles;
- guidance and training materials.
How is access provided?
Wherever possible the Portal provides fully downloadable content in PDF or other standard formats, hosted on our own secure server.
It also guides users to additional content in the British Library’s collections, articles in respected online journals, and useful documents from other online sources. Where electronic copies are not freely available, the portal provides direct links to the British Library catalogue. These can be used to request inter-library loans or to order printed copies of journal articles from the BL Document Supply Centre.
Adding new material
The Portal is constantly expanding and regularly adds up-to-date and topical material. Please get in touch if you have relevant material that you would like to see added to the Portal.
The Portal can help safeguard publications and collections at risk from funding cuts, and can enable your research to reach a wider audience. We are also committed to signposting and preserving other resources, such as charity and foundation archives, of use to the third sector and its research community.
Governance
Development of the portal is advised by the Knowledge Portal Management Committee (KPMC), made up of partners and users from the sector, academia and policy. See Terms of Reference.
For more information, contact:
Peter Lambert
Knowledge Portal Manager, Third Sector Research Centre
E: portal@tsrc.ac.uk
T: 0121 414 3012
Follow @3rdsectorportal on twitter