About a year ago, someone from eastern Washington phoned and asked me about PORTALS. He was working with a group of libraries who were building a consortium and thought that PORTALS would be a good model to look at. I was a bit perplexed - yes, I was involved with PORTALS, but the problem was, it didn't really exist as anything that I could, point to and say, here, this is PORTALS. Now, a year later, I can proudly say that we have indeed metamorphosed into something identifiable, though the evolution continues. This article will attempt to describe what PORTALS is, how it came into being, and 'where it is headed.