Intranet Information Portals and Enterprise Digital Information Services

T.B. Rajashekar
National Centre for Science Information (NCSI)
Indian Institute of Science
Bangalore - 560 012
(E-Mail: raja@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in)

June 2001

Abstract

Libraries have traditionally played a key role in enterprises by facilitating access to relevant internal and external information sources. They have absorbed several enabling information technologies over the past several decades, in an attempt to improve the quality and timeliness of their information services. Digital information processing was however limited to bibliographic and catalogue data. Advent of the Internet significantly intensified the pace of change since the mid 1990's. Rapid maturing of Internet and intranet technologies have witnessed all round developments in publishing, communication, delivery and access to a multitude of digital information, both in commercial and academic domains. Web technology has emerged to be the converging point for all related processes, media, tools and techniques. This has in turn given impetus for the development of digital libraries and knowledge management solutions. Changes these developments have brought about pose interesting challenges for effective management of digital information in enterprises. What information infrastructures are required in enterprises that can take advantage of these developments? We argue that libraries, given their traditional strength in organising information and the lead they have exhibited in managing access to web-based information, are well placed to play a significant role in managing both internal and external digital information resources. This requires that the libraries enhance library websites to full-fledged intranet information portals (or enterprise information portals), by incorporating knowledge organisation principles of traditional libraries, standards, tools and techniques of DLs; and exploit internal information assets, knowledge resources and promote learning and collaboration using appropriate KM solutions. We briefly discuss the design and implementation aspects of such an intranet information portal.

1. Perspective:

• Enterprise - academic, corporate, research institution
• Library/ information centre in an enterprise
• Key questions:
  • What intranet information infrastructures need to be developed within enterprises to effectively manage internal and external digital information sources?
  • How do we integrate traditional library practices, Internet and intranet technologies, digital libraries and KM solutions in such an infrastructure?
  • What roles libraries can play in the development and management of enterprise digital information services?

2. Traditional role of libraries:

• Facilitate access to predominantly external information
• Manage print sources and related services
• Enabling technologies for improved services
  • Computerised catalogues
  • Library automation
  • Bibliographic databases
  • Online search
  • CD-ROM databases
• Digital information processing: limited to catalogue/bibliographic information

3. Factors of change:

• Internet
• Intranets
• Digital publishing
• Digital libraries
• Knowledge management

4. Factors of change - Internet and the Web:

• Basis for global and organisational information infrastructure
• Instant access to a wide range of multimedia digital information sources
• To be a place to live, work, and play
• Has reached mission-critical status for many individuals, businesses, organisations and applications
• All round developments in publishing, communication, delivery and access to a multitude of digital information
• Web - Point of convergence - processes, media, tools and techniques
• Dramatically altered the nature of scholarly communication

5. Factors of change - Intranets:

• An organisation's private network that uses Internet technologies like TCP/IP and HTTP
• Designed to integrate organisation's information assets and communication facilities into a single, widely accessible networked environment
• High bandwidth
• Controlled access to internal and external content
• Enable innovative applications and services
• Key benefits: improved internal communication and access to internal information
• Foundation for deploying digital library and information services and KM systems

6. Factors of change - digital publishing and digital libraries:

• Digital publishing: automation of entire publishing life cycle
  • Document creation, refereeing, editing, publishing, distribution and hosting for network access
  • Digital version is becoming the basis for producing print version
  • Example: Maintain original in XML format and produce different presentations for display/ print
  • Publishing and content hosting: No longer limited to large organisations
• Digital libraries:
  • Organised and managed collections of digital material - deployed over the Internet and intranets
  • Technologies, tools, standards and techniques for content creation and capture; intellectual organisation using metadata; storing, preserving and archiving of digital objects; search and retrieval; distribution and access management; and interoperability
  • Applications: scholarly communication and collaborative research; management and access to internal information (enterprise "memory"); archives and museums; heritage and culture, etc.
  • Rapidly growing number of DLs

7. Factors of change - Knowledge Management:

• Make effective information and expertise available at the time of need to improve the learning process
• Focus is on developing learning organisations
• Identifying, managing and sharing all of enterprise's information assets - including database, documents, best practices, policies and procedures as well as unarticulated expertise and experience resident in individual workers
• Knowledge and people who own knowledge are considered key assets.
• Recognise that knowledge creation, innovation and learning takes place best through intellectual socialisation, communities, collaboration, and shared vision.
• Enabling technologies include Internet, intranets, groupware, databases, digital libraries, data mining, etc.

8. Factors of change - Consequences:

• Internet and Web enabling of online and CD-ROM databases
• Intranet versions of commercial databases
• Integration of bibliographic and full-text content through linking
• New licensing and payment models: consortia, pay-per-view, transaction-based
• More traditional media enter e-world: e-books
• Web enabling of more and more custom content: CBT is now WBT
• Most current scholarly and commercial information now online
• Tremendous growth in the number and variety of online digital information resources
  • Electronic versions of traditional scholarly publications like journals
  • Increasing number of free, quality content
    • Advertisement-based content
    • Content from government supported projects
    • Public-domain content hosted on organisation and individual websites (corporate, academic, research...)
    • Independent scholarly initiatives (e.g. preprint and e-print archives, e-journals, tech reports, theses)
• Significant increase in the use, and preference for, online resources by researchers. Their expectation for improved access to electronic information continues to grow.
• Increasing demand for improved access to internal information assets and integration with external information (particularly in corporate environments)
• Increasing need for participating in international DL initiatives
• Increasing need for "personalisation" of information packaging and delivery

9. Information management in enterprises - challenges:

• How do we take cognisance of these developments in designing information management solutions?
• What intranet information infrastructure will be adequate?
• Who should participate in developing these?
• How libraries can contribute to the effective management of both internal and external information?
• How libraries can bring in positive aspects of traditional library practices to handling digital information?
• How libraries can work with IT departments and KM groups?
• How libraries can make effective use of technologies and techniques from DL and KM fields?
• How do we develop the information resource base for the enterprise that
  • Captures, stores and provides access to content based on a proper understanding of key business processes
  • Provides a single point of entry to the staff to
    • access internal and external information sources
    • publish internally produced information on the intranet/ organisation website
  • Personalise information access and delivery
  • Ensure relevancy, quality and currency of information resources
  • Integrate access to print and digital information sources
  • Promote learning, sharing and collaboration
  • Take into account security, legal and property rights, provenance and quality of suppliers

10. Response of libraries:

• Libraries have been quick to set up library websites on intranets to integrate access to a variety of information sources
• Varying degree of sophistication
  • Static access to static content
  • Dynamic access to static content
  • Static access to dynamic content
  • Dynamic access to dynamic content
  • Dynamic access to all content
• Focus has predominantly been on providing improved access to "external" information, at catalogue, bibliographic and link level
  • Web-based OPAC for print collection
  • Locally hosted or remote access to bibliographic databases
  • Static or database driven gateway access to e-journals, fee and free Internet sources
  • Push services using e-mail
• Have been slow in responding to:
  • Coverage of internal information assets and integration with intranet and Internet websites of the organisation
  • Information needs arising out of fulfilling KM requirements
  • Use of DL technologies, standards and techniques
  • Use of KM solutions (e.g. groupware, data mining)

11. Intranet information portals:

• How enterprises can meet the challenge?
• Integrate information organisation principles of traditional libraries; experience of libraries in managing access to locally hosted and external digital information sources; standards and technologies of DLs for creation and management of digital resources; and KM solutions for managing internal knowledge and information assets
• Possible players: Libraries, IT departments and KM groups
• Only large enterprises have requisite IT and KM groups - libraries should play significant collaborative role here
  • IT staff - networking and software - purchasing, installing and maintaining
  • Information staff - information auditing, acquisition, organisation and dissemination of content - its management and updating
    
• Libraries can take complete lead in medium and small enterprises lacking IT and KM groups
• Goal: Develop an Enterprise intranet Information Portal (EIP) that provides seamless, but controlled, access to both internal and external information resources, relevant to the business processes of the enterprise
• Some key features of EIP:
  • Provide access to a wide variety of content and services - directory, news, search, discussion forum, gateway services,etc.
  • Resource base:
    • Internal information sources:
      • Laboratory notes, project reports, staff publications, staff/ expert profiles, annual reports, progress reports, vision documents, policies, best practices, query profiles, search results, client profiles, competitor profiles, company news, internal job postings, bulletin boards, phone directories, press releases, etc. (many of these capture and represent the embedded implicit knowledge)
    • External information sources:
      • Locally held and/or remote information sources
      • Print and/or electronic
      • Free and/or purchased
  • EIP facilitates access to 'more effective' information in several ways:
    • Interactive and dynamic content capture (internal information)
    • Fine grained knowledge representation and delivery
    • Knowledge rating and evaluation through user comments stored along with the content (e.g. Amazon.com)
    • Personalization and customization (through user profiling)
    • Go beyond conventionally recorded knowledge by capturing content at place of origin (e.g. group discussions, lectures, laboratory notebooks…)

12. Design, implementation and management issues:

Some recommendations from intranet portal designers and participating information professionals:

• Design based on a full understanding of the key business processes of the organisation
• Information auditing is a key design requirement - information audit tells us the information needs of the organisation. The audit process reviews the information assets of the firm, and helps us in identifying applications that tie the intranet to the business processes
• Productivity is the key issue in enterprises - EIPs should be designed for efficiency, memorability and error reduction
• Should take into account technologies used by mobile and home-based workers and branches
• Follow the 80/20 rule - 80% of the needs are met by 20% content - identify the core content
• Support both directory (browse) and search access. Develop directories reflecting the topics of interest, organised in a hierarchical fashion (e.g. Yahoo)
• Use strong metadata approach (e.g. Dublin Core) for facilitating resource discovery and access control
• Wherever possible, use appropriate standards - Classification and Thesauri, cataloguing rules, resource evaluation, metadata standards, XML, identifiers for digital objects (e.g. CNRI handle system), etc.
• Use open source software, wherever possible, for managing metadata and digital objects (e.g. Linux, Openarchives, Greenstone, MySQL)
• Participate in relevant international DL projects and initiatives (e.g. www.ndltd.org, www.ncstrl.org, www.eprints.org), and/ or use technologies and tool kits made available (e.g. see www.desire.org)
• Monitor usage through traffic logs, online surveys, offline surveys, and e-mail feedback forms
• Support customisation of interface and content, at individual and group levels
• Intranet users are repeat users - understand their immediate, short term and long term productivity issues
• Minimise graphics
• Database driven approach for handling metadata facilitates ease of content management (including quality control) and resource discovery
• EIP should be properly managed - requires development of workflows - staff responsible for content management - should be subject to a set of guidelines - a procedure manual - many organisations turn to information staff for this
  

13. Conclusion:

• Librarians have a key role to play as intranet "content managers" in enterprises, by participating in the development of intranet information portals that integrate access to both internal and external digital information sources
• Education and training courses for library and information professionals need to factor this in their curricula and programmes.