SLA Institute Focus's on Content Management

Citation

Taylor, V. (1999), "SLA Institute Focus's on Content Management", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 16 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.1999.23916cac.004

SLA Institute Focus's on Content Management

Valerie Taylor

Overview

The Special Libraries Association delivered its annual State-of-the-Art Institute, "Content Management: Putting Knowledge to Work," to a full house November 5-6, 1998, in Washington, DC. The Institute, co-sponsored by Disclosure Inc. and Dow Jones and Co., focussed on the issues, challenges, competencies, and opportunities involved in managing both internally produced and externally produced content. Educating the many information professionals in attendance were seven top-notch faculty speakers who proved their extensive knowledge on the subject.

The First Day

Andy Michuda, president and CEO, Teltech Resource Network Corporation, opened the Institute by describing the link between content management and knowledge management. Michuda talked about the progression of knowledge management to its status today focussing on the management of content. "If you do not commit resources to maintain content, your knowledge management initiative will suffer," explained Michuda. Six key learnings that provide the framework for any successful knowledge initiative, including the "soft" skill needed that many information professionals possess, were also explored.

"Strategies and Techniques for Acquiring Content," a panel featuring various perspectives of what is involved in acquiring content, proved to be a valuable session for the attendees. Corinne Campbell, manager of libraries, records, forms, policies, and procedures for Boeing Technical Libraries, shared the many challenges encountered by content purchasers. As Campbell stated, her organization's goal is "to have company-wide, unlimited access for a fixed, reasonable price based on use," yet this is quite challenging when the issues of sites, access, archiving and redistribution, usage and hosting are taken into account in the negotiation process. Campbell believes that the solution to frustration experienced by both content providers and purchasers is to "collaborate in a spirit of trust."

Gail Dykstra, director of content development and publisher relations for IHS/Micromedia, revealed the "AAA" ­ content's scarlet letter: Accumulate, Aggregate, and Agglomerate. Today's information environment requires agglomeration through the clustering of content, sources, functions, software applications, and services from the desktop. Dykstra followed up with the importance of license knowledge, relationships, and strategies. Finally, Anthea Stratigos, president, Outsell Incorporated, provided participants with Outsell's Model for Creating and Selling Research along with a Pricing Taxonomy and Model for Evaluating and Buying Content to help them deal more effectively with content vendors.

Clifford Lynch, executive director for the Coalition for Networked Information, and Mickie Voges, director of law libraries and associate professor of law, collaborated on a stimulating session on standards and copyright. The duo provided Institute attendees with a solid foundation of the standards in place today and shared what is to come in the future. An experienced teacher, Voges gave the attendees much copyright "food for thought." Immediately following the session, the audience broke out into discussion groups to explore how content management today differs from the strategies for the last 30 years. What we are building on, what we are discarding, and what we need to create were the hot topics discussed.

Kathleen Swantek, manager, AskNetwork (a virtual network of information professionals) for Arthur Andersen LLP, continued the dialog started in the discussion groups by sharing how content is managed in KnowledgeSpace, Arthur Andersen's subscription-based Internet resource, which includes their intranet and extranet. Swantek revealed the steps to successful content acquisition in which one should "define the scope of content; build a third-party content acquisition team; define the content acquisition team roles; identify vendor selection criteria; consider content integration issues; and identify content management."

The Second Day

With the essentials well covered, the second day of the Institute focussed on the tools, technologies, and competencies required for content management. "Structures and Compasses" was the first session of the day presented by Peter Morville, vice-president, Argus Associates. Morville defined information architecture as "application of organization, labeling, navigation, and indexing systems to support both browsing and searching in online environments" and talked about why this architecture is so important. Morville then detailed organization structures and schemes along with labeling and navigation systems. This session provided practical ideas of how to improve the availability of content on their Web sites to captive members of the audience.

"Tools and Tomorrow: The Challenge of the Meta-Libraries" was the futuristic presentation given by Steve Arnold. Arnold, president of Arnold IT, shared some fascinating ways in which emerging technologies are changing the way content is being managed. The transforming technologies that are bringing about these changes include intelligence everywhere there are high-speed data connections, Java-like functions in applications, multi-object environments, and visualization of content. Arnold showed examples of what is happening through a wide variety of Web sites.

Librarians at the Boeing Technical Libraries are central to the management of content of Boeing's intranet. Corinne Campbell described the many roles that they have taken on, including creating and maintaining the library's home page, creating links to internal and external sites, teaching people how to search the Web and evaluate content, selecting and implementing crawler and search engine, overseeing the registration process for Web site authentication, participating in cross-functional teams, and licensing electronic subscriptions. New roles require competencies, and Campbell shared how her staff uses the professional and personal competencies as outlined in the "Competencies for Special Librarians of the 21st Century" document.

The two days wrapped up with Steve Arnold, Gail Dykstra, and Peter Morville sharing their unique perspectives on the next frontier for content management. They addressed issues such as the impact of software for managing content, new opportunities for information professionals, and the challenges of content management in the years to come.

Conclusion

Overall, it was an exciting and stimulating two days at the Institute. A compendium of "Content Management: Putting Knowledge to Work," including presentations and readings on content management, was published in February 1999. Please contact the book order department at (202) 234-4700 ext. 643 to reserve your copy or order your copy through Special Libraries Associations' virtual bookstore at http://www.slapublishing.org/ Join SLA next fall for our next State-of-the-Art program, "The Next Technology Revolution."

Valerie Taylor is Director, Professional Development, Special Libraries Association, Washington, DC. valerie@sla.org