Site Content Management and the info pro

[Alex Fayle]

     I'm on an Intranet discussion forum and one of the popular questions 
     concerns content management. People often provide technical solutions 
     (eg databases), but rarely discuss the human side of content 
     management. So, I posted the following message. I thought it might be 
     of interest to others who might find themselves in a battle of wills 
     with the IS department over control of Intranet content.
     
     Alex
     
     
     When it comes to managing content on Internet or Intranet sites, I 
     believe that it's important to talk to someone who understands the 
     organization, storage, and classification of information: IOW, a
     librarian, or some similar information professional.
     
     Often the development of Intranets and Internet sites are left to IS 
     departments. No offense to IS people, but Librarians don't know 
     hardware, necessarily, and IS people don't know content,
     necessarily.
     
     When developing your site, if you can, involve your corporate 
     library/information centre/records manager. Of course, if you are like 
     me, it's next to impossible to convince IS to acknowledge their
     limitations. Far too often the technology is not separated from the 
     content. 
     
     You may find that an information professional (ie information content 
     pro) would be able to provide you with a framework for content 
     management.
     
     In our case, we have decided to establish naming conventions for 
     pages. These conventions collocate pages in the alpha-index providing 
     one sort of access. Logical Table of Contents are created on each 
     department's main page, creating a second point of access.
     
     Where the librarian becomes very useful is in the cross referencing 
     between pages. Librarians have been taught to quickly summarize 
     information and determine subjects - either with a controlled
     vocabulary (like Library of Congress subject headings) or with fluid 
     headings (like a records management system). This skill is transfered 
     to website creation by having the librarian examine all pages and 
     determine which ones relate to which other ones.
     
     Sorry for the long-winded message. I'm soap-boxing this morning. :]