Content area
Full Text
Information management (IM) can be defined as: “The economic, efficient and effective coordination of the production, control, storage, retrieval and dissemination of information from external and internal sources, in order to improve the performance of the organisation” (modified after White, 1985).
To this extent IM can be considered as a methodical attempt to prevent knowledge being lost in information. As T.S. Eliot asked: “Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”
Information – a manageable resource?
The idea of information as a resource to be developed, used, reused and traded as, for example, water, minerals, land or power, has gained currency in recent years, as shown by a spate of publications and popularised by Alvin Toffler in The Third Wave (1983), in which he postulated a third period of “industrialisation” based on the industry of information. Hard on the heels of this rash of publications came job titles containing allusions to information management; Information Resource Manager, Information Co‐ordinator, etc. This has been especially true in the USA, where the Information Centre or Information Resource Centre has been created, often at corporate level, with a management reporting to the chief executive officer.
It is also true, however, that a number of record keepers, database administrators and librarians have changed their titles without changing what they do, or the effect of what they do on the performance of their organisations. Both the range of publications and of job titles displays a good deal of confusion about what information management is, how it is carried out, and, hence, what the role of an information manager is or might be.
Whether information can actually be regarded as a resource is also a prickly question. It can certainly be reused, like money but, unlike money, it can be created by anyone. Like water, it can be recycled and modified or incorporated into other things. Unlike water the same item can be used simultaneously by many people for different purposes. As with many analogies, it is an attractive one but it is best not pushed too far.
However, it is worth exploring the ideas of management, and of information as being analogous to a resource to see if any pointers emerge as to how IM might develop in the future.