Intranets and Content Management

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Intranets and Content Management
T.B. RajashekarNational Centre for Science
InformationIndian Institute of ScienceBangalore
560 012 (EMail raja_at_ncsi.iisc.ernet.in)
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We will be covering

• Intranets what, why, intranet information
  portals
• Content management what, content types and
  formats, external content, current situation,
  challenges
• Role of libraries
• Resources

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What is an Intranet?

• Private and secure internal information system
  which uses Internet technology to collect and
  disseminate information of interest to all staff

Company network
Internet
Firewall
Web browser
Web browser
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What is an Intranet?

• Behind the firewall
• Take advantage of all the open standards and
  protocols that have emerged from the Internet
  (TCP/IP, HTTP, SMTP, Java, JavaScript, XML)
• Web based applications with corporate control
• Combination of the ease of use of the Internet
  with the security of a private network

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Technology behind Intranets

• One or more inter-connected TCP/IP networks
• Internet connectivity with firewall protection
• Servers Web, E-Mail, Proxy, DNS
• Browsers, plug-ins, authoring tools
• Databases, CGI tools, search engines
• Website administration tools

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Intranet VS Internet

• Internet
• External websites
• E-Commerce
• Insecure
• TCP/IP
• Limited management

• Intranet
• Internal websites
• Commutation Information access
• Secure
• TCP/IP
• Managed

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Why Intranets?

• Ubiquitous access to staff
• Improved internal communication
• Improved access to information
• Improved productivity
• Promote user participation
• Improved management

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Why Intranets?

• Open platform architecture - plenty of add-on
  applications available
• Existing information sources can be easily
  migrated to the desktop using Web technology
• Faster information delivery at lower costs
• Relatively quick and easy to set up
• Scaleable start small, and grow as needed
• End User training - most users are familiar with
  browser operation

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Why Intranets?

• Basis for KM solutions
• Basis for incorporating advanced information
  management solutions
• Digital libraries
• Data mining

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An Example Intranet
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Another Example
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What is a web site?

• Non-technical view A computer on the
  Internet/intranet providing access to its
  information store through web browsers
• Technical view One or more computers providing
  access to variety of web compatible documents
  using HTTP protocol (web servers)
• PC, RISC-based workstations/ servers
• Win95, Unix, WinNT
• Dedicated Internet/intranet connectivity

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What is a web site? ...

• Has a unique web site address in the URL format
• e.g. http//www.iisc.ernet.in, http//www.nic.in
• Documents stored in a web site are uniquely
  identified using the URL scheme
• access protocol//host.domain port/path/file
  name(e.g. http//www.ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/new.html)
  
• Document formats
• HTML, PDF, images, animations, audio, video,
  multimedia presentations, searchable databases,
  etc.

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What is a web site? ...

• HTML pages integrate the information content
  served by the web site
• Organized in a hierarchical manner
• Home page (root page) provides links to second
  level HTML pages which in turn link to third
  level HTML pages, and so on
• These pages may contain images and provide access
  to databases through search forms, PDF files,
  audio and video, etc. or link to documents on
  other servers

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What is a web site? ...
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Websites to Intranets to Information Portals

• Beginning External websites
• Promote company and its products
• Later Intranets
• Use Internet technologies for web enabling
  internal information communication
• Today Information Portals
• Integrate internal and external information via
  the Web

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Intranet Information Portals

• Aka Enterprise Information Portals
• Area of recent growth and rapid development
• EIPs are applications that enable companies to
  unlock internally and externally stored
  information, and provide users a single gateway
  to personalized information needed to make
  informed decisions

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Content Management

• Key issue today in most enterprises
• Why?
• Wide variety of web-enabled digital content
• Web enabling of businesses
• Digital publishing
• Most authoring tools support saving in web
  compatible formats
• Ease of web publishing and hosting
• Need for integrating internal and external content

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What is Content Management?

• Technologies, standards, principles and practices
  related to

• Content creation, capturing, publishing
• Organization and storage
• Search, retrieval and delivery
• Preservation

• Rights management
• Version control
• Administration
• Integration with external content
• Integration with other applications

on Intranets via web servers and browsers
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Content Types

• Structured, unstructured
• Source documents with/ without metadata
• Metadata with/ without source document
• Free/ fee based
• Internal/ external

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Content Types

• Internal content examples
• E-Mail, Company News
• Plans, policies, project reports, best practices,
  annual reports, press releases, news letters,
  product catalogs, presentations, etc.
• Staff/ expert profiles, phone directories
• Client, competitor info
• Software, Courseware, CBT
• SQL databases, library catalog, legacy databases

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Content Types

• External content examples
• Licensed
• Databases (bibliographic, full-text)
• e-journals
• e-books
• Software, etc.
• Free content (listserv, databases, e-journals,
  etc.)
• Locally hosted/ remote access
• More and more external content is brought behind
  the firewall

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External Content

• Why bring external content behind firewall?
• Robust delivery compared to WWW (World Wide Wait)
• Cheap storage
• Content aggregation, filtering, and profile-based
  delivery
• Integration with internal content

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Content Formats

• Text (HTML, ASCII)
• Binary objects (software)
• Graphics
• Images
• WYSIWYG documents
• PDF
• Multimedia presentations
• Digital audio, video
• More bandwidth more media rich content

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Content Management in Intranets Typical Current
Situation
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Who Is Creating Content?

• Almost everyone!
• Most from business processes
• Ubiquitous authoring tools integrated with
  business processes
• Libraries bring most of the external content
• Individual surfing, downloads

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Where It Resides?

• Distributed across the intranet
• Individual desktops
• Division/ dept. servers, websites
• Company websites external, internal
• Servers Database, E-Mail, Library

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Who Is Managing It?

• Typically webmasters of respective websites/
  servers
• Content creators and/or division heads
• Very little central control
• Very little quality control
• Poor integration

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How Is It Being Accessed?

• Visiting individual sites
• File finding tools, shared disk drives
• Reliance on peoples memory
• Individual bookmarks
• Asking colleagues around
• No central search engines or poor search results
  lack of context in search results

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Poor Content Management Consequences

• Do not know what exists
• Do not know where something exists
• Lack of confidence in available data enough
  contextual information not available
• Too much of information
• Infoglut, Intramess
• Poor productivity

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Content Management Challenges

• Develop a centrally controlled, distributed
  content management system
• Integrate internal and external information
• Organize the content for efficient information
  access
• Provide context for searching and search results
• Bring uniformity and consistency in content
  authoring, publishing and presentation
• Provide personalized services

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Role of Libraries

• Lead in using Internet, web surfing and Internet
  training
• Extend the reach of library catalogs
• Increasingly sophisticated library websites
• Static to dynamic websites
• Subject gateways
• Bring external content to the intranet desktop
• Databases, e-journals, e-books, software, free
  content

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Role of Libraries

• Expertise in metadata handling
• Knowledge representation and organization
• Classification, Thesauri
• Increasingly called upon to participate/ handle
  internal content management
• How Libraries can contribute?

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Resources

• Intranet Journal (http//www.intranetjournal.com/)
  
• The Complete Intranet Resource(http//intrack.com
  /intranet)
• Corporate intranets and corporate libraries.
  Honors thesis. Alyn Jones. June 1998.
  http//jimmy.qmuc.ac.uk/usr/im94jone/

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Resources

• McQueen Consulting Home The Intranet - Extranet
  Specialists http//www.mcq.com/
• Ragans Intranet Report http//www.ragan.com/
• Online magazine. Jan/Feb 1999 and May/June
  2001. Focus issues on intranets.
  http//www.onlineinc.com/onlinemag/