Last Friday (27 September 2002) I attended a UCISA MISG seminar on
Document Management Systems - see
http://www.ucisa.ac.uk/events/2002/DMseminar_programme.htm
The first speaker gave an overview of Document Management Systems and in
one slide pointed out that without an organisational information
strategy there was a danger that 'information islands' would develop.
There then followed a number of case studies of use of Document
Management Systems in MIS departments in UK HE institutions.
Interestingly ALL of the case studies were based on licensed products
(and the licence cost appeared to be significant in several cases, as
this had restricted deployment across campus). Typically the case
studies described applications for managing proprietary file format
(e.g. images of expense forms). There was no discussion of open source
alternatives, little mention of open file formats and little awareness
of lock in to particular applications (e.g. URLs for resources had a
proprietary application-dependent string, or resources only existed in
backend databases).
Interestingly 8 days prior to this seminar the UCISA SG organised a
seminar on Open Source - see
http://www.ucisa.ac.uk/groups/sg/events-papers/opensource/birmingham_eve
nt.html
in which Paul Browning and colleagues described the Zope CMS.
It seems as though there is a danger that we will continue to build
information islands, with the academic IT services camp (UCISA SG)
tending to go down the open source route and open standards and MIS
departments using licensed software and proprietary formats
(over-exaggeration I know).
I have suggested to a number of people that there is a need for these
two groups to get together. This may be an area we address in next
year's Institutional Web Management Workshop.
Note that I would see a need for liostening to both sides. The final
talk of the day was on the implications of the Freedom of Information
Act (Scottish version). In important areas like this you will probably
find better support in licensed document management systems.
Brian
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Brian Kelly
UK Web Focus
UKOLN
University of Bath
BATH
BA2 7AY
Email: [log in to unmask]
Web: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/
Phone: 01225 38 3943
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