Information management

Willpower Information
Information Management Consultants

What is "Information management"?

This interdisciplinary field draws on and combines skills and resources from librarianship and information science, information technology, records management, archives and general management. Its focus is information as a resource, independently of the physical form in which it occurs. Books and periodicals, data stored on local or remote computers, microforms, audio-visual media and the information in people's heads are all within its scope. Some of the main topics practitioners are concerned with are:

classification and coding
subject indexing
construction and use of thesauri and controlled vocabularies
cataloguing and indexing by names, places, and events
database design and data structures
physical storage of books and records, in paper and electronic form
storage of photographic and digitised images
information audits: reviews of an organisation's information resources
documentation of museum objects, both for management purposes and as a resource for scholarship.

There was an interesting discussion of the definition of "information management" on an Australian mailing list last year (the list archives are unfortunately no longer available). In this discussion, Barbara Laffan quoted the following definition:

"Information Management describes the means by which an organisation efficiently plans, collects, organises, uses, controls, disseminates and disposes of its information, and through which it ensures that the value of that information is identified and exploited to the fullest extent."

This comes from the [Queensland] Information Planning Branch (IPB) Information Standards. Information Standard No. 24 is titled 'Policies for the management of information within government'.

Analogies were proposed in this discussion by Bernard Robertson-Dunn who suggested that:

Information Management = writing
Information Systems = publishing
Information Technology = printing
Each have their own issues, but in the end it is the content of the writing that is important and which drives the requirment for the others.

There is a further discussion in a January 1996 draft paper by Richard E. Barry Making the distinctions between information management and records management, which also makes the distinction between information management and information technology.

Competency profile: information resources management specialists in archives, libraries and records management: a comprehensive cross-sectoral competency analysis / by Céline Gendron.

This competency profile represents an overall view of the work elements involved in positions held by professionals and technicians working as information resources specialists. For various reasons, it is possible to fit these positions, whether in libraries, archives or records management, to a common profile.

This document is at http://willpowerinfo.co.uk/infoman.htm
Last revised 2008-11-23 23:28

Comments and feedback on content or presentation are welcome and should be sent to Leonard Will

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