Information Today
Volume 15, Number 6 • June 1998
Report from the Field
19th Annual National Online Meeting and IOLS '98

Knowledge management, search engines were hot
by Paula J. Hane

"It was a dark and stormy night ..." when I arrived the night before this year's National Online Meeting, held in New York May 12-14. (I've always wanted to start a piece with that!) It had been raining on the East Coast for 2 weeks, and soggy residents were ready for some relief. Well, the next day the skies eventually cleared and spirits lifted. But for meeting attendees, the climate inside the New York Hilton's meeting rooms and three floors of exhibits was definitely bright and sunny. This was another record-breaking year for the information industry event. Organizers reported that paid conference registrations were up 10 percent over last year; there were 6,200 total attendees and 133 exhibiting companies.

The conference officially opened with welcoming remarks by Tom Hogan, president of Information Today, Inc. He noted how far the industry had come in the 19 years of the conference, and observed that "the only constant in our business is change." He then introduced a representative from the office of New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who presented a proclamation on the 100-year anniversary of the H.W. Wilson Company (located in New York's Bronx borough) to Harold Regan, Wilson's president and CEO.

Industry Highlights

Following the presentation of the UMI Library Technology award (see sidebar, page 70), Martha Williams, National Online Meeting program chair, provided her annual highlights of the online information industry and the Internet. The full statistical report can be found in the Proceedings volume for the meeting, available from Information Today, Inc. (800/300-9868).

One measure she reported was of particular interest. She noted that "FirstSearch is very high for use but their prices are low so they don't appear in the top revenue vendors. FirstSearch's online time was more than four times that of DIALOG, but DIALOG's revenue was about 10 times that of FirstSearch." This comment stood out because of the heated buzz of discussions at the meeting created by the Dialog Corporation's recent announcement of changes to its pricing. For all those bewildered and stunned folks who asked, "Just what is a DialUnit?" see the news story on page 1.

Williams also discussed some of the content issues related to Internet resources—specifically quality, reliability, and archiving. To answer the concern of some publishers that Web availability would cannibalize their print products, she related several success stories. For example, Thomas Register has generated "tens of millions of dollars" by providing basic listings of manufacturers for free on the Web and in-depth listings in their print product. Her quick overview of technological trends led nicely into the topic of the keynote speech on sharing of knowledge within organizations.

The Challenge of Knowledge Management

Ronald Weissman of Verity, Inc. immediately gained attendees' full attention by noting that his keynote presentation on knowledge management could be called the "revenge of the librarians." He stated that we have spent the last 20 years building the network infrastructure—the plumbing, he called it—and that the pendulum was about to shift back strongly in favor of content. It is time, he said, to bring back libraries and librarians to direct the management of content to deal with taxonomy and categorization, evaluation, ranking, and enabling access. Key questions for those wanting to use knowledge as a competitive business advantage include the following: What do we know that we know? Where is it stored? Who knows it? What don't we know?

Weissman presented his view of the main challenges facing us. The first challenge is the information, most of which exists as unstructured data. As he put it, the problem is still finding a needle in the haystack, but the haystack is getting bigger. The next steps in manageability will include metadata, context, and automated classification tools. The second challenge is dealing with users, who will require conceptual or knowledge maps and the ability to browse and navigate, not just search.

The third is technology. We are only at the beginning of having real knowledge tools, said Weissman. We have moved from text indexing and document management to groupware and push solutions. We are currently in an era of knowledge mining, working with natural language, metadata, collaborative agents, and content discovery tools. The next steps in the "knowledge warehouse" framework will employ data integration, inference, task-oriented retrieval, and pinpoint questioning. There is a clear role here for librarians to integrate technological developments and human capital.

Our information ecology is the fourth challenge. Weissman recommends picking pragmatic, achievable targets, and he stressed that it is critical to distinguish knowledge management from information technology functions.

Focus on Action

Many of the conference sessions then echoed these themes and presented strategies and tools for information professionals. One track on new technologies offered presentations on building and managing virtual libraries, using metadata and data mining techniques, and content analysis. Another track on organizing knowledge assets featured some very interesting case studies of successful intranet implementations. Other sessions focused on copyright and intellectual property issues, data quality issues in databases, Web-based training, evaluating Web resources, and pricing issues. The speakers I heard were all top-notch and the sessions were well attended. The presentations stimulated many questions, informal discussions, and networking among attendees.

The track on search engines and Internet searching was predictably popular and lively. Speakers discussed evaluation projects; new software solutions; research on search and retrieval, users' search behavior, and customizing systems; and more. The track immediately followed a plenary presentation by well-known industry consultant Steve Arnold that showcased some of the leading-edge search systems. He presented examples that stretched the audience to new ways of thinking about navigating and presenting information, such as employing inference clustering, or flying into a subject area with a 3-D visualizer, or using storyboards for organizing multimedia.

Perspectives on the Information Industry

Following upon last year's success, attendees were treated again to a special breakfast presentation by Ron Dunn, president of the Information Industry Association. He reviewed some key industry trends (including consolidation and alliances, customization, the rise of consortia, and technological advances), and then the challenges faced by both information providers and information professionals.

Information providers are facing maturing markets for their traditional services, along with growing price sensitivity and a shifting competitive environment that allows new niche players. He advised providers to build vertical communities with customized services, and to make it easy to incorporate data and content seamlessly into intranets.

Information professionals are facing a rapidly changing environment with a plethora of choices, while experiencing budget constraints and unfavorable public relations. Dunn advised them to embrace the Internet, study and understand their employers' businesses, be willing to learn and adapt, and communicate using an active marketing program.

He acknowledged that there were a number of legal/policy barriers to growth in the information industry, including intellectual property protection, liability, jurisdictional disputes, taxation, and privacy. Resolution of these issues will require cooperation between information providers and information professionals. He urged us to remember some key points: Quality counts, brands matter, the Internet is just a delivery medium, and we should not lose sight of the content. He reinforced the message in Weissman's keynote on the role of information professionals in filtering and evaluating, both in what he had to say and in how he said it. Ron Dunn has the ability to sort and filter through complex topics and issues and state things clearly. I am always grateful for a chance to hear his perspective on the industry. He generated some interesting audience questions on pricing, aggregating material, archiving the Internet, and quality.

Ensuring the Future

The final day of the conference opened with a plenary session as well. Joseph Kasputys of Primark Corporation spoke on taking advantage of the new options made possible by the Internet, and the implications of doing business when data are considered a commodity. He outlined six principles for content providers wanting to stay in business: 1) Constantly generate proprietary data; 2) emphasize relevance and add value; 3) present data in an integrated and related manner; 4) provide end-user applications; 5) link with other databases; and 6) show an uncompromising commitment to quality, with accurate, timely, and comprehensive data.

He also raised some important societal questions about using computers in education, serving disadvantaged populations, and government communication with citizens. He gave us a lot to think about as did all the sessions.

The Vendor Connection

In between attending conference sessions and the all-day Electronic Publishing seminar on pricing issues (look for a report on that in the next issue of Information Today), I made my way around the exhibit hall. This year I wore very comfortable shoes.

One newcomer in the hall was Arthur Andersen. Andersen's KnowledgeSpace is a new Internet service for business (http://www.knowledgespace.com) that offers integrated access to news, analysis, benchmarking, competitive research, etc.

Also, briefly noted, were the following:

Paula J. Hane is contributing editor of Information Today. She can be reached at paula.hane@mci2000.com.


Table of Contents Information Today Home Page