May 31, 2001, Medford, NJ — Over 5,200 participants attended InfoToday 2001 held May 15–17 at the New York Hilton & Towers in New York City. The conference and exhibition took the place of the National Online Meeting after 22 years as the premier event showcasing the latest developments in the online industry.

"With technology changing so rapidly, we decided to create a format for this annual event that would make it easier to add or subtract various content components without losing the underlying theme," said Tom Hogan, president of Information Today, Inc. "Using this 'umbrella' approach gave us the flexibility, for example, to add a strong knowledge management conference to complement our traditional programming on all facets of online information and library systems."

InfoToday 2001 focused on important issues in the electronic information and knowledge management (KM) communities, and divided programming among three simultaneous core conferences—National Online, KnowledgeNets, and E-Libraries. 

The National Online conference continued in the tradition of the National Online Meeting by focusing on information content and information delivery technologies. Hot topics in sessions included targeted vertical search of specific content, the Invisible Web, competitive intelligence, and enterprise products for both search technologies and knowledge management.

KnowledgeNets 2001 provided coverage of knowledge management and its applications within today’s organization. The conference included practical programs and case studies, and ended strong with a closing keynote address by Nick Bontis, CKO of Knexa.com and Director, Institute for Intellectual Capital Research, DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University.

The E-Libraries portion of the event focused specifically on the distribution and management of information through libraries and information centers. Conference highlights included a panel discussion with executives from the leading library automation companies. The panel included Carl Grant, President, Ex Libris USA; Patrick C. Sommers, President, SIRSI Corporation; Vinod Chachra, President, VTLS, Inc.; Lana Porter, President, epixtech, Inc.; and Jane Burke, President, Endeavor Information Systems, Inc. 

InfoToday 2001 got under way each day with a keynote, including an opening day address by Robert E. Kahn, president of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives, who is noted for his contributions to the Internet. David Snowden, director of the Institute for Knowledge Management, IBM, gave day two’s keynote titled “Innovation, Knowledge Management, and Corporate Success.” He focused on using complexity theory to improve the flow of knowledge within organizations. Tom Davenport, director for Strategic Change, Accenture, also focused on a KM issue, “Attention” — noting that attention is the scarcest and most valuable resource for new economy workers, and examples of attention-conscious KM are beginning to emerge. 

Other conference highlights included a breakfast address by Ron Dunn, CEO of Thomson Learning’s Academic Group. With a positive outlook for the health of the information industry, Dunn noted that free raw content has limited value and that information professionals and intermediary services still add essential value. InfoToday 2001 also featured pre- and post-conference workshops, free sessions and cybertours in the exhibit hall, and two receptions.

In the exhibit hall several product announcements were made including Netpinions 1.0, an Internet monitoring service from CyberAlert, Inc.; the first public demo of OSIRIS from Bureau van Dijk; ISI Web of Knowledge, an integrated platform for ISI content; and, the availability of new Harcourt health science journals on IDEAL.
 

About Information Today, Inc.
Information Today, Inc. is the organizer of the InfoToday, KMWorld, Internet Librarian, Internet Librarian International, and Computers in Libraries conferences. ITI also publishes Information Today, KMWorld, Computers in Libraries, Searcher, Link-Up, MultiMedia Schools, and other books, directories, and online products for the library and information user and professional. ITI’s goal is to provide users and producers of information products and services with the information they need to do their jobs as effectively as possible.

InfoToday 2002 will be held May 14–16, 2002 at the New York Hilton & Towers, New York, NY. 

For more information on InfoToday 2001, visit https://www.infotoday.com/it2001/.