Managing your Internet and Intranet services: the Information Professional's Guide to Strategy (2nd ed.)

Citation

Knight, J.P. (2005), "Managing your Internet and Intranet services: the Information Professional's Guide to Strategy (2nd ed.)", Program: electronic library and information systems, Vol. 39 No. 1, pp. 87-89. https://doi.org/10.1108/00330330510578895

This book is aimed at the LIS (Library and Information Science) professional, and probably LIS students, who are, or are about to be, managing an organisation's web presence. This target audience is likely to already be comfortable and familiar with concepts of information organisation, searching and retrieval, and promotion of services. This book builds upon those skills to enable LIS professionals to take an active role in the design, implementation and ongoing maintenance of web sites and empower them to successfully interact with the other stakeholders in such sites.

The book starts by the obligatory overview of why the internet is important to an organisation, who the users are likely to be and an explanation of some basic terminology. This is followed by a brief discussion on why LIS professionals should be intimately involved with web site design and management. The next two chapters describe the options for getting a site set up on the web and making a business case for such a site. Next the author looks at the nitty‐gritty of organising and populating the web site, managing the technical service provision, site design and promotion and content. A chapter is then devoted to the benefits and problems of maintaining an intranet. Following a chapter on keeping the web site fresh and up to date, the author presents a number of “golden rules” of web site design and implementation. The book concludes with a resource list and an index, and provides a set of useful references at the end of each chapter.

The basic premise that a LIS professional is the ideal candidate for managing a web site is something that few such professionals will disagree with. In that respect the book is “preaching to the converted” given its primary target audience. Whilst it is true that information management, editing, staff management, technology, project management, budgeting and business knowledge are skills that many recent graduates and professionals who have kept on top of their professional development portfolios will have, this book is not a “magic bullet” for LIS staff that have weaknesses in any of those fields. Instead it shows how the skills the LIS practitioner does have can be applied to the field of web site management and what to watch out for.

Introducing the LIS professional to some of the problems that can occur when dealing with other groups is one of the strengths of this book. In many organisations web sites have almost by default (or history) been set up by “techies” and even if they do hand over the management of the content and layout of the site to the LIS staff it is likely that they will wish to continue to have an input into technologies that are deployed. Other groups such as senior management, graphics designers, departmental staff, customers, web site visitors, suppliers and lawyers may also want to have ideas on how a web site should work. This book provides some guidance on dealing with these different groups and their often conflicting needs and desires.

A minor downside to the book is that it sometimes seems unclear whether it is aimed at LIS professionals working on a random organisation's main web site or just working on a library web site as part of a larger organisation. For the most part the target appears to be the former, but in places there is a definite “library” slant. For example, Chapter 6, “Populating and Organizing your Web site” starts by asking the question “What makes a good library Web site?” Whilst library web sites often include features that can be transplanted into other types of site, there is not a similar section on “What makes a good e‐commerce web site?” or “What makes a good politician's election Web site?” Different types of web site require different approaches and technologies, and focusing on one class of site when considering the tasks of populating and organising the site may be counterproductive, especially if other professions are involved. Incidentally, “Populating and Organising” seems the wrong way round to me – surely one should have a structure in place before one starts populating a site with content?

One of the best features in the book is Chapter 12's list of “Golden Rules”. These are some simple guidelines that should always be considered when deploying web technologies. It is all too easy to see the latest and greatest technology and then attempt to apply it to one's own web site, irrespective of whether it is useful to the site's users. These golden rules point out some common pitfalls that web site owners have repeatedly made (and continue to make!), and is worth the price of the book alone. In fact I hope the third edition comes with an A3 poster listing them that can be pinned on the office wall to remind web staff where they might go wrong!

On the whole the second edition of this book is a worthwhile purchase for its target audience. It makes no claim to be a technical guide nor an authoritative legal tome, but provides more than adequate coverage for the basic business management associated with a web site. As a web presence is rapidly becoming a necessity for many organisations, LIS practitioners should seriously consider ensuring that they are prepared for taking part in this revolution. This book should help to prepare them for that task.