The Intranet Challenge: Keeping Content Fresh Cindy L. Chick Special Libraries Association June 11, 2002

The History of Intranet Development Denial Taking Control Empowering Content Creators

Lessons from a 1 st Generation Intranets Maintaining content is the biggest challenge Technology shouldn’t be the ones maintaining content Portals, content management systems etc. are all trying to solve this same problem

Successful Intranets… Empower content authors Integrate database driven content Include appropriate vendor content

Use the Tools you Already Have For example - Outlook public folders

Products/OlLinker/OlLinker.htm

Linking into Your Document Management System

Successful Intranets… Empower content authors Integrate database driven content Include appropriate vendor content

How does it work? Content is separated from the page design. Information is pulled from a database and displayed on a web page. Newest data reflected on the page without intervention

Link information is stored in a SQL database.

The links can be updated without touching the page...

Can present the data in different ways.

Update info in one place - in the database - updates are then reflected everywhere.

It’s also searchable..

Limitation: Each entry shown below consists of the same fields in the same order.

Get the full functionality of an Access database

The library catalog as a source for dynamic data...

Don’t have a lot of technical expertise? Products like Gossamer Threads – Find a consultant to help.

Successful Intranets… Empower content authors Integrate database driven content Include appropriate vendor content - Let someone else keep the content current!

It takes a village..