In search for a perfect system

I wrote this about 15 years ago. It is not finish and never got published. I just thought I just share it anyway verbatim.

In Search of a Perfect System
by Ghazali Mohamed Fadzil

Twenty years ago when we talked about the automation of library or what is commonly known today as information resource center, we would definitely be talking about the computerization of their operations; catalogue, circulation, serial and acquisition. Then a while after that we were looking at a system called Information Retrieval System (IRS) which primarily is a system that has permit us to determine our own database structures, store data and retrieve them according to certain predetermine search function. Example of the earliest IRS system is Inmagic and then came CDS/ISIS and others. The hardware based also evolved from big machine like mainframe to PC and, now, client server technology. Some people say that there will be no end to this but it also only just the beginning.

There is a trend to anything. Ever since the history of humankind, some sort of patterns and trends prevail during human life span, be it sociological, economical or technological. Information Resource Center, Information Center or library has to particularly be aware of two most important trends. Information and Information Technology trends.

Information Trend

It all started with a free flowing format where information were passed around endlessly without any specific format or structure. Then suddenly somebody realized that there was a better way to organize the scattered information in the form of structured format. Which was later used in organizing information for a computer to read and display? This is what we called later a database. After the structured database then came along the introduction of abstract and free text indexing. Followed by variable length databases, fulltext, fullimage and now the concept of multimedia polluted the world of information. In a way the trend where the information are being stored and retrieved is also more or less the reflection of how the information being used. From a bibliographic type of information, now people are using information as it is and having the capability of manipulating the information into knowledge. Instead of moving towards an information society, we are actually moving towards a knowledge society. A society which takes in information, digests them and reproduces them as knowledge.

If we look into the trend of information usage in detail we could trace it from informal to specific use. Specific does not only mean specific in terms of information but in all aspects. Specific in use, type of information, format, time and need. Information of highest value now is information that can be used immediately as a decision making tools. In other words information that can produce a certain vital knowledge about something. Undoubtedly, this will make the person who could produce or provide such information very powerful or influential. The question remains what exactly is that information. How do we recognize such information? How do we get them? When can we get them and at what cost?

It is simply a case of ‘it is near yet so far.' You can say it as simple as finding the exact need of the client, but, what the client relay to you may be a matter of syntax or his own perception of things. Not really a reflection of the entire group needs. So where does it end, searching for a perfect system is like searching for an unknown then. Rest assured that nothing in this world is perfect, we just doing our best with the best possible means. As far as information system is concern the trend remains as to provide the widest, accurate and the most vital information at the fastest speed. The fact that it is still true till today is that most information systems developed are technology driven rather then needs. The information formats, types, services, and processes normally have to conform to technology. This has to change.


Information Technology Trend

Technologically there have been a lot of major changes since the introduction of the first computer. Information technology is getting smaller and powerful by each day, to keep pace of these changes is a full time job by itself. So what are we supposed to do? Go with the flow? Even if we manage to do just that we would not be able to do anything else at all. Nothing gets implemented, the technology changes faster than we could sit down and decide on any new implementation. Radical you might say. Well, that is exactly what going to happen and sooner than we like it to be.

The only sensible thing to do is to base every new implementation of information technology on the trend of our own profession. Even this is not a fool proof strategy. At least we have the consolation of knowing that we are not totally lost. If we trace the trend of computer technology alone could bog our mind with a lot of jargons and complexities; from mainframe, mini computer, super computers, workstations, PCs, Notebooks and Laptop. That is to name the type alone. Then you have to know about a system whether it is turnkey, dedicated, integrated, distributed, IRS (Information Retrieval System), Multi-media which comprises of another set of imaging, sound, text, CD-ROM and whatever else that you could think off. To make things even more complex, came telecommunication technologies, these make the changes even rampant. At first you need your PC’s to talk to each other than suddenly somebody came along saying you need LAN (Local Area Network), WAN (Wide Area Network), BBS (Bulletin Board System), Groupware and Internet until you do not even know where else you are connected to. They all claim to provide or make your information activity better. Regardless of whether you need them at all, they just dump everything upon you.


So what is the information resource center supposed to do?


What any information resource center or rather information professionals should do is firstly to evaluate his or her position in the organization. Position here means literally the position of their post in the organizational structure and their position as an influential person in the organization. A direct access to the decision maker in the organizational structure is the biggest asset any information professionals could have which means whatever it is they only need to convince one person for any critical decision or any new ideas. Evenso, this is not always an advantage, having an understanding immediate superior could be the best thing that ever happened to you. Evaluate your position in the organization properly and do something about it if you think you need to change structurally. To some it may be best the information resource center to be under the CEO itself, some part of R&D, or may be with the Administration, it is for you to make it work or make any changes.

What are we supposed to achieve is based on the organization’s goals and objectives. To really know about the objectives is very important to the roles and functions of any information resource centers. Careful and proper observation of what your organization trying to achieve in itself will explain the tasks that lay ahead for the information professionals. Sensitivity on the part of the information professionals is vital here. In the world of changing technologies, methods and concepts the information professionals should be prepared for every change in needs of their organization. It is no more of a once in a lifetime information needs survey methodology. The requirement of today’s on information can change as fast as the clock ticks. Literally speaking, at every tick of the clock million bits of information being transferred worldwide, with it also the changes in flow, types and needs. The moral of it is that all information professionals will have to be up-to-date with their organization’s current information needs. Continuos information survey should be formulated to maintain a degree of effectiveness to the services rendered to the users.


To do an effective survey or to maintain a continuous survey on information needs the information professionals in the first place have to identify who their clients are indefinitely. This should be straight forward enough. Base on whatever statistics that you have you can easily identify your regular users, but then, you also should look into other users that has not been using your services. Find out why is this so. Is it your services? Your marketing? Or your information is not what they want. The biggest challenge for certain information resource centers in Malaysia right now is to get their client to use the information resource center services. It is for a fact that it is not because of lack of appropriate information but rather more the lack of proper marketing strategy, timely information and the right type of information. So, firstly you have to be sure with whom and what kind of information you are dealing with. Outline as detail as possible on every of their information requirement. You can do this in several ways, Information Analysis, Information Need Analysis, InfoMapping or whatever you want to call it. Just make sure that you have everything pertaining to your clients and their needs. When you have this information your next step would be to survey the market and source around any information system that can be used to help you with your information management. This could be an Integrated Information resource center System, Information Retrieval System, Expert System or it could be just any of the application packages available out there. Your ultimate system could be just a derivation and combination of the capabilities of PC based software packages such as Database Management System (DBMS), (Dbase IV, Dbase for Windows, Paradox, etc), Spreadsheets (Lotus 123, Excel, etc), and Word Processing ((WordStar, Word, WordPerfect, etc.). The only thing that you need to be reminded of is that there is no right answer to every problem or needs. Just the best solutions for you to cope with and always think of the future needs. Try to think and acquire systems that could evolve with time and technology. Which leads us to our next point of discussion.

Basically, to me there are five types of systems that in every way deals directly with the activity of an information resource center. They are Information Retrieval System (IRS), Integrated Library Systems, Multimedia Library Systems, Groupware and a Total System. As I mentioned earlier IRS is a software that enables us to define our own database structure, indexing technique, search methodology and design our own output format. In fact they do a lot more if we know how to manipulate them. One micro based commercially example of such software is Inmagic which quiet famous when it was first introduced. The more famous of this type in Malaysia is UNESCO’s CDS/ISIS. This software is available free for a non-profit organization. A lot of people thought that since this software is free it is not that good or useless to use. On the contrary if we could manipulate its strong point it can be the most powerful tool for your information management. It will be even better if ever UNESCO will come out with a Windows version. A small and a medium size information resource center would certainly benefit from this software. You do not need to go through the hustle of implementing an integrated system because no matter how you justify it you do not really need such system. CDS/ISIS would work wonders for you and improve you information handling three folds. Basically with it you can create any type and format of information database and retrieval system which is exactly what any small information resource center needs. It is not the system that counts it is the information and how we handle those information that really matters. Information resource center or library is not about system or books anymore. It is about information, which will put us information professionals in a better perspective.

Dedicated information resource center system is a system that mechanized the way we manage the information resource center. That is all there is to it. Unless your organization has a lot of money, going to be an institute or going to be opened to the public do not go for the integrated information resource center system. If you want to, make sure the system that you choose is flexible enough for you to fully implement IRS functions using different templates for different databases. What I really mean here is that for whatever the systems you decided upon make sure such system would allow you to create a lot of databases using the existing templates rather then just bibliographic databases. Set up you own searching and display modes and could handle multimedia access. If you could identify such system’s existence for you to use go for it. It is in a way you are identifying the best solution to your needs. But it is by no means a perfect system for you. Simply because there is no such system. Based on current technologies I would say the best solution for information resource centers should cover every aspect of information entities. Information just do not come in one format or package. Once they are being repackaged by someone they could take many forms and format. So it is impossible to predetermine any future formats. At the moment I would say the best solution would be a solution that covers multimedia, interfaces to on-line services local and international, interface to local Internet host, CD-ROM and a system that complies to Z39.50 standard for information interchange. The system should also be something that can evolve for future requirement. If you acquire any integrated information resource center system that can only do the information resource center functions without these extras, then, I would say you have just wasted a lot of money for something that any PC could do even better.

To refresh, study your requirement properly and decide on what you really need. If you have found out that you really need an integrated information resource center system and you know a lot of new thing you could do with it, proceed by all means. But, that does not mean that your problem is over. It is, for all you know, only just the beginning for you. I do not mean to be very negative about these things, but it is a matter of precaution. Be prepared for any eventualities.

Seven criteria for system evaluation

• Own staff and environment

The best way to start is to firstly evaluate your own backyard. Find out what kind of environment and staff that you have. What are the levels of expertise that you can rely on. Are they equip to handle the task that you are going to set them to? If not, are they the kind of staff that can learn very fast or at the worst willing to try and learn new things? Or you need to get new staff who is equip with certain knowledge to handle the job. Sometimes you can just rely on the IT personnel of you organization.

• Functions and features

Of course this is the most important criteria to any user. All functions and features should be what the users want based on their information requirement. It is helpful if the users being specific with their needs and evaluate all the possibilities possible. If you cannot satisfy you information requirement with one system, maybe a combination of several systems is the answer. If you strife hard enough to cleanse you thirst you will find the answer. However, you have to bare in mind that that is no such thing as a perfect system. If you think it is perfect now, it will not be in the second year. Information are dynamic which warrant changes most of the time in terms of structure, requirement, speed and technologies to handle them.

• Flexibility

As I said earlier in this paper to get an information resource center system just to handle the day to day operation of your center is a bad investment. Any PC would do the job even better. The main thing is to get the most open and flexible system there is so that you can create and produce new information products and services. Flexible in terms of database structure, application, templates, searching and the whole setup of the system. Since, majority of today application software are Windows based and GUI is the most vital features from the user perspective, find a system that has these capabilities. Where cut and paste is the norm the user has somewhat a limited option to play around with the information for report or statistics.

• First line support from vendor

After you have satisfied with the functions and features of any system or at least you are satisfy with the vital part of it, the next criteria to evaluate is its first line support. As far as information resource center system is concern the supports that you need and should be aware of are system, hardware and database support. Software and hardware support if your system is a stand alone and system and database if it is client/server technology. Whichever option you want to go for, support is always a major concern to any user. Evaluate how many experience support staffs your vendor has. Are the experiences in the area of information resource center and information? What are their qualification backgrounds? At least one must has a library science degree. If not you have to be prepared for series of miscommunication and misinformation. You can never stress enough on the importance of your first line support. Some say it is a ‘do or die’ kind of situation.

• Second line support from vendor

Usually the second line of support will come from the principal distributors, which is normally overseas. Their activities, standing and how often they get together with their local distributors would tell you a lot about their support structure. Furthermore if you are thinking of customizing some part of the system the principal is the most likely organization to do it. So, if you have a principal that is so far away for you to get constantly in touch with, you going to face a lot of problem. The worst part is that your first line support wont do any better than you are. To say the least this is the worst possible scenario that any information professionals would want to have.

• Software support staff, database and system

You also have to be aware of the kind of support staff that you can have for your software, database and system. What are their credibility’s, capabilities and career history? If you are looking for stable support staff the one that move around a lot from company to company is obviously not your ideal person to support you and your system. It is a fact, maybe because of the economic upswing, that company pinches staff from each other. But the adverse effect is the user will lose confidence and faith of the whole industry altogether. There was a case where a certain support person boasted that he had worked in four different companies in the last five years. He or she is definitely the last person on earth that I am going to acquire to support my system. In fact I am not going to even think a second about the product he or she trying to sell. No matter how good this guy is you are the one who going to end up as the biggest loser. So think about this and do a little bit of research on their background discreetly. Sometimes all you need to do is just to listen to them.

• Development team

Most of us tend to miss this requirement or we simply just do not know it’s importance. The software development team is the section where normally the system people gather to develop and improve any particular system. Historically, this development team used to be the principal or the main supplier of the system. But, with the change in world economy and when everything is getting global this is not necessarily true anymore. There are a lot of instance where the main supplier is in Europe or Australia but the development team for the system is in Asia. This situation is to the advantage of any user around this region.

Users could really keep track of new enhancement to their system and see very well how the system developed. Our ideas and suggestion could easily be sent across and discussed so that our specific need could be implemented easily in the new version.

• Customer base

To get a system which is widely used could be a two edges sword. Evenso, in comparison, to have a wide user based work much better for the users. The main advantage is that it ensure the stability of the system, the supplier and it goes without saying, your support to the system. So, I really think you should think twice of getting the most sophisticated system available in the market if it is new with no customer base. That is unless you are so sure and confident of it’s existence.

It really can work against you. If a system is new in the market, several questions should be asked. One, who can effort the price? If you are the only one, forget about the system because you definitely will end up being deserted by your local supplier and left supporting the system yourselves. Business is business, if a supplier could only get one account chances are they are not going to spend a lot just to maintain you. Two, who are the players behind the system? What experience do they have? How many information professionals? What is their financial standing? In short find out whether they have what it takes to stay in business in this region.

• How long has the system in the market and it’s developmental history

This may be a part of what I have already said earlier, but, it is safe to check this history. You should be looking for a system that will evolve not stagnant. The more development they have in the past means you have a system and a development team that are dedicated to the system and its improvement. Development means development in terms of incorporating new technologies as well as introducing new functions and services.