Initial Intranet Development
Information technologists have often taken the initial lead in developing intranets by virtue of being the provider of the technical infrastructure. Often their partners have been Communications/Public Affairs, Human Resources, and the Information Center/Corporate Library. Situations in which the Information Center took the initiative and assumed primary responsibility, as in the case of Microsoft, appear to have been rare.
 

Current Role of Information Professionals
Current research indicates that information professionals/professional librarians are moving to the forefront of intranet development. They are either "senior partners" with the IT department, or, more often in small- to medium-sized organizations, are assuming primary responsibility for the intranet. The partnership developing between information professionals and IT professionals makes a great deal of sense and is long overdue. (I've been impatiently waiting for it since the 1970s). 

The two types of professionals come from opposite ends of the spectrum. IT professionals think that the end goal is content input, while to an information professional, the objective is to get content out. In other words, IT professionals typically do not consider the need to access and retrieve information from the user's point of view and thus have no idea of how complex or necessary a job it is. Consequently, the relationship between the two professionals is not an easy one: Both can find it hard to understand and respect the other's perspective.
 

[Complete article available in print] 

 

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