Papers in PDF format

Reorganised by the Web: Bringing the Missing Link into Focus
Paula Garrett, University of Sydney Library, Australia Email: p.garrett@library.usyd.edu.au
Steve Ryan, University of Sydney Library, Australia Email: s.ryan@library.usyd.edu.au
The Web environment is a "natural" for the delivery of many types of information based client services. In
libraries the Web offers a central platform from which a wide and increasing range of information resources
can be organised as well as accessed. Moreover, the Web provides the most suitable vehicle for keeping up
with the continual change inherent in the new information and technology marketplace and the digital library.
Web sites will probably always be "under construction." Adaptability and visibility are increasingly becoming
our corporate and academic survival tools.
Information based organisations such as libraries can actually use the process of designing a client-focussed
Web as a restructuring tool if staff resources are properly allocated or reallocated along the way. The Web
design process forces an organisation to take a hard look at values, priorities and processes. Mimicking library
departmental structure--Acquisitions, Cataloguing, Circulation, Reference--on the Web will most often be
meaningless and useless to clients. Web design needs to center around client processes not staff procedures.
In this way the Web can begin to graphically reflect the significant changes needed in an organisation’s
structure, particularly in its staffing, to better support its clientele.
To date there are library Web sites, such as the University of Sydney Library [HREF1], exemplifying the
framework of a client based interface, but often the substance or content is thin. Typically, Web designers and
authors will add those activities on top of their existing responsibilities. Then the Web begins its evolution as
a useful, valuable organisational presence. Expectations grow, workloads increase, and management issues
inevitably surface. In pyramid shaped institutions Web development often stays isolated with a few staff
members. Most likely this isolation will bring about its demise and thereby the failure of these information
organisations to adapt to the demands of their changing service environment.
In creating a client focussed Web design, new collaborations among staff and between staff and clientele
emerge if the structure is supportive. Collaborations encourage greater information sharing and result in what
Paepcke refers to as “information compounds,” new information “constructed from the accumulated pieces of
previously retrieved and newly acquired information.” [Paepcke 1996 [HREF2]] Staff and clients “need to
find, analyze, and understand information to use it in multiple contexts, and to manipulate it in collaboration
with colleagues of different backgrounds and focus of interest.” Paepcke [ 1996 [HREF3]]
Organisations will probably find that the intersecting circles of staff which form in designing a Web site will
not fit into their pyramid shaped structures. Web shaped structures of management have been discussed by
authors like Sally Helgesen in The Web of Inclusion. Although Helgesen does not use the World Wide Web
model, her concepts closely resemble those upon which the World Wide Web is based -- collegial participation,
open communication and accessibility. “Since web structures are circular rather than pyramidal, those who
emerge in them as leaders tend to be people who feel comfortable being in the center of things rather than at
the top, who prefer building consensus to issuing orders, and who place a low value on the kind of symbolic
perks and marks of distinction that define success in the hierarchy. This preference on the part of web-style
leaders infuses their organizations with a collegial atmosphere, which in turn enables people to focus upon
what needs to be done rather than who has the authority to do it.” [Helgesen 1995]