Managing Information: Chinese Edition

New Preface

We first visited China in 1996 for the IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations) Beijing Conference. Literally thousands of Librarians joined together to celebrate their profession, to share the latest thinking, to discuss, argue and learn. Partly as a result of contacts made then and partly because of the increasing globalisation of higher education and the information which supports it, we have visited China frequently since then. We have talked and listened at conferences and we have discussed and made institutional partnerships. Throughout that period two things have become very clear. The first is the sheer dynamism of China. The growth of the economy, the huge projects which build railways and dams and spread wireless technology, the new buildings and a new sense of national confidence, culminating in the Olympics of 2008 bear witness to a country making great strides. Second is the centrality of information to all of these activities and indeed to the transformation of Chinese society itself.

It is then very flattering to have this book translated into Chinese. Of course the world has moved on since the text was first written in 2000. Many of the examples cited are British or European and may seem removed from the Chinese experience. However, the underlying principles and practices described in the book remain constant and absolutely fundamental to an understanding of how the information world is developing. It remains as true as ever, as we commented in the Preface, that the book is meant “to open up the topic of information management and to encourage reflection on one’s own institution and how it is dealing with the lifeblood of its activity”.

Universities exist to create knowledge, to explore it, to share it, teach it and consume it. Whether the information is raw research data or an undergraduate blog it needs to be managed, to be bibliographically secure, to be preserved and to be shared accountably. It may seem surprising that the principles involved in all of these activities are largely the same as they were for the great libraries of several thousand years ago. What has perhaps changed is the need to formalise many of the procedures and practices so that all of the members of the university have a shared understanding of their roles and responsibilities in the information chain. It is equally important that librarians understand their place and role in the world of teaching and research.

And the relevance of the book to information managers remains that underlying strand of principles. We champion the importance of understanding why information is important in teaching, research and administration. We argue for the importance of information strategies as a way of committing the whole institution to best practice and to clarity of roles and purpose, we stress the need for controlling the information which the institution produces in every aspect from preservation to intellectual property rights. We argue for the importance of a partnership with academic staff in managing the materials which support learning in an internet enabled world. We stress the role of information in the smooth administration of universities. Of course the world has moved on, and there is no mention of a range of new technologies and activities from social networking to data mining. This does not matter. Throughout the book we stress that the rate of change continues to increase and that it is a mistake to focus on specific technologies or content. What will drive successful information management is the understanding of and application of a set of consistent principles which will guide how each new application is introduced and managed.