Recursos de información
Information resource. As defined for the purposes of the National Referral Center: any organization, facility or individual willing and able to give authoritative responses to scientific or technical inquiries out of an existing store of knowledge or expertise.
Montague, Leonard. 1971. The librarians’ glossary of terms used in librarianship and the book crafts and reference book. Great Britain: The trinity press. Pág. 329
What and where are your information resources? And by what process can they be identified? Managers must face up to these practical questions if they genuinely accept the concept that information is a costly and valuable resource and one of strategic significance. If a resource, information should be managed in accordance with resource, information should be managed in accordance with resource management principles. But exactly what is a resource? And what are the principles of resource management? Finally, managers may ask: what are the basic units of measurement of this “new”, intangible resource?
Although most managers usually equate the term resource directly with certain specific things, usually tangible items such as people, land and energy, an examination of the evolution of resource management shows us that what we specifically regard as resources derive from circumstances, not from the intrinsic nature of the entities. One definition holds that a resource is:
“A resource of supply, support or aid, especially one held in reserve.”
Following this concept, a resource should be thought of fundamentally as a resource of reservoir of something needed or important in the circumstances. A resource is something critical to achieving success and for which there is a real, potential or perceived shortage. For example, such shortages during the past decade -oil and gas, strategic minerals, fresh water and clean air – have brought about the “conserver society” attitude and with it a heightened awareness of the relevance of resource management principles. Optimize, exploit, conserve and enhance are the operative verbs of the ‘80s.
Like money, labor, land raw materials and energy, information has come also to be recognized as a resource, because of any intrinsic characteristics, but because of the role information was beginning to play during the early ‘60s in government laws and policies (e.g. copyright revision, privacy), in the economy (e.g. the ascendancy of white-collar office workers) and in the success or failure, of increasingly competitive business organizations.
Money/capital | Financial management | 1920s | Heightened investment awareness, capital shortages and depression.
People | Personnel management | 1930s | Advances in behavioral sciences and social forces (unions, working conditions).
Equipment & supplies; raw materials | Material management | 1940s | World War II; critical shortage forecasts for strategic stockpiles.
Land & buildings | Space & property management | 1940s | Need for prudent use of office/plant/laboratory space.
Energy | Energy resources management | 1970s | OPEC embargo (oil prices); declining reserves of oil & gas; new alternative sources.
Information | Information resources management | 1970s | Computers; information explosion; paperwork burden on taxpayers.
Knowledge | Knowledge management | 1980s | Expert systems; artificial intelligence; economic & cultural value of knowledge.
Narrowing our perspective from an institutional view of the resources of business and government in general, to those of an individual organization, as they might be seen from the top by its Chief Executive Officer, the same logic applies to the identification of organizational resources, including information resources. The CEO might ask: What information used by my organization is critical to achieving success? An analysis of (literally) all information holdings and functions within a typical organization, tested against resource criteria, would probably show that only some of its information holdings and functions are in fact resources. The rest is either overhead, of personal interest only or otherwise of little or no value. But in virtually all organizations, we would find a number of specific information entities that would be identified as corporate resources – reservoirs of supply, support or aid critical to the achievement of organizational goals and objectives.
Burk, Cornelius y Horton, Forest. 1988. Infomap: a complete guide to discovering corporate information resources. United States of America: Prentice Hall. Pág. 14
What sort of entities might these be? Basically, an Information Resource Entity or IRE is a configuration of people, things energy, information and other inputs that has the capacity to create, acquire, provide, process, store or disseminate information; in short, the entities are those information holdings and information handling functions that are, or should be, or could be, managed as organizational resources. In most cases they are specific, named and structured configurations. However, in some situations, some resource entities may be diffused, without structure and unrecognized. Our concept of an information resource entity – a configured amalgam of various “input” resources – may be likened to the view that the primary constituents (resources) of a biological being are the cells, tissues and organs, each a functional entity in its own right, yet forming part of a larger, interconnected living system.
The two essential, interdependent capacities of an information resource entity are: 1) To provide information content, and 2) to store and/or process information. The latter is a function of the medium or conduct used to receive, store or transmit the content. Individual IREs are combinations of content and medium: if all conceivable IREs were arrayed, they would form a spectrum ranging from nearly pure content, such as the telephone and mail systems, or to pure medium such as a blank page of paper. The vast majority of information resource entities fall between these end-members, merging imperceptibility according to the relative proportions of content and medium they represent.
In official U.S. Federal Government parlance, the two terms that come closest to the information resource entity idea we advance here are:
1) Information system, and
2) Information technology facility.
The former term is defined as “the organized collection, processing, transmission and dissemination of information on accordance with defined procedures, whether automated or manual.” The latter is defined as “an organizationally defined set of personnel, hardware, software and physical facilities, a primary function of which is the operation of information technology.”
Thus defined, however, neither term evokes, at least directly, the critical notion of information content as a basic constituent of the entity. Both definitions are “systems” and “technology” oriented, ignoring the vast numbers of information sources and services that are neither systems nor based on technology. And, a more glaring omission, ignoring the subject, nature and purpose of the information that is processed.
Burk, Cornelius y Horton, Forest. 1988. Infomap: a complete guide to discovering corporate information resources. United States of America: Prentice Hall. Pág. 21
In order to count all the people, offices, computers, software packages, overhead dollars and so on that form the inputs to the organization’s entities, we would need an inventory of the sources, services, systems or other information entities that constitute the organization’s information resource base. These two views of resources can be related by a simple matrix, which forms a bridge between the traditional resource accounting schemata (for personnel, space) and the new accounting schema needed for information resources (sources, services and systems). In the no too distant future, new accounting and management structures will be required to explicitly recognize information entities, in addition to those of a human, physical and monetary nature.
To continue with our biological metaphor: The “resource input” view of information resources is analogous to considering that the basic organic elements of a living being are water and minerals, as opposed to cells and organs. As it is true that the water /mineral approach misses the essential property of life in a biological system, likewise, the people/hardware/software approach to information resources misses the essential property of intellectual content or meaning.
The third concept of an information resource holds that only information content, or information itself, constitutes the basic resource entity. Using this model, everything else involved in handling and producing information is ignored, and the management process deals exclusively with the information itself, through management of name, attributes, values and other representational symbols. The main obstacle to managing content in isolation is that content, from a practical management point of view, cannot be arbitrarily divorced from media or handling functions. Content is inextricably bound with both the container and the source, the central thought expressed in Marshall McLuhan’s dictum “the medium is the message.”
Burk, Cornelius y Horton, Forest. 1988. Infomap: a complete guide to discovering corporate information resources. United States of America: Prentice Hall. Pág. 24
Source: A place, store or person from which information can be obtained. The “stocks of knowledge” maintained or accessed by the organization. The source typically draws its information from pools of holdings: form example, a collection of books, a correspondence file or a data base; or from the custodians thereof – for example a librarian, records manager or computer center manager; or from an expert who possesses special knowledge in a subject domain. Sources may be internal or external to the organization.
Burk, Cornelius y Horton, Forest. 1988. Infomap: a complete guide to discovering corporate information resources. United States of America: Prentice Hall. Pág. 47
As noted earlier, there is some confusion over the concept of information resources, mainly as a result of the inclusion of technological resources in the concept. However, most commentators regard the following as constituting information resources is organizations.
Data
All organizations generate data about their activities. Thus, a local government department such as a housing department generates data on its housing stock, the physical state of the houses, the details of tenants and their rents, and so forth. A manufacturing company generates data on the production process, recording not only the number of items of each product manufactured in a given time, but also data on the reliability of the equipment used to produce those items, the turnover rate and sickness rate of workers, and the sales by outlet, by region and by sales person. Organizations also collect data on the state of their markets, the economic circumstances of the country or of its exports markets, and sone are more important than others because they enable the firm, for example, to identify potentially profitable products, markets and export areas. In other words, some data have potential for competitive advantage and must be maintained securely and effectively if the organization is to benefit from having them available.
Records
Data are very often associated with records of events, objects and persons. For example, a personnel record identifies an individual and includes many items of data that define the person – age, training level, sex, marital status, courses attended, year of entry to the organization, and many more. Again, a project will have many records associated with its management and ultimate completion, including all the data associated with, for example, product design and development, prototyping market testing and full-scale production. Much of the information in these records will be textual in character and will consist of files of reports, test results, correspondence with suppliers, etc. Records of these kinds have long been the province of records management and procedures have been evolved to ensure their effective filing, security, storage and eventual disposal. The techniques of records management are now being applied to computer-based files, under the heading of information management.
Text
Textual information has long been the province of libraries and information centers, concerned, as they have been, with the acquisition, organization, storage and dissemination of printed materials, most often from outside the organization of which the library or information centre formed a part, but also often including the maintenance of stores of internal reports, particularly in research-intensive organizations. With the development of office automation systems and the creation of many more electronic documents in organizations, the producers of such systems have become increasingly aware of the need for effective information retrieval systems to underlie the database of electronic documents.
Multimedia
All above together with sound recordings, graphics, pictures and video, may now exist together in a single “document”. Examples include various educational and reference sources published as CD-ROM packages, such as Microsoft’s Encarta encyclopedia; but increasingly, organizations are finding applications for multimedia databases in which, for example, word-processed documents may have sound comments attached by readers and may include pictures, for example in a personal database, or video clips, in records held by a consumer products test laboratory. While the other information resources referred to above may exist in either paper or electronic form, multimedia records require the application of information technology.
Information technology
Information technology embraces computers, telecommunications and software systems that aid the organization, transmission storage and utilization of what might better be called the knowledge resources dealt with above. The range of equipment and the variety of specialized knowledge needed for their effective control in enormous and for these reasons information technology is often dealt with by different sections in organizations. Thus, telecommunications, including telephone systems and facsimile transmission systems, are often controlled separately from the computer resources of the organization. Similarly, functional divisions of an organization often have more expertise in the matters underlying software packages (for example, for accounting purposes) than the computer managers. However, these technologies are merging, so that, for example, electronic mail may replace internal paper mail systems and, in some cases, external mail systems. Similarly, computer linkages between a manufacturer and the supplying companies may obviate the need for communication by other means. Consequently, there is an argument for requiring information technology (in all of these senses) to be managed under an umbrella that also covers the knowledge resources.
To these information resources we may add expert systems and other manifestations of development in artificial intelligence, such as the “learning” systems of this kind, which draw upon other information resources and the personal knowledge of individuals, already play an important, but little document, role in certain kinds of businesses (e.g. stock trading) and may is put to use support of organizational objectives in the future.
Feather, John; Sturges, Paul. 1997. International encyclopedia of information and library science. Great Britain: Routledge. Pág. 190
Recurso. Conjunto de elementos disponibles para resolver una necesidad o llevar a cabo una acción. Los recursos se pueden dividir de muchas formas, según autores. Para el cumplimiento de sus actividades, la gestión de información en unidades documentales cuenta con recursos de cinco clases:
a) Recursos conceptuales,
b) Recursos humanos,
c) Recursos de información como tales, excluyendo los no conceptuales,
d) Recursos técnicos y tecnológicos y,
e) Recursos económicos.
López, José. 2004. Diccionario enciclopédico de ciencias de la documentación. España: Editorial Síntesis. Pág. 372
Recurso de información. Es una configuración de personas, cosas, energía, información y otros ‘inputs’ que tienen la capacidad de crear, adquirir, suministrar, procesar, almacenar o difundir información. en suma, son contenedores de información y funciones de manejo de la información que pueden ser gestionadas como recursos de la organización. En la mayoría de los casos están identificadas y tiene una estructura. Las dos capacidades interdependientes de los recursos de información son:
1) que suministran contenido informativo, y
2) almacenan y/o procesan información.
En este punto se nos plantean dos cuestiones: ¿Cómo saber dónde un recurso dado puede estar en una unidad de información? y, ¿dónde estas entidades identificadas son de hecho un recurso corporativo, y donde no lo son?
Para contestar esas preguntas es necesario inventariar las fuentes, servicios, sistemas y cualquiera otras entidades o unidades informativas que pueden constituir un recurso básico de la organización.
Forest Horton ofrece una matriz en la que podemos unir los recursos tradicionales (personal, espacio) y los nuevos, necesarios para los recursos de información (fuentes, servicios y sistemas), y compara esas unidades con las células de un organismo, donde los recursos de entrada serían el agua y los minerales.
En la década de los noventa un recurso de información era identificado como toda la documentación textual y no-textual, interna o externa, formal o informal de la organización.
1) Las fuentes primarias de información, internas y externas de la organización.
2) Las fuentes secundarias de información de la organización (índices, catálogos, directorios y repertorios, diccionarios de elementos informativos de la organización, etc.), ya sean elaboradas, o no, dentro de la organización.
3) Las fuentes terciarias de la información institucional, internas y externas.
4) Las bases de datos institucionales y extra-institucionales.
5) Los productos informativos de la organización, comerciables o resultantes de la agregación de valor a los institucional o extra-institucionalmente disponibles.
Esta concepción mantiene que solamente el contenido de la información o ella por sí misma, es un recurso de información. El principal problema de esta teoría es que, a nivel de la gestión, el contenido no se puede diferenciar, ni manejar arbitrariamente separado del medio o del soporte en el que se encuentra (el medio es el mensaje). En resumen, el concepto de recurso de información incluye:
1) La información propiamente dicha, y
2) Las unidades o entidades que ofrecen de información.
Este último concepto podríamos definirlo como “un conjunto de personas, software, hardware, material, espacio, información que ofrecen o realizan funciones y actividades de almacenamiento, manejo y difusión de información o, alternativamente, como fuentes de información, servicios y sistemas”.
Según el concepto de recurso de información anterior, y siguiendo a Forest Horton, podemos dividir en cuatro grandes clases a los recursos de información. el esquema de divisiones es:
Primero: fuentes de información (information sources). Pueden ser un individuo, un documento, o una organización – un lugar – que facilita la información necesaria y los datos a los usuarios. ejemplos son el jefe de una unidad, un ordenador, el departamento de ventas, el editor.
Segundo: servicios de información (information service). Son organismos, centros o unidades que proporcionan a los usuarios ayuda para encontrar la información necesaria. Son: oficinas de información, servicios de referencia de las bibliotecas, servicios de indización y resumen, DSI… se diferencian de las fuentes en que éstas no tienen como objetivo final informar, lo hacen como una parte más de las funciones que tienen asignadas, sin que sea éste el objetivo final. Los servicios de información contienen y ofrecen fuentes de información.
Tercero: productos de información (information products). Es una mercancía útil ofrecida a los usuarios para ayudarles a encontrar la información necesaria. Son documentos primarios, como publicaciones periódicas, monografías, documentos secundarios, como bibliografías, etc. en cualquier tipo de soporte.
Cuarto: sistemas de información (information-systems). Es un proceso o procedimiento estructurado a través del cual la información o los datos son recogidos, organizados y distribuidos a los usuarios. la recogida de datos es la entrada y los informes son las salidas. El resto de los recursos suelen formar parte de él.
Dos de las cuatro clases de recursos se refieren al significado: fuentes y sistemas (Primero y Cuarto); los otros dos (Segundo y Tercero), a la finalidad: productos y servicios.
López, José. 2004. Diccionario enciclopédico de ciencias de la documentación. España: Editorial Síntesis. Pág. 372
A common response to deficiencies in organizational data was to seek capital investment for new technology. This perception underestimated the requirements for system and facility maintenance, technical support, user training, data architecture development, data security, and distribution. Lack of organizational readiness stalled the deployment of information systems. Inflated expectations and uncoordinated usage of data services nullified the value of the information system. Erratic funding patterns destroyed development projects, making it extremely difficult to retain technical personnel. Poor maintenance damaged equipment and threatened data integrity. Cultural managers eager to modernize without fully understanding the implications of information resources management eventually abandoned support for the Western ideas.
Management seeking an easy fix to the organizational data problem mandated data compilation activities by the functional divisions. Besides undermining information resources as a critical organizational asset, little technical assistance was provided. Unmotivated managers neglected data quality and resisted data distribution. The turnover of administrators caused discontinuity in data resources development.
Information resources could be compared to utility services, such as water, the value of which was suppressed until serious issues developed in quality and supply. Often neglected was the accountancy of the value contribution of the information system, beyond periodic technical improvements. Benchmark studies should identify cost performance as well as the critical roles of information resources within the organization.
Law, Wai. 2005. Information resources development challenges in a cross-cultural environment. En Khosrow-Pour, Mehdi (ed.) Encyclopedia of information science and technology, volume III. United States: Idea Group Reference. Pág. 1479
Since the mid – 1990s, under the promotion of the tide of information superhighway construction in many countries, information resources development in China entered a new phase. In 1997, the Chinese government constituted the “Draft on China’s Informationalization,” drawing the outline of China’s information infrastructure, which includes six elements: information resource, national information network, information technology application, information industry, information professional, and information policy code and standard.
Information resource was set as the primary element among the six, which showed the state’s emphasis on its development. This also indicated that people once again realized the importance of information resources development. Several years later, the proposal was accepted as a part of China’s tenth “five-year plan,” which marked that information resources development became the central task of China’s informationalization drive.
The concept “information resources development” used in this term refers to collection, processing, organization and dissemination of document resources as well as their digitalization and networking. Factual and data resources ought to be included in the concept. However, China’s progress in these aspects is relatively slow. In recent years, people started to realize the importance of factual and data resources development. The departments concerned have started to work out a plan for constructing the National Data Center.
Lai, Maosheng; Fu, Xin; Zhang, Liyang. 2005. Information resources development in China. En Khosrow-Pour, Mehdi (ed.) Encyclopedia of information science and technology, volume III. United States: Idea Group Reference. Pág. 1482
