All good points, Sandy, and there is clearly some daylight
between the potential benefits of an IR and what we are
seeing in
their actual execution. I can think of two reasons off the
top
of my head why a series of departmental web sites would not
be as
effective as an IR in performing the tasks I previously
enumerated, First, there are surely economies of scale to be
gained by using a common software platform across multiple
campus
units. The duplication of effort that goes into manning
individual department web sites is nontrivial. Each needs
an IT
person, a server, some form of content management system, a
web
publishing mechanism, and so forth. An IR streamlines these
redundancies. Second, there are certainly people -
prospective
donors, students, researchers, etc. - who are interested not
just
in a single unit's scholarship but in the depth and breadth
of an
institution's intellectual output. For these souls, an IR
provides a better window into what the institution as a
whole is
all about as compared to a series of piecemeal departmental
web
sites.
Best, Greg
--
Greg Tananbaum
Consulting Services at the Intersection of Technology,
Content, & Academia
(510) 295-7504
gtananbaum gmail.com
http://www.scholarnext.com
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