Smashing the Silos: Towards Convergence in Information Management and Resource Discovery
Warwick S. Cathro · 2009
It is easy for institutions to overlook the implications of the fact that network space is shared. Institutions tend not to focus on the fact that their clients are actually the users of many services. These users do not wish to repeat information search many times in different systems. To use Dempsey’s words, users wish to refer to intellectual and cultural materials flexibly and transparently, without concern for institutional or national boundaries. To meet the needs of our users, we must address the issue of convergence. At its basic level, convergence is about providing users with the power to search across categories of information resource that have traditionally been separated.