Electronic Precinct - October 1998

An Information Strategy for the University

Everyone in the University relies on good quality information to enable them to teach, learn, and carry out effective research and administration. The amount of available information is increasingly delivered electronically as well as in print on paper. In order to ensure that everyone has access t o the information he/she needs in a timely fashion and has the equipment necessary to use it, an institutional strategy for the management of information and the identification of information needs is essential.

A working group under Pro-Vice-Chancellor Peter Goodhew will be developing information strategy proposals for the University. The group will be consulting with a wide range of groups of staff and students over the next nine months. Important issues for discussion will relate not only to the increas ing teaching and research opportunities offered by modern technology but also to the role of more conventional information resources such as libraries. Other topics of concern involve the increasing integration of administrative and managerial information systems (for example finance or student rec ords) with teaching and research information systems such as libraries, the University's Web pages, the internet and computer-based teaching (CBT) material.

Members of the working group will be holding discussion meetings with many groups but would also welcome input from individual staff and students. If you have views on how the University should develop any or all of its information systems please make them known to Professor Goodhew or to one of th e other members of the group (Professors P Batey, M Hoey, S Holloway, J Saunders, Dr L Schonfelder and Ms F Thomson).