A Framework for Managing Web Information: Current Research and Future Directions Ting-Peng Liang Dept. of Info. Management National Sun Yat-Sen Univ. Kaohsiung, Taiwan, R.O.C. liang@mis.nsysu.edu.tw Michael J. P. Shaw Dept. of Business Admin. Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Champaign, IL 61820, U.S.A m-shaw2@staff.uiuc.edu Chih-Ping Wei Dept. of Info. Management National Sun Yat-Sen Univ. Kaohsiung, Taiwan, R.O.C. cwei@mis.nsysu.edu.tw Abstract The rapid growth of Internet and world wide web users has created a new platform for information exchange. The information available on the web is increasing in an unprecedented speed. On the one hand, the web becomes a very rich information source. On the other hand, the uncontrolled information growth also calls for a better management. This paper proposes a framework that integrates existing effort in managing web information and outlines major issues for future research. 1. Introduction Since the Internet was opened for commercial use, the information on the world wide web (WWW) has increased dramatically. Now, it seems that the web is the place where people would go for information they need. Millions of individuals and companies are making their information accessible through the web. The technology is used for not only inter-organizational but also intra- organizational information exchange to integrate various types of communication needs. These include: (1) The Internet for exchanging and searching for information, setting up electronic storefront, providing customer services, and collecting market intelligence. (2) The Extranet for external coordination and information sharing with channel partners such as suppliers, distributors, and dealers, and (3) The Intranet for managing operations, processes, organizational knowledge, and internal communication within an enterprise. The explosive growth of information on the web is primarily due to several characteristics of the technology. First, information on the web is multimedia, which is richer than the traditional computer-based data presentation. Second, all data are stored and presented in a standard format. This makes it much easier for information integration and ad hoc retrieval. Third, the web is scalable. That is, new information can easily be added to the web with little restriction. Fourth, the web adopts distributed data processing. Every site on the web is independent of others and has a very strong autonomy. Any modification of existing information has virtually no effect on other information available on the web. Finally, web documents allow nonlinear organization to better fit human cognition. Instead of relying on sequential presentation, web uses hyperlinks to organize multimedia documents, which adds richness to the human-machine communication process. The nature of web offers an information environment in which every user is both information consumer and provider. Although the rapid growth of web makes more data easily available, it has also created many problems that need to be solved. For web users, the information explosion causes significant information overload that requires additional effort and concentration to maintain the desired level of decision performance. The nonlinearity of hyper documents may cause disorientation that the user tends to lose one’s sense of location and direction. The uncontrolled growth of data also reduces the quality of the data. Some data may be incorrect or out of date, while others may be incomplete. These significantly reduce the value of web as a reliable information source. For information providers, they have little control of who is using what data and how the data are used. How to maintain the ever-changing and continuously growing data to remain current is another headache for them. The information transmission process has to consider data security and performance. All these Proceedings of the 32nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 1999 0-7695-0001-3/99 $10.00 (c) 1999 IEEE Proceedings of the 32nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 1999 1