News

posted on 18 July 2008 06:05

Trade association AIIM has released a survey on Findability, 'the art and science of making content findable,' which it says shows that search tools don't find all the information we need. Content without access, it says, is worthless.

The survey is typical of its kind, in attempting to establish and justifying a need for the products and services sold by the underwriters of the report, OpenText and Vignette, and AIIM supplier members.

This 65+ page study of 528 end users found that a majority of respondents believe that findability in their organization is worse to much worse than their own organization's consumer-facing web sites and 49% of respondents have no formal goal for enterprise findability within their organizations.

For example:

- 49% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that fnding the information I ned to do my job is difficult and time consuming
- 69% of respondents believe that <50% of their organization's information is searchable online
- 49% of respondents have no formal goal for enterprise findability within their organizations
- 50% of respondents believe that findability in their organization is worse to much worse than their own organization's consumer-facing web sites.

The basic idea is that organisations need a content findability strategy. This is a new idea and the people involved will need IT, linguistic, business and other skills. Ironically enough, finding out about findability is hard work The starting point, AIIM might say, is to read the study, which can be downloaded below.

AIMM is the Association for Information and Image Management, and started out many years ago as the US National Microfilm oganisation.

Download the report here.

^{[Martin Edwards, news writer.]}