Informationsinfrastrukturen im Wandel. Changing ... - DINI

Preface
by Sabine Wefers
Spokeswoman of the DINI-group Information Management
Nowadays, there is an increasing demand for “Integrated Information
Management” as we call it. Can we take a collective approach to this question
or should we confine the assessment to individual universities and their
local circumstances? The German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft)
promotes projects which aim to improve scientific
and technical research facilities. The so-called “Leistungszentren für Forschungsinformation”
have been funded as institutions with a wide range of
different, but altogether successful information structures.
Universities increasingly require certain services to have very high
availability. The synergies and cross-dependencies of academic and
administrative computing are not to be underestimated. More particularly
purpose was to adopt structures for the strategic planning concerning the
developments in areas such as e-learning, institutional information systems
and access to online information resources.
Twenty years of convergence in the United Kingdom have shown that
convergence can be described by reference to a simple classification (see
Managing Academic Support Services in Universities, ed. by Terry Hanson,
London 2005, Introduction: page 5):