April 1997 € Volume 24 € Number 2

Content, Pointers and Intranet

By Michael Trick

Two years ago, I became the first editor of INFORMS Online (IOL; available on the world wide web at http://www.informs.org), the online information service of INFORMS.

INFORMS Online was the result of years of work by Jim Bean (then the vice president, Information Technology of INFORMS) and Mohan Sodhi (whose Cyberspace column appears elsewhere in OR/MS Today). They had worked hard for months to create the initial skeleton of IOL and to provide critical initial services such as the membership directory.

In those two years, the Internet has grown explosively. Can there be a person who has not heard of the World Wide Web and has not noticed the ubiquitous "http://www..." attached to advertisements, announcements and flyers? IOL has grown along with the Internet and now supports a tremendous variety of activities.

In this column, now a regular column in OR/MS Today, I plan to keep all INFORMS members up to date on the online activities of INFORMS.


What does INFORMS Online Provide?
INFORMS Online's activities can be divided into three areas: IOL content, other INFORMS pointers and the INFORMS Intranet. IOL provides information about INFORMS and its activities. This provides the main content of IOL, and causes IOL to work with almost every aspect of INFORMS.

A sample of this information includes:

• An online membership directory, easily searchable by name, address, subdivision membership and so on (http://www.informs.org/Dir/Dir2.html).
  
  
• Conference information, including searchable online bulletins, conference and hotel registration forms and meeting announcements (http://www.informs.org/Conf/Conf.html). In particular, we offer the full bulletin (including abstracts) for the upcoming San Diego National Meeting at http://www.informs.org/Conf/SD97/
  
  
• Journal information, including forthcoming papers and announcements of special issues (http://www.informs.org/Pubs/Pubshome.html).
  
  
• Subdivision information such as contact addresses and announcements of specialized meetings (http://www.informs.org/subdiv/subdiv.html).
  
  
• Student and educational material (http://www.informs.org/Edu/edu.html).
  
  
• Online bibliographic database (formerly the Annual Comprehensive Index) http://www.informs.org/Biblio/ACI.html.

This is just a selection of the information available at IOL. In future columns, I will talk about many of these in more detail.

The IOL content, however, is just a small part of what INFORMS does online. For example, most subdivisions now have their own home page on the world wide web. OR/MS Today has an extensive online version (http://lionhrtpub.com/ORMS.html). IOL provides pointers to all INFORMS activities and announces important additions and changes in its "What's New" area.

Finally, INFORMS acts as an "intranet" for INFORMS, providing its officers with an easy way to communicate with each other (through mail aliases) and access INFORMS documents (like the policy and procedures manual).

INFORMS is run by a combination of distributed volunteers and professional staff in its business offices. The Internet and INFORMS Online provides an effective mechanism for connecting everyone. IOL also acts as a repository of technical skill, helping subdivisions and committees of INFORMS better use the web.

INFORMS Online changes every week. You can get a weekly update of what is new at IOL via e-mail. Simply send an e-mail message with the body (not subject) "subscribe iol-news " (so my subscription message was "subscribe iol-news [email protected]", without the quotes) to [email protected]