Building an Internet resource for a specialized online community

ABSTRACT

SPIE is a nonprofit organization with 11,000 members worldwide. The society's constituency comprises optical and optoelectronic scientists and engineers in communications, biomedical, manufacturing, aerospace, and other applications. The perceived need to link our technical community electronically is both a response to a future scenario of pervasive interconnectivity among the scientific community and a need to address the issues raised by a changing paradigm for technical publishing, wherein the rise of electronic communication may obviate the need for the traditional publisher (and its capital investment). Through a growing but still modest effort over the last two years, SPIE has created an array of online services that are essentially paving the way for our organization's future offerings in the electronic publishing world. Many of our experiences and observations may apply to any group involved in setting up such a resource, and we hope this case study will provide some assistance to others embarking on that process.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.4 INFORMATION SYSTEMS APPLICATIONS

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL

General Terms:
Management, Theory