InfoMapping

InfoMapping is a methodology developed by the author and a Canadian colleague, Cornelius F. Burk, and first put forward in their 1988 Prentice-Hall book, InfoMap: The Complete Guide to Discovering Corporate Information Resources. In that book the authors set forth a five-step process that any organization can follow if and when they 'get serious' about managing information as a valued but costly organizational resource. The first step is to develop a baseline inventory of all critical information resources. InfoMapping is the trademarked term they give to developing a metainformation system wherein each major information resource in the organization, whether manual or automated, whether created internally or acquired externally, is profiled and an online record ('Information Resource Entity' or IRE) created. Over 100 data elements are involved in profiling each IRE. A software DBMS product called InfoMapper, programmed as a runtime application using dBASE IV, is also discussed.