CNI REPORT: CNI -- A Successful Merger of Content and Distribution Copyright 1994 CAUSE. From _CAUSE/EFFECT_ Volume 17, Number 3, Fall 1994. Permission to copy or disseminate all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for commercial advantage, the CAUSE copyright and its date appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of CAUSE, the association for managing and using information resources in higher education. To disseminate otherwise, or to republish, requires written permission. For further information, contact Julia Rudy at CAUSE, 4840 Pearl East Circle, Suite 302E, Boulder, CO 80301 USA; 303-939-0308; e-mail: jrudy@CAUSE.colorado.edu CNI REPORT CNI: A SUCCESSFUL MERGER OF CONTENT AND DISTRIBUTION by Richard P. West Every day there is a report in our local newspapers and other media about business and political events involving high- speed, general-access data, voice, and video communications. Political representatives at state and federal levels debate whether government fiscal subsidies should be given to specific groups that have an interest in mass digital communications. Actually, more often the political discussion revolves around reducing regulation in industries that have been traditionally regulated, such as telephone and video services. The popular business literature tells of companies' services and products that are now being offered via this new technology. The higher education community should have a sense of deja vu in these daily reports. Only the names and industry associations have been changed. I say this because the higher education community has been exploring the opportunities presented by high-speed packet-switched technology for the last six or seven years. The National Science Foundation- sponsored NSFNET and its associated regional networks that now make up the Internet have been operating for over five years in full production, with exponential growth each year. The success of the Internet in creating new relationships and new ways of communicating has stimulated the private business marketplace to embrace the Internet technology and the National Information Infrastructure. Almost everyone senses the promise of improving commerce through the use of high- speed, digital packet-switched technology. When will these entrepreneurs begin to see the payoff of their interest and their efforts? In higher education, CNI was created to energize and synthesize what seems like the natural symbiotic relationship in the new communications environment that the business marketplace is now trying to create. This is the relationship of producer/wholesaler and distributor--or, more familiarly stated, the role of campus librarians in acquiring, organizing, and providing access to information or content and the role of campus technologists in managing our communications infrastructure. CNI's meetings and work groups focus on ways of exploring possibilities and eliminating barriers to making our institutions' information--in fact, information in general--available in easy-to-use ways to our primary constituencies. In effect, CNI represents the only successful merger of content and distribution entities in the Internet environment. The CBS and QVC attempt is the most recent example of a failed attempt of a merger between a primarily distribution company and a traditional content or program company. For those who will argue that both of these companies did a little of both--content and distribution--and that the merger was an attempt to broaden each company's influence, I suggest the failure of the recent union of a traditional Baby Bell (distribution) company and a content company as a better example of a good idea that couldn't get consummated. The lack of culmination of these seemingly logical partnerships suggests that establishing roles in the new relationships proved unworkable. Have we avoided this conflict in CNI? Hardly. Have we ever thought this was a marriage with no future? Often. Through these columns I have tried to give CAUSE members a sense of what CNI is achieving. There are many projects and activities that have been generated by the CNI nexus of librarians, technologists, and commercial players in the scholarly information market that point to improving the distribution of scholarly information with the aid of communications technology. More importantly, however, is that CNI is about relationships: the relationship between content and network, the relationship of getting our increasingly empowered faculty and student more easily in touch with our campus information resources and the information resources of the world. What then makes the exploration of network technology and information resources so challenging? To a great extent, it is because what is distribution and what is content is no longer clear. How do users navigate the Internet, how do they know where information may reside, and is it the information they really want for the question they have in mind? And once they find the information somewhere on the electronic highway, do they have a right to use it? The rub is that technologists and librarians can't bring all of their traditional roles with them to the new technology. These are new technologies that will demand new processes of delivery; what was once mine must now be shared. CNI is about collaboration. Tradition is threatened in this forum, and CNI's role in providing such a forum for exchanging these ideas is exemplary. Great progress has been made in the last four years. My congratulations to CAUSE, Educom, and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) for having the courage to create a forum where we can discuss new types of relationships and roles outside of the traditional (and therefore necessarily conservative) professional associations of higher education technologists and librarians. There is still much to do. Let's continue to show that there is substantial merit in the partnership the private sector is still trying to figure out. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Richard P. West is Vice Chancellor for Business and Finance for The California State University System. He has chaired the steering committee of the Coalition for Networked Information since its establishment in 1990. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ CNI Report is a regular _CAUSE/EFFECT_ department that provides reports about the activities of the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), formed by the Association of Research Libraries, CAUSE, and Educom in 1990 to promote the creation of and access to information resources in networked environments. CNI REPORT: CNI -- A Successful Merger of Content and Distribution