OR/MS Today - December 1997

December 1997

Why Web Pages?

By Michael Trick

At INFORMS Online (http://www.informs.org/), my 11 associate editors and I (along with a large number of other INFORMS volunteers and business office people) try to provide the membership and the OR/MS community with an extensive and useful look at INFORMS and its activities.

One new and fascinating page provides pointers deep into the Web pages of other OR/MS or closely related professional societies (http://www.informs.org/General/liaison.html). Almost every professional society now has extensive Web offerings, though some societies clearly lag behind.

Some societies have gone for "glitzy" pages while others have created simple pages. INFORMS Online is in the latter class: we make limited use of graphics (other than the ubiquitous INFORMS logo) and have simple links between areas of the system. This will change in upcoming months, with our new associate editor for aesthetics working on a redesign. There is a danger in such a redesign; many graphics-intensive pages are extremely painful to access, particularly over limited bandwidth phone lines. There are some sites on the Society List that I do not have the patience to access even from my office with its high speed connection!

Any redesign for IOL will keep its low system usage, but will be more attractive and easier to use. I have always felt that IOL does a good job with information; our membership database, conference offerings and bibliographic databases are useful to me as a researcher and as an educator. With the Society List, you can judge for yourself: are other societies doing things we should be doing? Be sure to let me know your conclusions.

But what about INFORMS members? In recent renewals and membership applications, INFORMS has been asking for home page information. This information is available from the membership database (http://www.informs.org/Dir/Dir.html), but, in addition, we have created a list of the Web Pages of INFORMS members (http://www.informs.org/Dir/weblist.html). This is a list of the roughly 1,000 home pages given on membership and renewal forms. Again, these pages make fascinating reading; the variety of activities being undertaken by INFORMS members is amazing! The majority of the links are by our academic members, with a large number of student members. Students and faculty alike use their pages to provide contact information and (particularly) to provide online copies of their working papers. Our members in the business community are about equally split between providing pointers to their business or giving a pointer to a personal home page — often a private page not associated with their company. An afternoon spent browsing our members' pages will give an outstanding introduction to the breadth and depth of OR/MS.

While 1,000 pages is impressive (the next most extensive list I know of has about 300 pointers), it represents less than 10 percent of the INFORMS membership. I invite all members to create even a simple home page discussing their interests and activities and include the pointer to the page either at their next renewal or in an online change of address request (http://www.informs.org/Dir/coa.html). Simply fill in sufficient identifying material (Name and Membership Number [on your mailing label] or Name and Address) and your URL pointer (something like http://....) and within a month or so, you too will be on the list. One further advantage: we make certain that major Web robots visit IOL and its Members' Web Pages at least once a month. Being on the IOL page is an easy way to make certain your pages get indexed by Lycos, Infoseek and other major search engines.

What's new at IOL
IOL has begun a number of new services in addition to the listing of member Web pages given above. The Speaker's Program (http://www.informs.org/Speaker/) works at providing speakers for Chapters, colleges, businesses and kindred societies. Online forms are available to request speakers and to join the program as a speaker.

The Presentation Database (http://www.informs.org/Presentation) is an effort to categorize and organize online presentations on OR/MS topics. In areas associated with IOL, Practice Online (http://www.informs.org/pol.html) has been reorganized and now has a searchable index of Edelman Prize finalist abstracts. The Student Union (http://www.informs.org/student_union) continues to expand its offerings of pointers and information useful to students (and others!) in OR/MS.

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