Descriptive Figures and Hints for Further Research: IASSIST as a Virtual
Community"


Karsten Boye Rasmussen
Department of Organization and Management,
University of Southern Denmark

Repke de Vries
Research Department
Netherlands Institute for Scientific Information Services 

As a group of early adapters of technology IASSIST has for long been an
organization of international professionals communicating through
electronic mail and only having face-to-face meetings through
participation in a yearly conference. More recent IASSIST has become
web-visible, and the informational web-brochure has been further improved
by giving access to the articles of the IASSIST Quarterly (IQ) and an FTP
exchange facility.

This presentation is introspective as the object for investigation is the
IASSIST organization itself. The success of establishing IASSIST as a
"virtual community" will be estimated from a descriptive viewpoint. From
ordinary and available statistics on the use of e-mail and the web-site
the presentation will conduct a preliminary investigation into research
questions as well as into practical issues of improvement of the
electronic facilities and capabilities within IASSIST. The presentation
will look upon the electronic possibilities of information spread towards
a global audience, the contacting of authors by the readership of
IQ-articles, effects of announcements on different email lists, the use of
the IASSIST web-site by non-members, and the impact of search engines.

Several methodological questions will be addressed. First of all issues of
using incomplete and difficult to link existing data collections on web
site and email list usage, demand discussion and methodological
stratagems. Secondly the presentation is a step on a research path of
"virtuality in organizations".

In the IASSIST case it is intended to carry out several intensive and new
data collections both by contacting the IASSIST membership and by having
members and non-members identified while using the web-site. This will
also raise a discussion - from a dual viewpoint of data collector and
members of an organization - on the privacy and surveillance aspects of
gathering more complete data on the individual by use of detailed logs
from e-mail listservers and web-sites. Are researchers into virtual
communities threatening the privacy of memberships, or are the legal
directives of privacy threatening the research?