The problem facing the designer is that the same material will be required to provide different functions, yield different facts, and be subjected to different methodologies. On the other hand, a single knowledge-seeking mechanism may draw on material owned by different groups, updated with different frequencies, and funded in different manners. As illustration, Brilliant (1988) and Bearman (1988) separately showed how the same
information in an art historical information resource would showvalue to insurers, range to a curator, examples to an artist, size and shape to removalists, and the opinions of rivals to an art historian. O’Sullivan and Unwin (2003) discussed the situation in which the same details stored by different owners – the geographical information for a rural district, maintained by a council and a bus company – would provide information on surfaces and potential conflicts with other agencies (telecoms and gas) to the council, while it would provide information on routes and demographics for timetabling to a bus company.