Requirements for information professionals in a digital environment: some thoughts

Abstract

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to point out the increasing need to provide information professionals with a sound grounding in the technological aspects of their profession. Design/methodology/approach -The paper sets out by describing the sudden increase in volumes of information that confront our society, and then looks at how the younger generation approaches/uses this mass of information. It then analyses how the traditional functions of information professionals (presentation of material, reliable preservation of information, maintaining authenticity, and conservation) are handled in an electronic environment. Findings -The paper discovers that considerable technical knowledge and experience are required to carry out those same functions in an electronic environment and suggests a redefinition of information sciences as information engineering.Research limitations/implications -The paper recommends increasing the technology content in the training of information professionals such as archivists, records managers and librarians. Originality/value -The paper concludes with a radical assertion that the proper locus for such training is a school of engineering rather than a school of librarianship, information studies and/or archives. New generation of usersThe archival world has been arguing about the paperless office concept for decades. One theory states that there will always be paper and that computers simply produce paper faster than human beings could ever do. This is absolutely correct, of course, but when we look at the real reasons for the increase in paper-based information, a startling truth confronts us. What is being generated so much faster is not mere paper but real information. Computers have given us the capability to create, in just a few years, more information than the whole human race managed to produce during its entire history.What is more, the information we see on paper now was produced, and stored, in an electronic environment before being printed as hard copy. We seem to be in a transitional period. The stock of information is currently doubling every three years.The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at According to 2002 figures, our civilisation creates five exabytes (5,000,000,000 GB) of unique information every 12 months, enough to fill the Library of Congress in the US 37,000 times over, or the equivalent of about 1.2 trillion books; 92 per cent of this information is recorded on magnetic media (Lyman and Varian, 2003).According to a study by the International Data Corporation (IDC), the amount of digital information produced in 2006 reached 161 exabytes, a figure which is expected to reach 988 exabytes by 2010(Gantz et al., 2007. It is glaringly obvious that this figure is going to increase exponentially, and that in the near future little or no unique information is going to be produced by actual pens, pencils and typewriters making marks on paper.Nevertheless, the need to transfer information onto paper is likely to continue for some time t...