INTRODUCTION
Information
is not a tangible thing but something invisible in itself, yet always present
and surrounding us. According to
Wikipedia we have been living in the information age for some time[i].
One can say that the so-called fourth industrial revolution is under way, driven
by information and data[ii].
There is an ongoing debate with mixed opinions over the statement which
declares data as new oil. As Clive R. Humby[iii]
says, „data is the new oil. It’s
valuable, but if unrefined it cannot really be used. It has to be changed into
gas, plastic, chemicals, etc to create a valuable entity that drives profitable
activity; so must data be broken down, analyzed for it to have value.“[iv]
Going
even further, it has also been suggested that we have already reached the edge
of information age and take first steps toward vast new area, so-called
datasphere, as the data keep growing to cosmic heights. The vision paper Data Age 2025 compiled by David Reinsel,
John Gantz and John Rydning (2017), tells us clearly that „we are fast approaching a new era of the Data Age. From autonomous
cars to humanoid robots and from intelligent personal assistants to smart home
devices, the world around us is undergoing a fundamental change, transforming
the way we live, work, and play./.../ The
way society uses data is going through a fundamental shift: from entertainment
to productivity, from business focused to hyperpersonal, from structured to
unstructured, from selective to ubiquitous, from retrospective to here and now,
from life-enhancing to life-critical.“[v]
 | |
| https://assets.ey.com/content/dam/ey-sites/ey-com/en_gl/topics/workforce/Seagate-WP-DataAge2025-March-2017.pdf |
So
the future belongs to information and data, the situation won’t get any
clearer. Back in 1983, a well-known American historician Daniel J. Boorstin
made his famous quote in New York Times: "Technology
is so much fun but we can drown in our technology. The fog of information can
drive out knowledge."[vi]
I agree. Here’s my question: what we can do about it, inevitable as it is?
The concept of this essay was born from the fruitful yet dystopic predictions
of data age, which gave me an idea to describe an info specialist (in fact, it
applies to everyone, one way or another) as a full equipped information warrior
with special skills. Our martial arts come from the high level information
literacy and abilities to dig up the sources, using certain methods to process
raw data into value. But in the beginning of all, there is a rookie with some
basic knowledge. The idea follows that every step upward, taken academically,
is a step forward acquiring aforementioned status, i.e. becoming info scientist
as an ultimate goal.
THE BASE: INFORMATION LITERACY
We
all have information literacy in some extent, before entering the field of information
science. At least, I did. By definition it should be „the set of integrated abilities encompas-sing the reflective discovery
of information, the understanding of how information is produced and valued,
and the use of information in creating new knowledge and participating
ethically in communities of learning,“
- the way American Library Association (ALA) sees it.[vii]
More simply, „to be information literate,
a person must be able to recognize when information is needed and have the
ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information.“[viii]
Jeremy J. Shapiro and Shelley K.
Hughes (1996) declare information literacy as a new liberal art and provide us
the sketch of curriculum, attempting to encompass the old concept of „computer
literacy“, the librarians’ notion of information literacy and a broader,
critical conception of a more humanistic sort. They give seven well-described dimensions
of literacy as such:
·
Tool literacy is the
ability to understand and use print and electronic resources, including
software, hardware and multimedia, that are relevant to education and the areas
of work and professional life; the basics of computer and network applications
as well as fundamental concepts of algorithms, data structures, network
topologies and protocols - all goes
within.
·
Resource literacy means
the ability to understand the form, format, location and access methods of
information resources, especially daily expanding networked information
resources, which is practically identical with librarians' conceptions of
information literacy.
·
Social-structural
literacy is knowing how information is socially situated and produced, how it
fits into the life of groups; about the
institutions and social networks (universities, libraries, research communities
etc), it also includes understanding the scholarly publishing process.
·
Research literacy is
the ability to understand and use the IT-based tools to carry out research
work.
·
Publishing literacy
allows to format and produce a text or multimedia report of the results of
research.
·
Emerging technology
literacy consists of abilities to ongoingly adapt to, evaluate and make use of
innovations in IT, encouraging us to
replace of old with new.
·
Critical literacy means
the ability to evaluate critically the intellectual, human and social strengths
and weaknesses, potentials and limits, benefits and costs of information
technologies[ix].
On
those seven pillars we should stand firmly enough to challenge the new era.
Questions like who owns the information, what's the difference between a piece
of information and a copy of it, who should have access to it, is the internet
a public good or a private one, or should internet content be regulated, and if
so, by whom, are as relevant today as they were in 1996.[x]
Besides, it’s good to know, according to Alexandria Proclamation on Information
Literacy and Lifelong Learning (2005) the information literacy is now
considered as a basic human right in a digital world, promoting social
inclusion of all nations.[xi]
THE PATH: SKILLS AND TOOLS
Now,
being aware of the necessity of information literacy, we should learn tools for
each and every action (remember our game – information warriors as we are). I
see the learning (training) process literally as the bumpy road from BibDesk via
Mendeley to Zotero – the true Discovery indeed. And this is just one route out
of many. Surely it depends on where we heading to.We can establish our own
infopreneurship to take advantage of acquired retrieval skills by making
dollars, or we can do the charitable guidance work in this foggy information
field. Either way the future looks sustainably good: society is increasingly in
need of helping hands, well educated knowledge workers, who could easily
navigate the data ocean.
Reducing
the scope, focusing on modern librarian – the friendliest form of knowledge
worker, I guess - , there’s a big list
of opportunities and challenges to cope with. Not the „Ssh, silence,
please!“-announcer anymore but „Feel free to ask“-person, doing well both in communication and
technology. Take digital preservation, for example: the concept of acquisition
has been shifted to subscription, as information is getting generated in
e-format. The set of activities which assure “interoperability with the future”
can be termed as digital preservation – without it we might not be able to
access the wide range of digital resources created and collected today[xii].
Much of this work has to be done by librarians themselves.
There
are questions of content: impact and accessibility. Librarians should have
skills to analyze the impact of purchased information to maximalize its effect
(deal with data, right?). Because of all these new horizons (open access,
e-ressources, library in your smartphone) the collection development policy has
also making a fundamental shift, i.e. less paper and more electronic. In 2004 Norwegian special libraries had 163,000
print journal subscriptions, by 2014 that figure had
plummeted to a little over 40,000, while
electronic subscriptions had
grown from 155,000 to 650,000[xiii].
It reflects the tendency that acquisitions are now
made overwhelmingly at the request
of researchers and
students. There has been a change
of direction from developing collections
on a „just-in-case“ basis to acquisition „on demand“. There has
also been a change from individual purchases to purchases of large
resource packages through consortia, so
we talking about administering consortia agreements governing access
to various digital
knowledge sources and negotiating with
the providers on behalf of the
libraries.[xiv]
Therefore
the modern librarian as a councelor, specialist, information officer and data
analyst has a great responsibility in educational field. In my opinion the
strategy is always the same – provide information to the people and make it
accessible so that the outcome would be satisfactory. The methodology is
different, depending on personal needs of the researcher. So it really does not
matter whoever it is – an astrophysician
or a digital humanist – the librarian as information worker should remain on
duty and maintain high standards in any such case.
And
yes, there is a world of LibGuides – an impressive network of 714 289
tutorials, 461 160 librarians and 5415 institutions in 95 countries at the
moment.[xv]
LibGuides are, according to Alison Hicks (2015), guides to relevant or
recommended sources and sites that students can use to search for information
on a topic, typically created for courses or for general topics (e.g. criminology,
art history) and organized by source format, for example, databases or images, and
have now expanded beyond their original research guide design, being marketed
as a core instructional tool for academic, public, school and special libraries.[xvi]
But then again, Hicks is critical as they
tend to be just librarian-defined list of „best sources“, static instead of
pedagogigal. Better approach is to help students create their personal
LibGuides, so they can experience inquiry. Then the librarian steps up in
intermediary role.[xvii]
Nevertheless,
LibGuides are powerful tools which deserve special chapter, but here, in this
context they characterize the scope of information worker and do it fine.
CONCLUSION
After
I had read some interesting but somewhat pompous and glossy ideas about the
coming soon Data Age, I got stuck in question what kind of role information
workers will play in this new era. Are they arbitrators, educators,
missionaires, kind of infopreneurs or
watchdogs of the society? As I understand it, they can be a little bit of
everything. So I was mesmerized by the idea that the fully educated information
worker can be compared to heavily armed warrior. Acquiring high level
information literacy and becoming tech savvy, he or she has precious skills to
face the challenges of Data Age, takes advantages of its potential and serves
as a guide for data-blind people.
And last, but not least - here is a manifesto I found from the abyss of Internet. An information warriors' manifesto. Manifestos are meant to spread, then let it spread.
 |
| http://sis.wayne.edu/alumni/sis_info_warrior_manifesto_printable_1.pdf |
[iii] British matematician and entrepreneur in the field of data science (b.
1955), brain behind Tesco's highly successful Clubcard, a scheme that tracks
customer behaviour to an astonishing degree, see https://www.managementtoday.co.uk/mt-britains-top-100-entrepreneurs-2007/article/625114.,
[v] Reinsel, D., Gantz, J., Rydning, J. (2017, April). Data Age 2025. The
Evolution of Data to Life-Critical Don’t Focus on Big Data; Focus on the Data
That’s Big. An IDC White Paper. Retrieved from https://assets.ey.com/content/dam/ey-sites/ey-com/en_gl/topics/workforce/Seagate-WP-DataAge2025-March-2017.pdf.
See also https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/information-age-over-welcome-data-aaron-edell.
[vii] American Library Association
(2015, February 9). Framework for
Information Literacy for Higher Education. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ilframework
[viii] American Library Association (2006, July 24). Presidential Committee on Information Literacy: Final Report.
Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/acrl/publications/whitepapers/presidential.
[ix] Shapiro, J.J., Hughes, S. K. (1996, March/April). Information Literacy
as a Liberal Art. Educom Review, Vol 31, No 2. Retrieved from https://www.educause.edu/ir/library/html/erm/31231.html
.
[x] Ibidem.
[xi] IFLA (2015, January 26). Beacons of the Information Society: The
Alexandria Proclamation on Information Literacy and Lifelong Learning. Retrieved
from https://www.ifla.org/publications/beacons-of-the-information-society-the-alexandria-proclamation-on-information-literacy.
[xii] Pai, R. D., Parmar, S.S. (2014). Modern
Librarian: Opportunities and Challenges. Conference Paper. Retr. from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263464447_Modern_Librarian_Challenges_and_Opportunities.
[xiii] Egeland, L. (2015). From „just
in case“ to „just in time“. Scandinavian Library Quaterly. No 4. Retrieved from http://slq.nu/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/SLQ-4.2015.pdf.
[xiv] Egeland, L. (2015). Ibidem.
[xvi] Hicks, A. (2015). LibGuides:
Pedagogy to Oppress? Hybrid Pedagogy.
Retrieved https://scholar.colorado.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1039&context=libr_facpapers.
[xvii] Ibidem.
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