Internet editorial

Citation

O'Beirne, R. (2006), "Internet editorial", Reference Reviews, Vol. 20 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/rr.2006.09920eaa.002

Internet editorial

As librarians, we witness daily the many new technologies that come along and offer us a glimpse of the future. Whether it is a simple change of format to a regularly published book or a change of greater significance to the varied work of the profession, we usually take a short time to adapt our lives in some way. Often, it is not merely the technology that changes our lives, but the new way of doing things which can be a direct or indirect consequence of the technology. A good example of this is the use of news broadcasting. There was a time, 40 years ago perhaps, when the 6pm news bulletin brought the family together around the radio, focussing in on a physical space at a set time. Today, news is big business; there are 24-hour news channels on the TV, radio and web. There are news feeds categorised by region and subject, and these are independent and free from the shackles of a physical location or time. With this ability to break away from a time-dependency aspect, for example, radio offering listen-again services and podcasts of recent shows, media organizations are seen to be “sweating their assets”. The entertainment industry has realised the benefits of being able to offer films in a variety of time packages in conjunction with broadcasting companies.

Many of the advances have been made possible because of technological breakthroughs, and yet it is important to note that the socio-economic climate also needs to accommodate the changes. Anyone who is looking into the future is certain to understand this social dimension and to take notice of the signals. A series of signals can give an indication of a trend that may itself be a harbinger of some shift in behaviour. The entertainment industry understands the shift from demand based on scarcity to demand based on convenience. Instead of distributing a movie to a few outlets the movie is now more widely, or indeed universally, available.

Within the information industry there are many similarities. Our industry is only too aware that the approaches and systems that have been put in place were there to deal with a world in which information was a scarce commodity. What we now have is almost the opposite problem; there is abundant information and in order to cope with it we need to put in place the correct strategies. It is beyond our capability to manage with any effectiveness the rate at which information is growing. Furthermore, there is no agreed strategic withdrawal from the position held 20 years ago. We, as librarians, know we are unable to catalogue or control all content and yet we have not decided where we should draw the lines which delineate what is part of the old world and what is part of the new.

As we are forced to reconsider the rationale of collecting information, because the goal of completeness is unachievable, we turn to connections. In a re-working of the old saying, its not what you know its who you know, we can now be seen as moving from collections to connections. So perhaps when we look at the trend from a distance we can see the increased use of personalisation in digital distribution and the quest for relevancy and timeliness in information delivery as major shifts in the way we do our work. We need to begin to think now about how we will respond.

Ronan O’BeirneInternet Editor, Reference Reviews, and Principal Libraries Officer, Bradford Libraries, Archives and Information Service, Bradford, UK