[11314] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
FYI France: The New Information Profession, Ch.1 Intro.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Kathy Fowler)
Mon May 19 21:16:40 1997
Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 13:14:45 -0500
From: Kathy Fowler <fowler@mcc.com>
To: PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU>
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FYI France: "The New Information Profession", Chapter 1 -- Introduction
Visit the FYI France Online Service!: a new feature called "interactive
bibliography", is under way at http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi91200.htm --
and rest assured that the FYI France Ejournal which appears here is
continuing, with its monthly reports of library and digital information
news in France and Europe.
What appears here this month, however, is a new experiment. In addition to
"just the news", some have said that online media might provide us with
other forms of publishing. What follows, then, is the Introduction to a
"digital book", one about "The New Information Profession" as it is
developing now in France, Europe, North America, and some other places.
These "digital book" chapters will alternate here, for some time, with the
news reports which appear in monthly FYI France issues; the chapters will
be online for viewing in their entirety at http://www.fyifrance.com .
The New Information Profession: a "digital book"
by Jack Kessler, kessler@well.sf.ca.us
Chapter 1 -- Introduction
The time has come to define the new professions which help people to find
online digital information. The tools are here. So now are the resources
and, recently arrived, the users: we have the computers and the databases
and the Internet and the Minitel, plenty of "information overload", and now
millions upon millions of users. The missing link has been the
sophisticated or at least specialized user -- the person who does it for a
living -- the professional who helps the other users to find what they need
online and to use it.
Digital information might have become a non - mediated process, one
putting users in direct contact with resources, requiring no interfering
"profession". This has indeed been the dream of several of its inventors,
and arguably there are technological precedents in the telephone and the
toaster. But in the case of online digital information this would have
been medicine without doctors -- or perhaps health without medicine, or
litigation without lawyers or cities without police or education without
teachers -- all similarly dreamed but all equally unrealistic.
Some things can be automated. Others cannot. The seeking and using of
information amid vast resources of data is one of the latter. Telephony
may be automated, computer software and modems may threaten accountancy,
the gas station attendant may go the way of the scrivener, the toaster may
"work by itself". But the process of seeking and using information is
complex, and it is eccentric to the seeker, and it already has spawned a
number of new "mediating" professions which are the subject of this text.
So the intention here is to describe, define, and analyze these new
professions which are assisting users of the newer digital information
tools and techniques. Primary focus is on the Internet -- digital
information which is "online" in the sense of being transmitted via the
Internet's "TCP/IP" rules -- but what is said here about these professions
could apply equally to Intranet, Extranet, and generally nearly any
digital information situation. From the user's perspective, the carrier --
Internet, Minitel, or computer -- does not matter so much: to the general
public user it all is bits and bytes and their representations, rather
than any particular system which carries them, and it is the user's
perspective which primarily concerns the professions described here.
What has emerged in the 1990s is a rapidly - expanding set of job and
skill and expertise classifications, all devoted to this task of helping
users find and use digital information online. The individuals performing
this task range from the sole "helpful person down the hall" in
corporations to entire academic departments on university campuses. Their
backgrounds range from "office experience" to "librarianship" to "computer
science", from nothing more than a love of video games to advanced
university degrees in highly - technical academic subjects. They are drawn
from the tens of millions of current online digital information users. But
the group is not co - extensive with the totality of those users; rather
they are the much smaller subset of "users who help other users".
Do they constitute a "profession"? What does? Need there be bylaws and
hierarchical organizational structures and meetings and minutes and
accredited educational programs, to establish a profession? Need there be
expensive conventions and professional journals? Need there be
"standards"? Does there have to be an office in a building somewhere with
a sign on the door proclaiming, "Information Professionals, a not - for -
profit corporation, 501c3"... -- this for an "Internet" telecommunications
medium which does not have such centralization itself?
More important, perhaps, for the "new" information professions, are all of
the older professions which have or claim to have a stake in their
activities. "Librarians", "publishers", "indexers" and "editors" all claim
a role. "Journalists", "graphic designers", "engineers", and "teachers"
-- each very much a profession in its own right -- all claim to be _the_
information profession par excellence, in the new "Information Economy".
Lawyers inevitably claim the central role, too -- what is the law but an
"information" profession? -- and there are many other claimants as well,
including computer scientists, film makers, archivists, museum curators.
There is much at stake, and there are many motivations involved, both good
and bad. Distinctions must be drawn.
It is very possible that a traditional profession may yet fill the niche
and become _the_ arbiter of the new online digital information world: such
is the aspiration of several, and it might achieve some social economy
were one able to do so. The wheel may have to be re - invented instead,
however. There may be not so much in common between the demands of digital
information use, and the skills of traditional professions, as the
practitioners of those older professions would have us believe.
There is a Method, moreover, under development and already in use in
practice, one which deals very directly with the needs of users. An odd
assortment of "information scientists", "computer engineers",
"documentalists", "librarians", and "trainers" -- to name only a few of
the contributing groups -- has developed a rapidly - growing set of
skills, approaches, and standards, all designed to assist users with
online digital information.
The time has come to wrest this work from its confusion with other
interests with which it is associated, and to canonize it as the "Method"
of an "Information Profession". Doctors would have little with which to
define themselves were it not for "Medicine". Lawyers would face the same
problem were it not for "The Law". Information Professionals need some
form of procedure, some canon, which -- like "Medicine" for doctors and
"The Law" for lawyers -- can aid them in their self - definition. The
canon exists -- it is in use now every day at Internet - connected
computer terminals, and online -- it remains only to define it and to call
it by its proper name.
Education, then, is of paramount importance to any profession: education
of two types -- preparation for practice, and continuing professional
education thereafter. Lawyers have a professional degree, or years of
apprenticeship, which they must obtain before they practice, and
"continuing education of the bar" for the rest of their careers. Doctors
are "in school" seemingly forever: years of general medical school and
specialty qualification, constant refresher courses and institutes
throughout their practice to keep them up to date. The same applies to
dentists and nurses and accountants and architects. Just so the
information professions: whoever these people are, and whatever it is that
they are doing, to qualify as a professional they must have some form of
professional education under way, before and after.
"Jobs" and "Research and Development", also necessary, are two sides of
the same coin: the practical and the theoretical. A profession without a
position has little future, as numerous professions in the past have
discovered too late: theology was "Queen of the Sciences", once, and in
fact was the very reason itself for the existence of early universities in
both the US and Europe. But a technique without "Research and Development"
to support it -- to extend and improve its "Method" -- becomes lost.
The new information professions are very much real - world, wage - and -
handsome - fee - earning entities in our online digital information era.
They are dependent, however, as is the entire era, on techniques which
need constant renewal and extension through Research and Development. Both
the practical and the theoretical will be explored here, and Resource
Lists will be provided to give pointers to further exploration.
The Future, finally, is clear for none of this, but is of great importance
to all of it. Digital information techniques have long antecedents. But
their presence in everyday life has come upon an unsuspecting general
public rapidly, and with great force. The techniques seem to be the
essence of novelty in today's culture, constantly descending from a sort
of dimly - perceived future which is dragging us inexorably into it: a
symptom of our loss of control, perhaps -- of technology run amok, of
machines named "Big Blue" defeating our best human chess players, of
technological determinism -- but also a firm part of our conventional
wisdom about "The Future" and about online digital information, now.
So, "information professions" -- or, perhaps better, an "Information
Profession" -- the people who help other people in an "information
society". Who these people are, how they define themselves and how others
define them, whether a "profession" is needed and whether these folks yet
constitute a profession and what perhaps is developing to encourage this:
these are the concerns which will be addressed here.
The approach will be to focus on the same "Information Profession" target
from several different angles: its allies, its history, its current
professional organizations, its method, its education both preparatory and
continuing, its job market, its research and development, and its future
-- each focus in turn, ten chapters published singly here over twice as
many months, interspersed with continuing ejournal issues devoted simply
to French and European library and online digital information news.
The focus will be generic. The United States has no monopoly on wisdom in
the online digital information arena, any longer if it ever had one.
Digital information's "Age of Incunabula" may have occurred in the US --
bold early experiments in the UK, Scandinavia, France and elsewhere
notwithstanding -- but that Age now is over. Quite a few of the examples
here will be French, and deliberately non - US. With the advent of the
"international" and the "general public" user -- and the "commercial use"
-- the Internet has exploded now out of any development phase which might
reasonably be described any longer as a "test - bed". Users are pretty
much the same everywhere. Their differences can and should be analyzed
somewhere else. Here the concern will be for all of the users' common need
for "help": for an Information Profession.
Outline
"The New Information Profession: a 'digital book'"
by Jack Kessler, kessler@well.sf.ca.us
1) Introduction (this issue -- May 15, 1997)
2) Allies -- who is doing what, now
3) History -- a sketch
4) Professional Organizations -- a few
5) Method
6) Education -- Preparation -- the Old Story
7) Education -- Continuing -- the New Story
8) Jobs
9) Research and Development
10) The Future
* The above text and an annotated "Resource List" -- a bibliography
plus live online links and even some images -- will appear online,
sometime before June 15, at, http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi91401.htm .
--oOo--
FYI France (sm)(tm) e - newsletter ISSN 1071 - 5916
*
| FYI France (sm)(tm) is a monthly electronic newsletter,
| published since 1992 as a small - scale, personal,
| experiment, in the creation of large - scale
| "information overload", by Jack Kessler. Any material
/ \ written by me which appears in FYI France may be
----- copied and used by anyone for any good purpose, so
// \\ long as, a) they give me credit and show my e - mail
--------- address and, b) it isn't going to make them money: if
// \\ if it is going to make them money, they must get my
permission in advance, and share some of the money
which they get with me. Use of material written by others requires their
permission. FYI France archives are at http://infolib.berkeley.edu
(search for FYIFrance), or via gopher to infolib.berkeley.edu 72
(path: 3. Electronic Journals (Library-Oriented)/ 6. FYIFrance/ , or
http://www.univ-rennes1.fr/LISTES/biblio-fr@univ-rennes1.fr/ (BIBLIO-FR
econference archive), or via telnet to a.cni.org , login brsuser
(PACS / PACS-L econference archive), or at http://www.fyifrance.com .
Suggestions, reactions, criticisms, praise, and poison - pen
letters all will be gratefully received at kessler@well.sf.ca.us .
Copyright 1992- by Jack Kessler, all rights reserved.
Kathy Fowler
Corporate Librarian
MCC
3500 W. Balcones Center Dr.
Austin, TX 78759
