| UT SIS 490 |  | Introduction |
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| SIS 490 page |
The concept of a "physical environment" is one that we understand well. We talk about the environment in general, and that has come to specifically mean our natural resources: the lakes, the streams, the land, our oceans and air. We can also talk about specifics of the environment that contribute to an immediate purpose. For instance, if we want to go swimming, we can talk about if the lake is free of fish or if the water is a good temperature for swimming.
If we are talking about the "physical environment of a room", such as a classroom, we can talk about the physical attributes of the room: the color of its walls, the cleanliness of its floor, the placement of windows, the temperature and the like. We can also talk about the attributes of the room that contribute to its specific purpose: whether there is a computer in the classroom for students, whether the chairs are comfortable, if the VCR is functioning, if the video feed is "wavy", and so on.
We also talk about the "political environment," which is not a physical environment, but an environment of ideas, attitudes, laws and emotions. For instance, if a law is proposed, legislators have to consider the political environment. Is there a sense that the general population would accept this law? What would be the consequences if the law was passed? What would be the consequences to a particular legislator (like the proposer of the legislation, particularly!) if it were even proposed? And this process of consideration would include the economic situation of the country (a related system), whether the proposer is about to retire (personal consequences), and the implications of the implementation of the law.
The information environment shares attributes of all of these definitions of an environment. It is both a physical environment and an environment of ideas. It is the ways that information is being presented to us, the kinds of information that is being presented to us, and the impact that that information has on us. And "us" means "us" as people living in an information-rich society, as well as "us" as "professionals". Without carrying the analogy too far, we can understand that in this context, information is all around us.
With this very broad definition, our information environment includes advertising, nutritional labels on cans of soup, and messages on our microwaves and the signs on our highways. These, by in large, we leave to others.
When we consider the information environment, we need to consider these aspects:
But we have a real problem with technologies, and that is convergence. Ten years ago we could leave television to the mass communications folks. Now, with the rise of networks such as Home and Garden TV, the Food TV network and the like, television networks are turning into video databases. And some of the digital library experiments are working with building databases of educational programming. Useful, "how-to" information that one might want to retrieve, is becoming widely available. So, we have issues of convergence of technologies in the sense of content: an entertainment technology is being used for practical, useful information. These networks recognize the retrieval value of their information, and so must we.
We have issues of convergence of the technologies themselves: when personal computers first became available, often you used your television as a monitor. (Actually we do in our UTK SIS classrooms, too!). But the point is, that was the ONLY option for some machines in the late 1970's and early 1980's. Now, you can buy machines that are both televisions and vcr's all in one box. Businesses can buy a fax/printer/answering machine and so forth all in one machine. With voice mail, a computer is integrated into the telephone system to marry your telephone with your answering/message system.
Convergence is also happening at the service or industry level: the telephone company, for example, is very interested in becoming your video provider. And your Internet provider. They have an established market base: there are telephone wires strung into about 98% of all the homes and businesses in this country. Your cable company is ALSO very interested in becoming your telephone service provider. They also are gaining a large share of the television market, and, they have the bandwidth (the capacity of their wires) to carry the traffic.
Of course the technology, or rather the converged set of technologies, that is gathering the most attention, is the Internet. And the part of the Internet that has found its way into the children's section of the Sunday funnies, into commercial jingles, into talk radio, into cereal boxes, is of course the Web (formerly known as the World Wide Web). A project that started out as a means for physicists to exchange scientific and technical information now has them talking to children in classrooms a continent away.
The Internet, and particularly the Web, will be used as the "backbone" for the class because it enables us to examine all of the aspects of the information environment in a single microcosm. If you studied "An introduction to bibliography" in the 1930's, you would learn the structure of an early book: quartos and folios, signatures and colophons, and how they were all put together. Librarians were taught how to work with books published in the early days of printing. Publishing has changed a good deal, and much of the work of cataloging these resources has been done. The parts of a book, because of the mechanization of the publishing industry, are pretty standardized (although the serials people will rightly argue this point). Now, however, we need to learn about how Web pages are constructed.
We talk about the global community of the Internet. But community networks also have grown up as local resources for sharing community-level information. Often, public and school libraries are actively involved in these as well.
When all we had to worry about was print, copyright was, well, interesting for copyright lawyers. The photocopy machine changed all that, and librarians had to learn the laws. Then personal computers, with the ability to easily copy software, made the issue of piracy an international economic discussion. With the Web, and the ability to easily copy and paste text, plagiarism is a hot topic indeed. As is copyright of a Web page, and the images thereon. And because the internet is a global, international arena, we have become very conscious of the different views of intellectual property in different countries. In some, for example, it can be argued that intellectual property belongs to the community as a whole, and not to an individual. This puts a very different perspective on how you use and work with resources.
Even five years ago, censorship was a concern for librarians and lawyers. The debate for information professionals focused on books that were "challenged" by parents or members of the community for various reasons such as racisim or sexual content. In the courts, cases focused primarily on pornography, but also on the means to violence: how to build a bomb, for example. But it was no where near the hot topic it is today, on an international scale. The latest debate focuses on "filtering" - whether a filter of some sort should be placed on internet computers to prevent people from reaching sites of "questionable" content, usually focusing on pornography and violence. But who is to decide what is "questionable?" and from what perspective? and from what country? Is materials selection censorship, do we practice it already? Companies like SurfWatch are making millions of dollars enabling people to individually censor the Net. All libraries are reviewing their policies and consulting lawyers to figure out what they can - and cannot - do.
The immediate and traditional environment of the information professional is very different from what it was even three years ago, just before Mosaic was released. It is increasingly difficult, if not impossible altogether, to escape to a back corner and avoid information technologies. Five or six years ago, the "hot topic" was how to move bibliographic information from an online database to a personal bibliographic database. This is now hardly discussed.
The information environment of the user has also radically changed: if the typical undergraduate cannot find resources through his or her personal computer, the resources simply don't exist. Businesses are the fastest growing sector of the Web, and they expect to radically change the way we receive news, stock information, sports information and the like (not to mention books, groceries, fishing tackle and other goods).
What particularly is changing is the nature of the relationships between the technologies, the information professional, the information resources, and the users. Some relationships are becoming more adversarial, some more cooperative; some increasingly based on finance and economics. Particularly challenging is the international character of these relationships, and our increased awareness of practices and policies in other countries.
It is also national: you are by definition a part of the national information policy sphere. Pages needed here.
And it is local. Indeed, what do your users want and need? According to what standards? Tammy Benshoof of KORRNET will answer some of these questions. The issue of community information networks is a natural outgrowth of the need to communicate, the need to be in touch with other people, and the technolgies that are pressing upon us.
The public library clearly answers local community needs, according to local community standards. But what are we to make of the Benton Report, that suggests that the public library staff can be replaced by volunteer retirees? What does that tell us of the public perception of the local library?
