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Considerations on the Role of Information Professionals Today. Maria Luiza Monteiro Bueno e Silva UNESCO Office Brasilia Documentation Centre UNESCO Clearing House Workshop 2003 Paris, June 25-27, 2003. The Knowledge Universe….
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Considerations on the Role of Information Professionals Today Maria Luiza Monteiro Bueno e Silva UNESCO Office Brasilia Documentation Centre UNESCO Clearing House Workshop 2003 Paris, June 25-27, 2003
The Knowledge Universe… • Let’s imagine the Knowledge World as being the Universe, where each star is a new discovery… • .. the Organization is a spaceship navigating through the Information Superhighway… • Where would you place the Information Professional into the Organizational Chart in order to help the spaceship navigate through the information & knowledge developing world? • What are the roles of an Information Professional in today’s world? • What is the main function of an Information Professional inside an Organization?
Information Professionals as Organization Co-pilots on the Journey through the Knowledge Universe…
Basic Considerations… • Before considering a modern and sophisticated environment for information professionals and their roles in today’s world, there are always basic considerations that can never be forgotten … • … so let’s compare these basic considerations with a growing plant…
Information Professional as a Growing Plant… • First, let’s consider a seed as an individual person…
Personal Development into the Educational Developing Process… • A person needs to develop his or her skills…
The Growing Seed… • A person needs to grow individually through the Educational Developing Process in order to integrate into society… • The person integrates into society by growing intellectually and physically…
The Growing plant… • Society grows its roots of development through the cooperative support of individuals, organizations, and tools… • Information Professionals grow as plants to be part of the Knowledge World with the same support of individuals, organizations, and tools…
Plants need the sun, water and air… • … as Information Professionals need professional respect, recognition, recycling, training, and social awareness in order to perform its role in society properly… • Information Professionals need individuals (users) to serve them with information… • They need support from the Organization where they serve… • They need good tools to work with to offer good quality service…
Functions of Information Professionals … • The main function of Information Professionals remains the same as the traditional librarians as being the mediator between Information resources (Knowledge World) and Information Users… • … but today, since the world started the new millennium with an “explosion” of new technological tools, new means of communication, new attitudes, and new ways to access knowledge… • … information professionals need to be in complete harmony with new discoveries and new challenges that appear everyday... • … but also needs to preserve the basic professional considerations as being patient and polite with new users who are not familiar with dealing with searching information skills…
Information Professionals today • Information professionals need to be objective, creative, active, curious, aware of ethical attitudes… • They need to collect various skills from multidisciplinary techniques and unite them all into efficient, prompt, exact, adequate, and good quality information services. • Information Professionals have to have absolute awareness of their enormous social function. • For this reason, it is necessary that Information Professionals keep up with the advancements of the knowledge, communication and information world in order to bloom as a flower and generate new fruits for the advancement of society as a whole.