KNOWLEDGE PROFESSIONALS

If knowledge is power, meet the world leaders

Due to the rapid development of information and communications technologies, and the phenomenal growth of networks, especially the explosion of the Internet and the Web, 'knowledge professionals' and their information skills have become vital to the scientific and research community. Robin Murray of Fretwell-Downing reports.

The upshot of creation of the World Wide Web is that a huge quantity of information, much of it questionable in quality, is becoming available to anyone, at any time, anywhere. The result of this - as stated by Sheila Corrall, first president of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) and director of Academic Support Services at the University of Southampton - is that 'information and communication technologies have made information superficially much easier to access but actually much harder to access - in terms of accuracy, provenance, reliability. People need help to find, appraise and use information effectively. Library and information professionals have a fundamental role to play here in helping our various user constituencies to develop competence and confidence in handling information. Our profession is about making connections - between people and information - in a fast-changing world.'

There is a danger in that emphasis is still being placed on society's use of technology, and not enough is being directed towards its ability to use it skilfully as a tool to find and evaluate information. The problem is not only the volume of accessible information, and the multiplicity of institutions that provide it, but also that there is a huge amount of confusion and conflict of roles between those institutions. There clearly is a real and critical need for the competence of knowledge professionals in this networked world.

The developing role for the knowledge professional has led to the development of new software tools that can meet growing user expectations for reliable and accurate information - to be provided instantly.

So how can the knowledge professional help users to:

• Discover valuable information from the most relevant sources without overloading them;
• Obtain the information they need from a reliable source; and
• Avoid using only familiar databases and, in so doing, miss out on easily accessible alternative sources?

One tool that can make a difference is the information portal, where the knowledge professional can develop a service that offers a single point of access to selected, quality resources - packaged in a way that suits the needs of users, and which has the power to deliver the content directly to them. The single interface allows searching of:

• Web sites;
• Intranet and Internet search engines;
• Internal and online databases;
• Library catalogues; and
• External e-journal services.

This ability to provide an easy route to information that is of value to the individual is a significant user benefit and can win economic advantages for the organisation. It also brings control back to knowledge professionals, which puts them in a strong position in the battle to be the prime information providers in the digital age.

The knowledge professional's role today is about more than providing better searching - it is also about being able to deliver the end-to-end process where the user discovers the existence of quality information and gains access to it.

Today's portals can also help here, by locating useful articles, documents, and books, and offering researchers a choice of routes to access the full-text content. Content may be located anywhere internal or external to the organisation and may be in any format, physical or digital.

This is an important point for knowledge professionals as today's world is still a mixture of media - both physical and digital. This enables knowledge professionals to satisfy the trend for instant information and to make life as easy as possible for information seekers.

Some researchers may need to perform their search through specialist interfaces, such as those that search chemical structures, rather than through an information portal.

The knowledge professional needs to be able to manage an information environment where there is more than one search interface. The development of standards-based portal solutions, and the adoption of OpenURL technology, increasingly allow users to submit requests to the 'locate and request' services within the information portal from third party interfaces.

The system can then automatically establish the appropriate copy or delivery service to satisfy the request. Because all request and delivery transactions have been routed through a single point (irrespective of the searching route), resource utilisation can be audited simply. This is important for knowledge professionals as it streamlines the delivery management process and improves efficiency.

Knowledge professionals are well placed to make a significant contribution to the information flow in their organisations.

There are now real possibilities for them to combine the best of their professional skills with the best of today's technology. They can manage the information held within an organisation, and are able to mediate a wide range of external resources and offer a personalised, contextualised information service to their organisations.
Robin Murray is managing director of Fretwell-Downing Informatics.

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