Emerging Trends - Evolving Global Information Infrastructure and Information Transfer - page 164

Emerging Trends in Information Agencies
The library and information profession traditionally has structured professional
organizations by type of library; for example, the Public Library Association within
the American Library Association (ALA), College and Research Libraries Section
of ALA, Special Libraries Association, and American Association of School Librari-
ans. However, just as technology collapses barriers of distance and time, so does
the emerging paradigm collapse traditional organizational structures and practices.
Consequently, we will discuss trends generally, noting some applications within
types of libraries and information agencies.
Globalization
The Internet transcends geographical boundaries, and English is evolving as
the international link language. Global partnerships are emerging; for example, the
electronic library in Ukraine is funded by international organizations, including the
Gates Foundation, and publishers, especially European publishers.
Through the Internet, local library catalogs have global reach. When a public
library or university catalog is linked to WorldCat, a library user can identify other
libraries that have a certain work that may not be available in the local library's col-
lection. Through interlibrary loan, a client can retrieve items within a few days, and
the local collection is thereby expanded beyond state and national boundaries.
The information infrastructure is as close as one's smart phone or laptop com-
puter, which is global in reach. People in developing countries have access, as do
people in developed countries.
Open Access
The open access movement, which is international in scope, is revolutionizing
the information infrastructure, and library and information professionals are lead-
ers. The Budapest Open Access Initiative in December 2001 was a conference
convened in Budapest “to accelerate progress in the international effort to make
research articles in all academic fields freely available on the Internet.”
The Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Hu-
manities is another major international statement on open access that was de-
veloped at a 2003 conference hosted in Berlin. The objectives of the open ac-
cess movement are to (1) maintain peer review standards of quality for research
while (2) making journal articles and other academic publications available free
for access and reading, yet published with some other means of recovering cost
(e.g., subsidies or charges for hard copy publications), and (3) modifying traditional