Emerging Trends - Evolving Global Information Infrastructure and Information Transfer - page 173

They must also be able to talk to parents. Library education must prepare people
to make decisions based on community needs identified by evidence. Librarians
must also be able to diagnose the information needs of individuals and read non-
verbal communication cues.
Evaluation is necessary to determine which services to maintain, which ser-
vices to discontinue, and which services to add. Information professionals must
be intentional about testing their effectiveness, and LIS education must include
instruction in research methods to enable students to make evidence-based de-
cisions.

The Information Infrastructure in the Digital Age

Information professionals are expert on the information infrastructure and utilize
a variety of social and information theories to provide leadership in the creation,
reproduction, dissemination, organization, diffusion, utilization, preservation, and
discarding of information and knowledge; therefore, library and information profes-
sionals can diagnose information needs, then provide services and sources that
address those needs. These services include the gamut of information functions:
education, information, research, culture, recreation, and organization.
Throughout this nation, public agencies face cuts as local, state, and federal
governments are challenged to reduce services. Information professionals must
make themselves and their information agencies essential in order to survive and
prosper. To do so means changing with societal trends in order to meet the needs
of our communities.
Libraries and information agencies must partner with their communities, wheth-
er local, national, or global; library and information professionals must be engaged
in their communities as leaders, building trust and establishing relationships, to
survive and thrive. Community involvement requires being proactive, willing to take
risks, and armed with an entrepreneurial spirit.
Through the leadership of information professionals, the information infrastruc-
ture nourishes a society through the information transfer cycle. The stages of
the information transfer model remain the same, but the ways that each process
is manifested in the infrastructure have changed significantly in this emergent
paradigm prompted by digitization. Table 10.1 portrays these changes.

Table 10.1 Changes in the Information Infrastructure

Information
Transfer Pro-
cess

Bibliographic Paradigm Emergent Paradigm