Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Introduction: digital information, an
overview of the landscape
Lorraine Estelle and Hazel Woodward
As seasoned information professionals it is easy to think that we have a
reasonable understanding of the way in which the world of information
and associated technologies is moving. However, the world is changing
fast and many of our core beliefs and understandings will, without
doubt, be impacted by these changes. In the words of Clifford Lynch:
Digital technologies have opened the door to a host of new possibilities
for sharing knowledge and generated entirely new forms of content that
must be made broadly available.
(ARL, 2009)
Take, for example, the way in which users search for information. Only
a few years ago, librarians would advise that the starting point for all
literature searches should be an abstracting and indexing (A&I) service,
or a reference publication such as a handbook or encyclopedia. While
this advice is still given in appropriate circumstances, all librarians
know that everyone (ourselves included) uses an internet search engine
such as Google, Google Scholar or Yahoo! as a first port of call. We
know this by talking to, and observing, our users, and recent research
by the Centre for Information Behaviour and the Evaluation of
Research (CIBER, 2008) has validated it.
In 2009 the UK Serials Group (UKSG) ran a student competition.
Entrants were asked to write a short submission on how they used
libraries, electronic resources and the internet; the winner was then
invited to run a workshop at the 2009 UKSG conference. The winner
