Information Experts in the Information Economy
This month’s Information Outlook, the magazine of the Special Libraries Association, includes an interview with Dialog’s CEO, Roy Martin. Dialog is one of the leading database providers for special libraries and has been in the business longer than many of its competitors. Martin addresses the growth of information and the increasing need for people with the skills to find, organize, and disseminate information to the people who need it. He also talks about the difference between free information services, like Google, and subscription databases, like those Dialog offers. The interviewer and he speculate about the future of the profession, too.
"And I think as the amount of information increases, in some cases exponentially, it creates tremendous problems that people in this profession are uniquely positioned to solve. The more information there is, the more difficult it is to find any single thing unless you know exactly where it is. … I think it’s also a great opportunity for companies or other organizations to organize information, figure out unique finding aids to help people. … And that will always create opportunities for experts, for companies, organizations, for the person in the middle who’s brokering all those transactions in some way. It’s a very exciting time. I think it’s a great time for this profession."
(I would have liked to have linked directly to the article, but could not. It is restricted to SLA members and it requires some special software I do not have on my computer (an ebrary reader) that I could not download.)
