Information and Information Service Centers

Drennan, Henry T.

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/1585 Copy

Description

Title

Information and Information Service Centers

Author(s)

Drennan, Henry T.

Issue Date

1971

Keyword(s)

• Libraries and community
• Social service --Information services
• Reference services (Libraries)
• Community information services

Abstract

All of us utilize information in our lives. Librarians and information scientists value it most highly since their lives are spent in gathering, ordering, storing, and distributing it. A very few in these professions produce information, although all live by it. For all people, however, information is used to reduce the uncertainty of nature. 1 Those in information professions often puzzle over the relatively small use (in their estimation) that the general public makes of their informational product. This concern may be somewhat alarmist. Most of us live in a data -rich society, even, it sometimes seems, in a data -saturated system, and many persons may be evolving immunity mechanisms to the overload. Still, many in the information professions are haunted by the suspicion that a data-rich environment may be a decision-poor environment. Many librarians and information specialists are particularly concerned by the low use of informational services by those perceived as requiring this reinforcement of their environmental competencethe poor. These professions have given a good deal of discussion, with some implementation, to new modes of organization more responsive to this target group. As yet sufficient attention has not been paid to reducing the costs of information to the poor, although we have been developing concepts and a few operational examples.

Publisher

Graduate School of Library Science. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Series/Report Name or Number

Allerton Park Institute (17th : 1971)

ISSN

0536-4604

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1585

Copyright and License Information

Copyright owned by Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. 1971.

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