[Sigiii-l] Please post

[Gibson, Kate]

Please post the following position statement.  It has been created in
reponse to an assignment for the Faculty of Information Studies, U of T.

Perhaps the greatest impact of the globalization of the information society
on my personal and professional life will be the use of the internet.
There is such a wealth of information instantly available to individuals.
With the touch of a computer key, a world of known and unknown trivia, facts
and knowledge is revealed.  I can access information from around the world
without a formal or lengthy research process.  

But, the internet poses challenges to its users.   The sheer amount of
information available can be overwhelming.  I sometimes feel
information-saturated.  The classification and authority of the internet
have not yet been standardized so finding pertinent, current and accurate
information is not guaranteed.  Indeed, websites and information seen today
might have disappeared by tomorrow.   These issues will certainly affect me
both as an individual and as an information professional.   

Professionally, I will be dealing with relatively well-informed clients who
know about web-searching.  Requests for assistance will mean finding highly
specialized and difficult to find information.   I'll have expertise in
other information retrieval methods but I'll also need to remain highly
skilled at internet searching.  Certainly, I'll have a responsibility to
make clients aware of the potential shortcomings of information found
through the internet, helping them to evaluate the material that's
available.

The information science community will need to continue to develop
international standards for classifying and providing consistency so users
from around the globe will continue to benefit from this wonderful but
daunting tool.    The internet has made information so available to
urbanized Western culture that it's difficult to imagine how we managed
without it.  The task is now to further harness it's power.  

Thank you...
Kate Gibson