"MAKING HISTORY….. AND PROJECTING TOWARDS THE FUTURE OF INFORMATION UNITS
“The change is accelerating more and more. Before the company is done adjusting to one change, it is hit by several more. We live in a period of constant transition and the useful life of our solutions is getting shorter and shorter. What works, becomes history in a moment ”(1). Where does this change come from? It is the people who create the change. It is enough to see what is happening to the population of Mother Earth.
Human beings have already existed for about six to seven million years. It took all that time for the world population to reach 5.3 billion people. However, predictions indicate that it will only take about 50 years for the earth to have another 5.3 billion people. If human beings create change - and they clearly are - then we should expect a rapid increase in the speed of change as the population doubles in the coming decades.
This growing conglomerate of people comes equipped with another source of change: technology. It is also a self-powered technology. Let's review what happens in the field of science, inventions and technology in general.
It is said that more than 80% of our technological inventions have taken place as early as 1900. It is predicted that during the last years of the 20th century we would see the same amount of technological change that occurred during the first 85 years of this century. You should not think of technological change as something that simply adds up, you have to think of it as something that multiplies day after day.
Another source of change is knowledge. The amount of information available doubles every five years.
More people, more tools, more knowledge. And this is the final point.. But this is not all, the future promises many more changes than we have experienced and they will take place in an increasingly accelerated way. The question is whether we will give permission to change our culture in such a way that the company, in our case the -information company- can survive in a world with accelerated historical development.
The change has no consciousness. It has no preferences. He takes no prisoners. And change mercilessly destroys companies whose cultures don't adapt. The rush should become the normal style. The competition moves too fast. Markets change, technology advances in an unbridled way. The world wants it all instantly. The result? Good turns bad in the blink of an eye. And the level of performance that today can qualify us as winners, can turn it into something that "has been" tomorrow.
Prittchet, in his work on cultural change, quotes an expression by Yogi Berra: "If you come to a crossroads, take it!" Let us then go to our point of interest: ´The information units and the future '"and we address this when studying the new paradigms of information systems." (one)
The prophecies of the experts that by the year 2000, predicted a generalized electronic information system today are a fact.
Robert C Schank (2) - an expert in artificial intelligence - said that the best use that can be made of a personal computer is that of the electronic library. How to consult foreign libraries from our home, how to recover information contained in the world's databases? The answers will be given by the type of approach we give to our information units.
Says Nuria Amat, (3) in The Electronic Library: ¨ The automation of information is closely linked to the Sciences of documentation. Without the appearance of the computer, they would have no reason to exist, since a significant proportion of them would not exist, nor should the documentation be identified only with machines and technology and the expression information technology, encompasses the broad concept of how to apply technologies for information management - generation, storage, treatment, recovery, dissemination and others. The new information technologies are based on the most recent advances in electronics, digital communication, telematics ”.
Anderla, (4) one of the first professionals who recognized that fifteen years after his report was published, the cost of how many activities were necessary for the information processing would be impossible to bear according to the traditional way then in force. Automated information would definitely replace, in the course of the 1980-1990s, the artisanal procedures with which, better or worse, the transmission and dissemination of knowledge is currently carried out, says Anderla, in addition to ensuring that automatic processing would be more cheaper than the manual from 1980.
This process of automating the future, Anderla continues, would be carried out in three phases: in the first of the databases, they would no longer consider documents such as the periodical article and the book as privileged documents, with scientific and technical reports taking precedence over them., all gray literature and patents. In a second phase of automation -1985-, databases that provide non-bibliographic information would be important.
In a third phase Anderla anticipated for the year 1987, the automatic translation of scientific documents, advancing that by 1995 50% of the documents processed in the databases, instead of being bibliographic references, would be full text.
Finally, Anderla predicted the libraries of the future as authentic - self-services - that would provide the user with any data requested by him, which would be extracted from large, ultra-fast memories projected on the screen and eventually reproduced.
These videophones to which Anderla referred, are now called microcomputers, which in a first stage would be in libraries, allowing access to the general public receiving a more complete and personalized service. Universities would be connected to databases and each student could have a videophone to access them. As the acquisition of encyclopedic knowledge lost importance, the data that refer to them would be processed in databases. The media - press, radio, television, publishing - would participate in the transfer of scientific knowledge, with publishers dedicating themselves to producing new information media - electronic books. The teacher would be fundamentally an animator –1984- and towards - 1990- the student would carry out their work,at least 50%, at home and would have at his disposal a terminal and a closed-circuit television receiver. Before 2000, electronic terminals installed in homes would be as common as telephones today.
As a conclusion to this presentation of Anderla, we can verify that the forecasts have been fulfilled to date. In Amat's book (3) it is stated that FW Lancaster “offers us an electronic information system for the year 2000” in his controversial work known as the path to paperless information.
In that world envisioned by Lancaster, all information would be electronic. The terminal would be used for three main functions: creating, transmitting and receiving information. Using the computer terminal, the scientist could receive texts, ask factual answer questions, build his own information files and converse with his colleagues. The language of the databases accessed would be natural and in the most commercial language. On the other hand, the electronic information systems of the year 2000 would allow the distribution of the full text in digital form stored in centers for this purpose. It also provided for teleconferencing systems, where conference communications could be accessed on the day of their celebration. "
So far we have exposed different visions of what the libraries of the future will be, but let's see what we are aiming for in our reality.
Edward de Bono (5) in Six Pairs of Shoes for Action expresses: “The mind sees what it is ready to see and notices what it is ready to notice. The brain functions as a self-organizing system in which information is arranged by itself in patterns… once patterns are created, we see the world through them ”.
Today the most critical threats consist of slow and gradual processes to which we ourselves have contributed. These problems cannot be addressed with conventional ideas, simply by recognizing the need to think differently and by understanding dependency structures. Individual change is vital, but not enough. If we want to tackle these problems, we will need collective thinking, at the level of organizations, communities and society.
Change is a process through which one passes from one state of affairs to another, generating quantitative and / or qualitative modifications or alterations of reality. The causes that accelerate change are: technological innovation, which generates new and better technologies, contributes to improving man's environment and his way of thinking and suggests solutions to the problems of different social and economic activities.
Information and knowledge, where its proper domain allows to rapidly incorporate scientific and technological advances and causes new ways of doing, thinking and acting. Understanding and learning are complementary elements of information and knowledge, therefore they are strong drivers of change. The internal environment: adequate managerial leadership, teamwork, systems and processes, productivity and efficiency, the creation of added value for users in creative processes where permanent change is imposed. The external environment: users or clients, markets, developing communities, competitors, and administrative and union bodies constitute elements within the environment that exert positive or negative influence on changes.
Change is an informational process. Technological or other innovation can be represented as an information package, comprising bits of information arranged in a novel way, or new to those who use it.
Without learning there can be no change, at least some that is not speculative or accidental. Intentional changes require information. The organization must seek most of the information it requires for change in the world outside its borders.
Big changes require a higher level of learning. The more resistance is made to change, the more difficult and traumatic will be the changes that will inevitably take place in them. Those that drive change will maintain the flexibility to make corrections on the fly, avoiding massive and difficult changes.
The essence of change in the organization is the external information that is required for learning and the understanding that the change process lies not only in how this external information can be used within the organization, but how this information can be located and acquired outside the boundaries of the organization or discipline
Change involves unlearning and learning quickly. It is something that occurs systematically and that its treatment is systemic, so the part-whole relationship and the cause-effect relationship are permanently produced.
Information professionals are researchers by nature, therefore we continually learn, that positions us to adapt to changes and lead the process successfully. Are we ready for this challenge?
Librarians have often started a process of change by trying to reorganize the library. Generally, the final product is an organization with different terminology, but with very little change in its functionality. Directors raise budget requests not business plans. The concept of generating an income or a profit is outside of your aspirations.
The libraries of the future need to be business oriented. Libraries should not become commercial entities, but they cannot remain idyllic free services that they have been in the past. What does this mean? That new ways of offering information services should be developed based on the amount of information resources we have in our hands and the current technological capacity of our users.
It means looking at the units within our institutions that up to now may have been perceived as rivals - such as the data center - and becoming their allies and partners to devise a set of information services for our users.
It means that library managers must think creatively about the resources at their disposal and drive the budget, not let the budget drive us ”(1)
Chapter 2
"The Purpose
The company has to adapt to the context and face increasing pressure from its competitors (current and potential, local and foreign). The manager needs to achieve better results.
The company needs a change to improve its competitiveness
The manager needs to make changes to improve its results, its effectiveness
. What results to improve? You can try to improve the company's shareholder value, return on investment, profits, market share, customer satisfaction, or any other set of goals.
With what proposals? Results…
Results are the formula to grow in competitive vertigo.
How to do it? With the methodology proposed in RESULTS, from ideas to concrete facts. " (6)
This is what will be tried to demonstrate in the following thesis, applied to the specific case "LIBRARY MANAGEMENT" in the Library and
Documentation Center, Bahía Blanca Regional Faculty of the Technological University of Argentina
Institutional Situation Analysis October 2002
Questions raised for the establishment of the problem reason for the following work, and presentation of Hypothesis:
What is the short-term institutional objective?
Accredit engineering careers
What is Institutionally required of Senior Management to accredit, among other requirements?
Have an Information Unit that covers, not only the curricular needs, but also learning and research needs.
Problem Statement:
"As of October 2002, the Bahía Blanca Regional Faculty, National Technological University does not have a Library Management in order to meet the needs and requirements required for the accreditation of Coneau Engineering careers."
Hypothesis:
We are capable of giving the Information Unit Prof. Ing. Duillo Marchessi, the necessary business emphasis, in order to comply with the Library's mission and vision, of establishing a new model of the University Library Paradigm, for the future which is "now" that involves the future, the integration of areas related to the entire company (Library Management) focused on the user or client and the added value of the information products and services that accompany the new Paradigm of higher education, which it tends to move from a model based on teaching to a model based on learning and inquiry.
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