Information integrity and the information professional

摘要

The information professional (IP) has traditionally acted as gatekeeper and adviser for the benefit of users, whether they be corporate colleagues or ultimate beneficiaries of the information's use. With disintermediation and new resources resulting from almost ubiquitous internet access, globalisation and emerging information and communication technologies (ICTs), there has been a slight but certainly perceptible diminution of IPs' role as gatekeepers. This is manifested not only in the apparent ability of young children to 'research' their homework on the web, but in the growing role of IPs as trainers of end users and as quality assessors of intranet and database systems. For the IP, novice users' misappreciation of information is a constant frustration. Frustrating, because the competent IP is viscerally aware of occasions when information is not all it appears to be. Frustrating also because the IP knows well that it is a myth that all information is but a few mouse clicks away. Novice users of information resources include not only those whose exposure to resources is limiteci, but those whose primary role is not the use or exploitation of information at source. In other words, we can say that almost all those who are not IPs are novice users.