Rethinking Information

摘要

I've observed an unexpected effect of our current "uncertain times"-an increased willingness to reexamine many of our traditional routines and practices. Staying at home and, if we're lucky, working remotely require that we rethink virtually all our daily activities. For librarians and information professionals, this also means looking more closely at information-what it is, how we find it, and what we do with it. SLA recently conducted a vote to approve proposed changes to its bylaws. One modification was the removal of the word "written" from the requirement for an annual financial report. A discussion ensued around how to require a permanent record of the report and what concepts were encompassed by the word "written." Would this preclude an oral report, with or without a transcript? What about a slide deck? Would the text on the slides be considered "written"? My gut instinct would be to define a written report as a permanent record of some combination of text and graphics in a commonly used format (DOCX, PDF, PPTX). Fortunately, I wasn't involved in the difficult task of drafting the bylaws revisions, but this did get me thinking about the impact of this ambiguity of what constitutes written content on our ability to conduct online research.