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undeniable and people began to recognize that having too much
unneeded and irrelevant information was as bad as having too
little needed and relevant information, and, sometimes, could even
be far worse. “Ignorance is bliss” increasingly became a tempting
siren call to hide from the data onslaught.
At the same time the value of information professionals was
ascending as individuals and organizations alike begin to realize
that if information itself could no longer be perceived as a free
good, neither could the services of a skilled information
professional be perceived as free either. Besides the traditional
information experts such as librarians, archivists, curators,
documentalists and records management experts, there emerged
a brand new family of information brokers and information
counselors of various hues, with many occupational titles, and
practicing in many different market niches, such as science and
technology information, government information, business and
industry information, health and medical information, and so on.
Databases and data banks were proliferating all over the place,
and if they happened to be developed off line (in the “manual”
mode to use an almost obsolete term today) they were soon
migrated to an online mode, because their value, both from a
monetary and a handling efficiency standpoint, exponentially
increased commensurate with the degree to which they could be
automated in order to facilitate widespread and ready availability
and accessibility.
In the 21st Century, with the Second Millennium’s Google and
search engines, and the Internet, the possibility of stopping the
information tsunami was virtually doomed forever. Media and
media modes – the channels and conduits that move data and
information from senders to receivers - proliferated too. The
variety of information content arrangements, the many different
audio and video communication modalities, and the diversity of
Overview of Information Literacy Resources Worldwide |22