(Part III)

More and more books are now being published electronically. Is it just a ?passing gimmick? or the emergence of a phenomenon that will gather momentum? E-books are gaining popularity because they obviate the need for writers to place their skills and talents at the mercy of unscrupulous publishers, the cost of production starts from ?very little to zero? since there are no production in advance of demand, warehousing and shipment costs ? thus eliminating the frustration of not getting their work published and read by a wider public, they offer higher royalties to authors ? at least 50% compared to 10-20% for printed books.

Moreover, they enable writers to create a unique product or publish their own literary works in a secure format. E-books may also offer writers the prospects of including hyperlinks, promoting their websites and boosting up their profiles.

However, the following troublesome aspects of online books need not be overlooked : the requirements for a standard web browser, a special reader software, and reading appliances, their standard is believed to be lower than the traditional printed book since they are often un-refereed.

E-book customers have to pay by credit cards ? a not so secure method. Online books may be read on screen at the website, printed out immediately or downloaded for reading or printing offline at a later time. (Randall, 2003)

E-books cannot compete with the human?s personal relationship with printed and portable books made of paper, ink and glue. They will be more widely accepted when interfaces for digital text become ?uniformly better than the publishing products? (Larrea-Ona ).

One of the consequences of the evolving economy is that job categories will constantly change. The library and information service profession is no exception. Men and women will be faced with a legitimate concern or fear of seeing their jobs becoming less important or even obsolete.

Bill Gates rightly predicted: ?the pace of frenzied technological change is so fast that sometimes, it seems that the world will be completely different from one day to another. More than once, people will be pushed out of their comfort zones?. How can we best prepare ourselves to face this dilemma?

Gates advocated education, training and re-training as part of the solution. Individuals and companies will have to ?reinvent themselves ? possibly more than once by acquiring new interests, and skills throughout one?s life?. (Gates, 1995) An example of successful adaptation and proactive endeavour on the part of library managers has been to provide Internet cafés within libraries as an extension of their information resources rather than considering the Web as a competitor or a threat.

Today?s information environment is characterised by the rising cost of information resources, shrinking budgets, pressure for greater accountability (as exemplified by concepts like value for money and customer care), an exponential growth of print and electronic media resulting in the information overload, increased expectations and demands from information seekers amongst others.

Our traditional role of intermediary or mediator between information seekers and information resources implying the collection, organisation and dissemination of information must no longer be our sole objectives. Our core business has since long, shifted from books to information. Since ?knowledge is information effective in action, or information focused on results? (Drucker, 1993), high quality information is correlated to successful decision-making, problem solving, policy formulation and strategic planning in any organisation.

New breed of professionals

To be competitive in the new millennium, it is vital to have timely access to accurate and relevant information. The information transfer process requires professionals who understand how information is generated, collected, stored, retrieved, disseminated and used.

A new breed of information professionals with a new vision and drawing their multi-disciplinary education from librarianship, information science, information management and computer science and capable of developing and delivering value-added information products and services in all types of information-rich environments will be required.

One of the challenges facing library and information professionals in the 21st century is to understand the changes in the information market place and acquire non-traditional skills (other than classification, cataloguing and indexing) to ensure their survival in this knowledge-based economy.

They must strive to add value to their profile by becoming multi-skilled, hybrid professionals and acquire applied information skills such as: systems analysis, project management, marketing management, database management, presentation, records management, strategic planning, internet navigation, public relations, research and evaluation. These skills, once considered optional are now pre-requisites for their survival. (Wisdom-Hill, 1996)

While it is imperative to harness the latest technological innovations, we must resist the temptation of over-glorifying technology and under-estimating the human resource required to make the technology work. (Blosh, 2003). Information technologies must be creatively and effectively integrated into library and information services. But they must remain a servant rather than becoming the master (Orna, 1990).

Effective networking

Library and information professionals have interest to share information resources through innovative and effective networking and ensure equitable distribution of a broad range of information because users? information needs often transcend the four walls of a library and due to the rising cost of information resources and financial stringency.

In such an information environment, is there not a need for other information workers, i.e all those whose work involve the ?creation, storage, manipulation, use and dissemination of information? (Willard and Mychalyn, 1998) such as archivists, record managers, journalists, database managers, and information scientists to join together and build a partnership ? on the basis of ?common information values? such as: access and freedom of information, intellectual property, censorship, privacy, copyright, national information policy.

These values can be used to forge a new and broader idea of the information profession which is more in tune with the information society (Browne, 1999).

Ibrahim RAMJAUN