Information Soup - There’s Lots of it but is it Nutritious?

We live in a complex information society in which we are inundated with information from many sources and in many different formats. There’s a lot of information noise out there. In fact, so much that it can be difficult to filter out the bits we want from the bits we don’t want. We are constantly challenged with new forms of information, new ways of searching, retrieving and storing.

But our natural inclination is to seek and exchange information on a personal level - to ask questions of and talk to the people who are around us. Informal information exchange on a personal level is often effective because we are good at incorporating what we learn in this way into our frame of reference. It makes sense. It’s helpful to have a human element that can transform information into communication.

And this is where libraries come in. Libraries are natural information providers for their community. They are community hubs and meeting places. They can help to build beneficial networks and connections their local and wider community by being the human link in information transactions. They can develop links with community organisations and service providers to ensure that other local community places are information rich and that information can flow to where it is needed.