The Information Workforce
As we move towards information-based societies, there is a growing need for specialist staff who can manage flows of information within organisations and, more generally, within society as a whole. For over 30 years Nick Moore has been closely associated with research into both the demand for, and the supply of, information specialists.
In the mid-1980s he carried out research into the emerging market for information professionals, identifying the start of a dramatic expansion in the demand for researchers and information analysts in both the UK and Singapore. At this time he was also developing for Unesco a set of Guidelines for information workforce surveys (Unesco 1986). These were based on two pilot surveys in the Caribbean and have since been used to collect baseline data in a wide range of countries.
More recently he has focused on the changing skills and competencies that are required in an information society. It is possible to identify four complementary sets of skills that are exercised by today's information specialists:
- Creation
- the design and production of printed and digital information packages
- Collection
- the development and management of libraries and other collections of information resources
- Communication
- the delivery of information to people in response to their enquiries
- Consolidation
- the provision of intelligence services for managers and executives.
Since then Nick has developed this basic idea through a series of presentations at conferences in Bangkok, Lisbon, Berlin, Tallinn, Tokyo and Oslo. It also formed the core of an article in Education for Information (16 (3) 1998, pages 191-208).
In 1997 Nick Moore worked with the Unesco Asia-Pacific Region to develop a set of curriculum guidelines based on this analysis. The results - A curriculum for an information society: educating and training information professionals in the Asia-Pacific region - were published by Unesco in 1998.
More recently Nick has been working with the Social Informatics Research Unit at the University of Brighton to survey the libraries, museums and archives workforce in the South East of England. The survey was commissioned by SEMLAC the regional development agency for museums, libraries and archives.
Acumen has since been commissioned by MLA-WM (The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council for the West Midlands) to produce a practical manual that can be used by regional agencies to survey the workforce.