This hypertext examines the following major themes challenging today's
information world
- The Information Explosion: Small colleges, like Skidmore, face
the daunting challenge to provide their students with broad access to
modern information resources at a time when both the volume of publications
and the unit cost of these publications is increasing at unsustainable
rates. Meanwhile, the worldwide web (WWW) grows at an unprecedented rate.
- New Forms of Publication: In print media, a stable information
economy had evolved to make it relatively easy to identify quality publications
whose contents have been edited and tested against the prevailing thought
of disciplinary experts. New modes of electronic publishing threaten to
disrupt this stability, creating new challenges for scholars and teachers.
Will scholars reassert the traditional review model, or is the world at
the birth of a new information economy based on principles that remain
unenunciated?
- The Democratization of Information: This section explores some
of the potential dimensions to this new information economy -- one that
transforms information from a scarce resource to an item so plentiful
that it spawns a new social concern "information overload".
It remains to be seen whether this becomes the start of a major new trend
or the temporary excesses of a new communication medium.
- Emerging Technologies: Several technology trends are helping
to facilitate this information explosion. New display technologies will
be better suited for reading prose, and universal connectivity will provide
the infrastructure to enable rapid delivery of documents to homes and
schools. The emergence of "intelligent appliances" offers to
expand greatly the diversity of information sources -- particularly for
scholars engaged in laboratory studies..
- The On-line Generation: Today's college freshmen represent a
generation of students who have grown up with computers in the home and
Internet access a routine part of daily life. How has this experience
shaped their approach to technology and their view of information services?
- New Models of Teaching and Learning: Much of higher education
is based upon the need to centralize scarce knowledge resources into universities
in order to maximize their potential. As information becomes universally
available, it will evoke new priorities for tomorrow's teachers and learners.
- Analogies from Today's World: Today is hardly the first time
that our society has been confronted by major changes that offer to restructure
the character of everyday life. Through examination of these prior changes,
we can infer strategies to thrive in the new opportunities that will be
introduced in the coming years.
- Bringing it Home: This section offers recommendations for actions
that might be feasible for implementation at Skidmore College.
