I have occasionally posed the following riddle: What happens when you breed an information scientists (a librarian) with an information systems engineer (a computer programmer)?

Answer: An information therapy (Ix) crusader… That breeding produced a baby version of Joshua Seidman, who grows up to be considerably less cute but slightly more articulate.

Although my parents are mostly retired, my dad still teaches M programming to IT professionals at the VA (and other places).

More to the point of Ix, however… Not surprisingly, when you go to my mom’s personal Web page, you will find that her interests include:

• Improving communication between information providers and information users
• Integrating traditional with electronic library services
• Fostering core information competencies for students, faculty, researchers
• Developing cooperative activities among different types of libraries
• Family and work issues
• International exchange of information

My mother spent several decades running special libraries–at the Environmental Protection Agency, Hanscom Air Force Base Geophysics Lab, and ultimately the MIT Sciences & Engineering Libraries. The mission of the organizations she ran was basically to figure out how to most effectively deliver the right information to the right person at the right time.

Much like I wrote in my blog post yesterday, the librarian doesn’t necessarily need to prescribe the information to the consumer (whether that be a patient, a research scientist or a library user–which, BTW, are all examples of consumers of Ix that various special librarians encounter). In fact, my mother was a pioneer in both using electronic search techniques decades ago and in trying to figure out how to make such tools more accessible to the library consumer.

The key for the librarian, the clinician, or any other “information therapist” is to provide multiple vehicles to allow the consumer to access the information in the way that works best for him or her at the particular moment in care. Because sometimes I want a precise information prescription and other times I want to go to the stacks myself to rummage around…and other times I want to make a trip to the virtual library with a peer that I trust.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 27th, 2008 at 2:16 pm and is filed under Libraries & Ix. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.