Looking to the future

TASK

Write an essay exploring ONE of the following topics:

What are the greatest challenges for a specific library sector (public, academic, school, special etc.) over the next five years?
What are the greatest challenges for public archives or records management units over the next five years?
What are the greatest challenges for information agencies other than libraries and archives over the next five years?

Identify and describe five challenges

Drawing evidence from scholarly and professional literature and the subject modules, identify and briefly discuss five challenges that your sector is likely to face in the next five years. At least one of these challenges should relate to an evolving Information Technology, and another one on the infrastructure context that is impacting the sector you selected from the list above.

Explore two challenges in detail

Provide a detailed discussion of the IT-related challenge and another one of your identified challenges. For each of these two challenges, you should provide a global perspective first, which is then narrowed down to the Australian context to indicate how the sector is affected locally. In your discussion you should consider the following in relation to each of the two challenges:

Changing professional contexts;
Evolving organisational and societal contexts;
Relevant legal, ethical, and policy frameworks;
Contributions that research and scholarship may be able to make to help solve these two challenges.

You are expected to analyse the literature and modules critically, reflect on what you have read and synthesise what you have learned from the literature and the course modules in relation to both of your identified challenges.

Rationale

This assessment task will assess the following learning outcome/s:

be able to identify and explain ethical, legal and policy issues relevant to the information sector.
be able to understand basic IT terminology related to the information studies field and the roles of IT in enabling the management of information.
be able to compare and contrast how libraries and information agencies fit into constantly evolving information technology and infrastructure contexts.
be able to demonstrate comprehension of the diversity of library and information scholarship, including the professional and theoretical discourse of library and information studies.
be able to identify, evaluate and communicate about developments arising from major issues, questions and trends that define the information fields.