Autoroutes de l'information et apprentissages documentaires

Abstract

Navigating multimedia networks and systems doesn't just happen: information presentation and seeking have been transformed in the electronic age to the point that users are now obliged to learn specific information seeking techniques, while helping them learn has become an essential mediation task performed by both school and special librarians. Seraphin Alava has adopted nautical metaphors to describe how to navigate the electronic networks without getting lost or drowning in a sea of hypermedia, hypertext, hyperdocument, hyperspace... The electronic information networks represent a major opportunity for developing countries. The present article is about Africa and the urgent need to development information highways so that this continent is not left behind by the information society. Examples of some of the networks and infrastructures already operating are described here. The authors use the highway metaphor to call for a universal highway code, appropriate vehicle provision and driver education, and point to several essential directions to travel down: health, research and education, economic development and the tourist industry, African culture and integration. It is urgent to create a French language infosphere, and this can be brought about only by using standards, linguistic tools and software that guarantee a multilinguistic environment on the Internet and the information highways. Public hospitals, like any enterprise, are facing the vital problem of how to manage information. How can we organize and exploit appropriately the enormous amount of information generated in the different fields of administration, medicine, science, nursing care and technology? Special librarians are meeting this challenge by creating specialized libraries and information services. A review of recent developments in hospital librarianship is followed by a description of the different types of users and their different needs. The authors explain how, when a hospital information service is at the heart of its institution's information systems and administration, it can be a partner in public health decision-making. The university hospital center of Rouen has been connected to the Internet since late 1994. A Web server was created in February 1995 to help users access medical resources on this network. The server presents both local information sources at the hospital (library catalog, related services, publications etc.) and links to the main, primarily French, medical information servers, particularly those links to information sources (such as libraries, publishers, electronic reviews, discussion lists etc.) and electronic applications in medicine (indexed using Medline MESH terms). Competitive intelligence is no longer a practice reserved for large companies; it is also used in many middle-sized companies. A service set up recently is described: its definition, organization and use by a pharmaceutical company and its information center. The main findings of a survey of the place and role of information services in research in the Congo are presented here. The foreseeable result was that information services are the principal means for researchers who, if they are not totally satisfied, have not got many other options. The present article examines the process of information searching, user expectations of an information service, and the relationship between information, research and development. During their practical work experience, library science students were asked to study user practices in the information centers where they were assigned. The present article describes the methods used and problems encountered, as well as the different types of users observed. The analysis leads us to question how users and information professionals really see information mediation, and to examine the role of different techniques in information searching and of the relationship that develops between librarian and end-user.

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