I was reflecting today on Stewart Brand's famous quote, first said in 1985:
Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive. Information wants to be free because it has become so cheap to distribute, copy, and recombine - too cheap to meter. It wants to be expensive because it can be immeasurably valuable to the recipient [emphasis added]. That tension will not go away. It leads to endless wrenching debate about price, copyright, 'intellectual property', the moral rightness of casual distribution, because each round of new devices makes the tension worse, not better.
What I found most interesting is that the "cost" of information is not inherent in the information itself but is specific to the individual recipient.
This is yet another way of saying that the role of info pros has to be not just providing information but making sure it will be seen as valuable to each client. Is it distilled? Is it easy to read, repurpose and share? Is it customized and formatted in the way your client wants?
Want more thoughts on how to turn "free" information into "expensive" information? See the slide deck of a presentation I gave in July at the AALL conference: From Search to Insight: adding value where it counts, and other slide decks at BatesInfo.com/extras.
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