Free Essay Sample on Sustainability in Information Agencies

Introduction

The concept of sustainability seeks to address the existing necessities without declining the future generation’s capability to satisfy their wants. The principle of sustainability entails of three cornerstones: economic, environmental, and social- informally referred to as profits, earth, and people. The world currently aims to achieve sustainable development goals by the year 2030. With this initially, most of the aims were directed to words food providence and climatic concerns. Some of the goals included: providing the basic human needs to all people globally, managing climatic changes by avoiding pollution, and making use of natural resources adequately. Financial stability is also the main objective of SDGs (Pradhan et al., 2017).

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With much research, it turns out that the central pillar for the Sustainable Development Goals is information. With well-arrayed information, the other desired projects can be figured out. It is, therefore, crucial to reinforcing sustainable development objectives in the information society so as to provide an adept foundation for other goals and projects to be achieved. Under the sustainable development goals, information projects and systems are included at target 16.10: Guarantee public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms, in agreement with national legislation and international agreements. Several bodies have been formed to address the issue of information development and sustainability in relation to sustainable development goals. Examples of these bodies are the United Nations World Summit on Information Society (WSIS). Other bodies include the Australian Library of Information Association (ALIA), the Library and Information Association (CILIP), the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). The following are the aims of sustainable development projects within the information society: fostering education, reducing the digital divide, and closing the knowledge needs gap, and offering government initiatives and services distribution sites. Also, promoting digital inclusion through information and communication technology, supporting science and academia, and upholding culture and heritage.

Information Professionals

There are various ways in which information professionals such as librarians, archivists, information managers, and information system specialists can support the ongoing sustainable development projects (Samantaray, 2017), which are aimed at achieving the sustainable development goals. Some of the main projects currently in the information society that are in line with sustainable development goals include digitization of the information resources, thus enabling most of the formerly hard copies getting scanned and uploaded in different archives to enable more people to access at the same time. The information museums are currently being virtualized to enable remote access. Inclusion of a digital system to provide more insight into some of the ancient materials that are fragile and are likely to be affected when exposed to light. Thus, by use of technologies such as infrared lights that do not affect these photo-sensitive materials, information is able to be retained. Another key project that is going on under sustainable development projects is the deciphering of ancient data and translation of information into other languages. Some of the ancient data that is still under translation include the voynich manuscript, large khitan script, and proto-elamate. Thus, information society still has lots of projects going on and which calls for assistance from information professionals.

Information professionals can use the concept of sustainability to assist in sustainable development projects through scholarly information. While the researchers carry on with the projects in the information society, they usually require materials written by experts in different fields. Despite a researcher having skills in one’s field, finding this material in most cases requires an information professional who can quickly extract the information from accurate sources since that is where the information professional has expertise in. The information professional also offers a peer review of the papers done by other people while undertaking their projects. They provide insight on format and citations while the researcher provides details of content and flow. Also, there are different aspects of scholarly communication that requires both one carrying out the project in information society to bring to clarity. There are situations that need a specific combination of tools and competences to be able to materialize a piece of work. Such include cases where there is a need for digital curation and organization of the analyzed information.

The information professional engages different groups of persons handling sustainable development projects to support them in accomplishing their desire tasks. These groups are found within the 17 sustainable development goals. Poverty eradication projects are one of the groups that information professional engages with to assist in different ways while regarding the aspect of sustainability. The information professional here provides core materials that are used for research. While carrying out deeper information on how the project may materialize with minimal costs, the information professional suggests which technology to use and can also assist with proper documentation of the research papers by following professional formats. The final information is usually required to be stored both in a secured system and part of it archived for future reference. The archivist helps with all these roles and classifies the information to minimize confusion. While the engineers endeavor to examine a solution and use as much better means at arriving at a solution under the project, communicating their needs might be cumbersome to them due to a lack of better know-how in switching communication tactics from the engineering perspective to the ordinary business perspective. The information professional, therefore, comes to rescue by getting to understand the needs of the engineers and formulating reports to other stakeholders in a convenient way. This includes presenting results and evidence in a way that the audience grasps information with ease and is able to reason alongside it. Information professionals also help with different forms of information synthesis in some situations. This is seen in multilingual information professionals who take data from a wide range of sources and sometimes from different languages and different data types such as images and textual. The data is then reformatted into a uniform format and a coherent flow, thus resolving inconsistencies in information where there is any. This reduces the type spent by the group handling a different project (Owen, 1999). Thus, leading to an efficient project accomplishment and within less time.

Quality Education

Another group of sustainable development projects falls under the fourth UN sustainable goal, which provides quality education. Such projects include designing advanced stand-alone software that students can use to study on devices such as tablets. Another software can be made to provide tutors with a platform to be comparing and sharing information with other tutors globally. This improves the quality of education, thus cutting down the population living under poverty. In most cases, the person carrying out the above project could be a computer software developer or a graphics and animations person who has no much background of other requirements other than the system security and functionality. The information professional engages with this group by providing material to carry out a literature review of the project. The literature review provides lots of insight into the person of the project on which steps to follow and which elements to live out for the success of the project. Some of the information provided by the information professional include scholarly background information on the project under development, supplying other perspectives. Suppose it is a computer program intended for junior students of a local primary school in a remote area. The information professionals advise on what the data that is present says about the region and its people and what features will best work to motivate the children to go to school and keep learning. Having been able to carry out a deeper literature review and deep analysis of knowledge conveyance, the information professional also engages this group by providing ethical information with regards to how the project should materialize among learners (Abell and Oxbrow, 2006). For instance, eradication of any chance that an animation that was intended to be a graphic illustration for pupils is perceived as a religious assault by a certain group. This might significantly affect the success of the project. Such information is supplied by the information professional.

While handling this project, the information professional assists in the integration and evaluation of multiple sources of information that have been presented in a variety of formats. Since this might have more of digitized projects, including an adept in digital skills information professional is one of the surest ways of materializing the project (Raboy, 2004). They can greatly help with the testing of the final system if it is one that has been designed say to be a virtual library to help with the education of students from different backgrounds. They also help the project owners to access the required information effectively and with speed and accuracy. Moreover, the available information can critically be evaluated and utilized by the information professional who classifies the information and uses the required tools and experience in handling the data. Also, the flow of information management, especially ones coming from different sources and media, can well be done by engaging the information professional. The documentation of the project will then be taken by the archivist for back-up storage, and whenever required, they are retrieved and provided for reference.

Sustainable Development Goal

Another group that can be engaged by the information professional while upholding the concept of sustainability is under the seventh UN sustainable development goal. Provision of affordable and clean energy (Biermann, 2017). There is a need for conducting systematic reviews and backtracking into the ancient systems for insight to come up with means of having advancement in energy. An example is studying Egyptian engineering articles to find out how they used to harness energy in ancient times. This knowledge provides mechanical skills that enable the project persons to understand what to build on. To have this information well arrayed and stripped off the unnecessary information requires engaging the information professional. With this expert, one will be able to give sufficient citations and well-established textual evidence to strengthen the analysis of the text employed in the study of the project.

Conclusion

The information professional could also assist in deep research and provide written articles that have different minerals that can be explored to provide energy. The information professional also engages other groups with sustainable development projects by offering training on how to present their studies in a professional manner and how to approach bulky research materials. These skills, as they are rare, they require well-trained persons to reduce the cost and time spent carrying out preliminary research.