The word 'cuts' has been rearing its ugly head in the information sector with far too much regularity in the last month or two. The latest two organisations to be threatened are the two jewels in the British crown of not only information, but also our culture – the BBC and the British Library.
No organisation can spend willy-nilly and difficult as they often are to deal with, the money men have their place. But if the focus becomes too narrow, in other words too short term, the damage can be lasting. Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the British Library penned an item in this weekend's Observer discussing what will happen if the money men starve our national library of cash. As she rightly points out, "I simply don't want to run a second rate organisation. Slipping from world leadership to the second tier is not something that can be reversed."
Talk to anyone on the street and they will believe that Britain is second at just about everything. We've lost our iron grip on manufacturing (it was only really in place because our Empire was the world market), we are no longer a military super power and other than the brilliant efforts of Lewis Hamilton we are not winning every sporting event about. Yet when you tell people that the UK is the world leader in the information world they are surprised. But once again the money men could very well cut the costs and accept second place whilst talking of being winners.
If funds are cut the quality will drop. The quality debate has, of late, been caught up in a debate about information literacy and egalitarianism born from the Web 2.0 movement. Yet an excellent analysis of the role of Radio 4 as it reaches 40 in the Saturday edition of the Guardian summed up what I've been feeling, "The confusion is the assumption that unstructured demotic chatter is more "accessible" than a well written talk by someone who really knows about a topic. As sources of information and comment proliferate, the demand for authoritative, well informed programmes increases rather than diminishes." The last sentence sums up what faces the information world at the moment, not a need to ditch our methods in place of Web 2.0, but to improve our resources to complement Web 2.0.
The same is true of the British Library, according to Brindley, for the cost of a cup of coffee and a muffin (presumably at the BL café) the nation has access to some of the most important cultural, academic; and informed works on earth, including the Magna Carta.
If these two scions of information and quality are reduced to silver medal holders then the information industry as a whole will suffer.
Undoubtedly the challenges facing the BBC and British Library highlight all too clearly how, in today's era of information availability, quality has been sorely neglected. Our national resources are one thing, but surely it's vital that like charity, valuing information begins at home. There is no point in trying to stir up support for national information resources, if people cannot understand the importance of quality in their everyday lives. Wikipedia's move to introduce tighter editorial controls is a welcome indicator of a growing backlash against today's online information mania, most likely prompted by the growing following for Citizendium. However, information has never been more vulnerable and we, as the users of information, more susceptible to making poorly informed decisions. We must encourage an ethos of interrogating our information sources, so as to understand the value of our national information treasures, and appreciate why losing our first place, matters.
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