Mediation and information

Abstract

The work of the information professional, in special the librarian, can be defined as the mediation between the information need and the specific information which is present in the universe—barely infinite— informational. For that mediation to become real, the action of that professional should include from user service, storage and technical handling, to the creation of documentary products, etc. For some time, different authors have defended a change of paradigm in the LIS area, moving its focus on the collection to a focus on information. On the basis of this presupposition, the research project “Mediation of information and multiple languages” pretends: “To analyze the mediation of information, not alone in the scope of its narrower relation with the dissemination and transference of information, but, also, and mainly, understood as the determinant backgorund of library work; and analyze the implications of information mediation on the knowledge of the several information media and their processing”. The research project aims at establishing the bacground for a confrontation between the literature and the position that actually governs practice in the informational spaces. It is here defended there is a need, or opportunity, to rethink the area from the idea of information, but, in more rigorous way, that is, guided from the concept of information mediation. From this point of view, information mediation would be the object—or, attending to others ways of thinking science, the epistemological nucleus—of area. A provisional concept of mediation of information is presented, resulting from a previous research project developed by the group “Interfaces: information and knowledge”. As the research is in course, the conclusions and results are not still available, obviously.