Breaking Down Information Sectors
As an aspiring information professional, one of the first things you have to understand is the concept of information organizations, needs, seeking-behavior, and communities are essential to the foundation of your career.
Don’t believe me?
Think back to when you were a child. Did you spend a lot of time watching shows like Sesame Street, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Blue’s Clues, or Between the Lions? If you did, can you remember what you got out of those programs outside of educational value? Did Steve make you believe that he was your friend? Was there comfort in the opening acknowledgement and ending farewells? Was there a desire to return to these programs as they aired in order to obtain this value?
Then congratulations!
You were a participant—whether aggressive or silent—(Chang et al., 2022) of an information community!
Now of course, it would be easy to stop here and simply presume that an information community is exactly what it sounds like—a community of information—and while you would technically be right, if we go just a few layers deeper we can bring to surface a more comprehensive of what an information community truly is.
In the simplest of terms, an information community is a community that is formed by people who are—presumably—seeking to fulfill an information need. Although I would prefer not to be quoted on it, one could also presume that a community is able to form because it’s participants are both seeking to fulfill a information need as well as partaking in similar information seeking-behaviors. In our current example, the information community would be the Educational Children’s Television Programming Community (hereby after, ECTPC)—that is, organizations who produce educational children’s content and participants who engage with said content—and an information organization within that community would be PBS.
The Public Broadcasting Service (better known as PBS) is a publicly broadcasted, free-to-air television network that is both the most prominent provider of educational programming as well as the most trusted media organization in the United States. (Publicity, 2022) To understand how significant that is, PBS is a media organization so successful in its advocacy and public facing marketing, that unlike the public library (unfortunately) almost 80% of survey respondents don't mind if their tax dollars are used to keep it running and an astounding 84% of parents believes that the network's children's programming helps set children up for educational success. That is almost unfathomable in this day and age given that there is currently so much division amongst racial, economic, and socio-political lines.
All this to say, PBS—and the greater ECTPC at large—are examples of information organizations and communities that are a part of the information sector. Moreover, I’d like to submit the argument that PBS in particular is an incredible example of an information organization that was born out of the emergence of a new technology (television) and has managed to adapt with that technology as it has changed, advanced, and coincided with the creation of new media forms.
At a higher level, PBS as a media organization exists as an aggressive participant in a never-slowing information community; however, at the more grounded level—that is, participation at the level of show creation and distribution—there is a more specific and explicit information need that different programs were meant to address. Fred Rogers, host of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, pursued his career in television in order to “[use] this fabulous instrument to be of nurture to those who would watch and listen.” (2013) As he further elaborated in his speech to the Senate Subcommittee of Communications, his show—and PBS at large—was meant to help nurture, validate, and educate the children watching. (2020) Sesame Street was created in the hopes that television could be used to help disadvantaged children prepare for school when they might otherwise have been unable (2024) Between the Lions, an animated/live-action/puppet hybrid show that was created to promote reading, was proven by the Early Childhood Institute of the University of Mississippi to have actually improved literacy rates in both low-income communities and communities where English was spoken as a second language.
I could go on (really, I could) but in summary: information sectors/communities/organizations are all around us and they are led by people that you might have never considered to be information professionals to address information needs you never realize existed!
References
Chang, K.-F., Huang, Y.-H., Li, W.-C., Luo, S., & Yang, D.-J. (2022). Promotion of internet users’ aggressive participation via the mediators of flow experience and identification. Frontiers in Psychology, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.836303
Our mission and history. Sesame Workshop. (2024, May 8). https://sesameworkshop.org/about-us/mission-and-history/#:~:text=Against%20the%20backdrop%20of%20the,prepare%20disadvantaged%20children%20for%20school.)
Public Broadcasting Service. (2013, January 8). Fred Rogers. PBS. https://www.pbs.org/wnet/pioneers-of-television/pioneering-people/fred-rogers/)
Publicity, P. (2022, March 17). PBS and member stations named “Most trusted” media organization for 19 consecutive years. https://www.pbs.org/about/about-pbs/blogs/news/pbs-and-member-stations-named-most-trusted-media-organization-for-19-consecutive-years/
(subtitles) Fred Rogers testifies before the Senate Subcommittee on Communications 1969. YouTube. (2020, March 11). https://youtu.be/E6wSjINly88?si=8ZG9eRcQQcchC7Dr