Who is the information professional: some reflections

Abstract

The information sector is, by its nature, an heterogeneous sector. The diversity of the professional environments where these activities occur, the diversity of its actors and interpenetration of their duties make difficult to characterize the professional areas and their names. In this sense, the boundaries that separate the occupations of this sector are not clear. According Abbott (1988), all the professions form a system. In this system, the professions divide their spaces in accordance with the power of that each one. The history of these disputes determines the history of professions. The difficulty in define the field of the information professions is a consequence of these interactions, the uncertainty of roles that these professionals should play in a reality where technological change is very rapid. The term “information professional” covers a wide field of activities with various This paper aims to reflect on the reality of the information professional, evoking the contradictions between the different meanings of the words that describe these professionals from the literature of Information Science from Brazil and Spain. It is based in research on the sociology of professions, following mainly Abbott (1988) and Dubar (2005). The content analysis is based on Bardin’s technique, and considers three variables: the names of the professions, their definitions and their competences.