Overcoming reductionism in information and documentation systems management

Abstract

Some of the current challenges in the management of information systems are analyzed, building on the synthesis and discussion of the studies published in the Editorial first number of the ninth volume of the journal Scire. Technology contributes with powerful tools and intellectual techniques ensure a safe frame of work; but, eventually, managing information and documentation systems is a problem centred in people, in their needs and interests, and in their capabilities and interrelations. Building information and documentation systems is about animating, serving and rationalizing human systems in those specific aspects concerned with the shared need of preserving and communicating their common memory. It is the human factor that gives libraries and information centres their sense of mission, because they not only give services, but also configure spaces of conviviality in which human communities concentrate in the aspects related to the transmission of the knowledge and celebrate their collective memory. Reductionisms —managerial, technological, social, ethical, etc.— are useful for guiding specialization and focusing priorities, but in the long trend only a systemic and humanistic perspective will keep the professional, educational and research practices in the trail of the classical disciplines. In a age of change, strategic management of human resources, especially in those aspects connected with education and training, must be carefully considered in order to accomplish such a mission statement