Human resource development for the information society

This paper uses the four occupational categories identified by the OECD ‐ information producers, information processors, information distributors and infrastructure providers ‐ to explore the state of the information economy of countries in the Asia Pacific region. As would be expected, the developed countries in the region have more advanced information economies than the developing countries as measured by the outputs of these four occupational categories. This does not imply that the developing countries in the region are sitting on their hands. Many countries have developed strategies to improve their information technology and telecommunications infrastructure. The paper argues that perhaps too much emphasis has been placed on infrastructure development and not enough on human resource development. It identifies in particular the need to train information processors (i.e. people who use information for the creation of new knowledge, to make decisions or to increase productivity and profit) through the development of information literacy skills, and information distributors, particularly library and information professionals. In connection with the training of information professionals, the writer argues that the current curriculum in many library schools is no longer suitable, and stresses the need to build a curriculum that revolves around the model of the virtual library and the Internet