VISUALIZING INFORMATION by Marylaine Block

On several occasions librarians have asked me to speak about the future of reference service - if, indeed, there IS a future for reference service. I think librarians are worried that the simple delivery of information is not a growth area for libraries because that's where our primary competitor, the internet, excels, with its search engines and resources like Wikipedia. Helping people make sense of the information they've retrieved is something else again, and that, I believe, is where the future of reference service lies. After all, who is dying to compete with librarians in explaining to people how to fill out online FAFSA and FEMA applications? Who is fighting librarians for the opportunity to show people how to select, combine, and chart a variety of data points in government data sets? Who else wants to help students analyze and retrieve the kinds of information needed to solve a problem or research a topic? Who else worries about making sure the information retrieved matches the user's purposes and level of knowledge and sophistication? Who else is interested in providing context for the information? One of the most effective tools we can use to help people make sense of information is visualization.