Information Dissemination in Education: A Status Report

THE DISSEMINATION OF educational information has undergone dramatic change and growth in the last decade.Not only has the volume of information to be conveyed exploded, but the techniques employed to disseminate and use it have grown complex and demanding.Perhaps still more significant is our recognition that, for whatever reasons, information is not being disseminated and used as much as it should be by members of the educational community.Regardless of the title assigned to our jobs-reference librarian, information center manager, or director of special services-we are all concerned with the handling and use of information.This is the heart of the business.How can the librarian effectuate a successful information dissemination program?Certainly there is no simple answer to this broad and complex question.But who will disagree that a necessary starting point is to survey the resources and dissemination techniques now available?This article provides such a survey, and hopefully, will stimulate the use and further expansion of similar efforts in other fields of education.As used in the following discussion,