Introduction

In this chapter we will consider some of the changes which have occurred, and are still occurring, in the way in which recorded information is communicated, largely as a result of digital technologies but also because of associated economic and sociocultural factors. This amounts to a consideration of the changing infrastructure of the infosphere. It has a wide scope, including publishing, data curation, news media, collection and memory institutions including libraries and archives, and social media. These will mainly be covered in outline, with references to other sources for more detail. The chapter is divided into three sections. The first deals with information chains and lifecycles, simple models which help to understand changes in the communication of information; the second deals with the communication of knowledge, through publishing in the broadest sense; and the third with information places and spaces, which act as nodes for the communication and sharing of information.

Information chains and lifecycles

The idea of a communication chain, or information chain, or information lifecycle of recorded information is fundamental for the information sciences, and it is also commonly invoked in explanations of information and digital literacies. Such a chain describes the processes of documentation from creation, through dissemination, organisation, storage and use to disposal. They have been applied to information and data, and to journal articles, books, archival records and other forms of document. Communicating information typically falls within ‘dissemination’ or similar steps, but is obviously dependent upon other stages.