THE INFORMATION UNITS AND INFORMATION-DOCUMENTARY COMPANIES THAT ARE REQUIRED TODAY IN LATIN AMERICA: A VIEW FROM MANAGEMENT AND MARKETING WITH SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

Abstract

It is a reality in current-day Latin American society that departments of information (UI) and information/ documentation companies (EID) are applying, or beginning to apply, the principal concepts and tools of management and marketing toward developing an «adequate» organizational performance. However, this reality is often undertaken in the organizational practice of the IU/EID and in the education of librarians as a course of inertia (if everyone is doing it, it must be good) and a collision course (to apply these concepts is to betray librarianship and the reason for being of libraries), both of which are equally detrimental. Neither course of action leads to a critical adaptation of reality, to a reading of «a sign of the times, » that are always found in an intermediate course, that may tend toward one side or the other, but depending previously and invariably on an analysis of the different contexts, not on fashions, impositions, fears, prejudices, and conceptual and disciplinary ignorance. Therefore, this article attempts to present some of the multiple positions or courses of action in search of a non-dogmatic response to this question: What kind of departments of information and information/ documentation companies are needed today in Latin America? In so doing, we must keep in mind the situation of the Latin American populace and its access to information, and the social responsibility that every organization must assume in an underdeveloped setting such as ours—which should be reflected in its mission and its plan of action.