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In this paper I analytically review the literature on the information overload problem, with special reference to the business organizations and entrepreneurship and the study mainly reveals that the problem of the information overload has been existed for many years, whereas in current years the problem has become more clearly recognized and experienced. A concern stressed in the literature is the paradoxical situation that most probably there is an abundance of information available and it is often difficult to obtain useful, and relevant information when it may be needed. Both perceptions and the actual effects of information overload have exacerbated by rapid advances made in the information and communication technology, whereas it is not clear cut as to whether Internet has worsened/improved the situation. Some solutions have put forward to reduce the information overload are a reduction in duplication of the information found in professional literature; the adoption of the personal information management strategies, along with the integration of software solutions such as push technology and intelligent agents; and the provision of value-added information. Main emphasis is placed on the technology as a tool and not driver, while increased in information literacy may provide key to reducing the information overload in organisations.

Information overload has always been a challenge for businesspeople as well as professionals from other types of organizations. And today with search algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) such an ever-present part of daily life and media consumption, the challenges in learning how to filter information for oneself for effective processing, interpretation and analysis have only increased. This article presents several frameworks that were created for instructing students to assist with addressing this. They were tested and refined over four years in a core MBA course focused on decision making and project-based work. They include ways to conceptualize the broad areas of information available for business decision making as well as how to identify information by thinking about who is producing it, why they are producing it and who their key customers are. Other frameworks presented deal with ways to identify pertinent information and how to process and work with it as part of a research investigation. These frameworks are presented as tools that can be used by business school instructors, but certainly have a broader application as useful guidelines for anyone hoping to be a better collector and processor of relevant information for decision making and project work.

The author explores the concept of ‘information anorexia’ – the idea that one may not be receiving the essential information one needs to be an effective information professional. In the article, the author outlines a construct of information anorexia and its causes, illustrates some factors that might lead to information anorexia, and puts forth some thoughts and practices on coping with it in the professional and personal realm.

Content creation is no longer the exclusive domain of journalists, newspapers and advertisers. As Clay Shirky1 has famously pointed out, publishing is no longer a job or an industry, it’s a button. We’re all creating content, as originators or commentators, which is then shared and re-shared many times over. The resulting cascade of information requires new content organization and consumption techniques, and the disciplines, competencies and skills of content curation are now critical. This article argues that effective content curation requires real-time technology and tools used by knowledge domain experts who can interpret and add insight to content. It explores the content curation process, introduces five laws for the curation economy, presents models of content curation and assesses the essential curation skills.

Information managers are now bombarded with information from multiple sources: traditional media, the Internet and more recently social media. The demand for fast insight from this data is becoming the primary challenge for those tasked with managing information for business advantage. This article explores how the consumption, analysis and delivery of insight from content are changing and how this will impact information managers in the future.

The author looks at the concept of ‘information obesity’ – analogous to physical obesity – especially as it applies to information professionals. The author examines causes, such as information overload, and additional factors that make information professionals prone to information obesity. The article concludes with practical and philosophical suggestions for preventing and coping with information obesity, and an overview of ideas around the concept of ‘slow information’.

The volume of information continues to grow at an exponential rate; new products, social networks and web services appear almost daily. Government and public bodies are releasing more data for public scrutiny; companies are becoming more radical in the way they create and use information; global news and events reach us in near real time, 24/7. Professional and social networks proliferate. We are awash with data and information. This article describes five simple steps we can take and some of the tools we can use to become more effective in managing and using digital information and the social web for personal learning and development.

In this article, the author considers the important trends that are reshaping the way information and knowledge workers consume and use information. She looks at the way in which the first generation of digital natives are approaching work activities in a different way from earlier generations, and exploiting the advances in technology across the spectrum to deal with the explosion in the volume of available information. She focuses on the way in which the combination of these factors emphasize the need for good quality, timely and relevant information, and how they affect the role of the information professional.

Information overload is a very common problem in the business information industry. However, the root of this problem is not too much information; rather it is the fact that humans have limited attention spans to handle this information. Humans possess more processing power than computers but computers score over us in having almost unlimited attention spans. We must allocate our attention span in such a way as to maximize the information we obtain, given the constraint of our mental abilities. We have adopted a number of strategies to cope, like using intelligent search agents or spreading what attention we have thinly across as many information sources as possible (in other words skimming). The financial services industry, however, has adopted a radical approach: cut the human out of key parts of information acquisition and processing and use computers instead. This article argues that this approach could well spread to the wider business information market in the next few years. Far from being a threat, this could prove liberating for information professionals, allowing them to become more expert in specific industry sectors. The new breed of industry information portals, or community sites, will greatly aid in this transition and will build professional skills and efficiency.

Examines the implications for law librarians of technological and other information changes. Suggests that the information overload challenges they face are the same as those faced by lawyers, and points out that law librarians continue to have a role as evaluators of information services and intermediaries between publisher and lawyer. Emphasizes the benefits of both printed and electronic access to legal materials, particularly as there is no adequate online archive of older legal material available yet. Assesses relations between information professionals and vendors, expressing concerns about erratic customer service and escalating costs. Declares that lawyers will always need librarians but acknowledges that the information department's strategy must be closely aligned with that of the business. Suggests that traditional skills of librarianship remain as important as ever, albeit in a new technological context, and expresses concern at the lack of some of these skills among new entrants to the profession. Concludes that new opportunities regularly present themselves and must be seized.

Information acquisition and use have been transformed by the internet. An enormous range of resources are more widely available than ever before, contributing to the perception that all information is available on the web. Many internet users complain of 'information surfeit', an inability to negotiate the vast volume of information at their fingertips. This article is a view of the trends towards reduced access to data, reduced choice, and reduced transparency threatening the flow of information access worldwide.

This is the first in a series of short articles by Roger James in which he explores the technical challenges and developments that signal changes in the world in which information specialists operate. Here Roger explores the factors contributing to information overload and its effect on our ability to recognize new ideas.

There is a paradox in practical knowledge management in which the need to have an environment in which knowledge is organized in a more efficient manner needs to be balanced against the problem of “information overload”. Two approaches to resolving this paradox comprise: the “big software” approach, involving the use of a sophisticated search engine; and the “traditional information” approach, where content is organized beforehand using highly skilled people to spend time indexing, abstracting and isolating critical pieces of information within the bulk of any information source. It is proposed that a more practical approach would be to use techniques based on metadata, XML (Extensible Markup Language), tagging, data models and relational databases, arguing that, above a certain size of genuinely useful internal knowledge assets, the metadata approach is an essential management tool. While search engines performed reasonably well with the older, smaller databases, the increasing size of these databases means that size and density have become critical variables in knowledge management. Details of metadata and related techniques are described as a means of solving some of the problems involved in organizing knowledge in very large databases.

The degree to which companies are failing in their attempts to manage the increasing amount of information becoming available to them is discussed in light of a study, undertaken in 1999 by Autonomy Corporation and based on interviews with over 200 managing directors, managers and heads of Information technology (IT) departments in some of the UK’s leading companies across the financial, media and publishing, legal and retail sectors. Many of the companies that turned to technology for a solution to their problems found that the technology exacerbated the problems they already faced. The ways in which information has become a problem for so many organizations are considered, including: the corporate perspective; employee contributions to information overload; ways in which businesses make room in their organization for information overload; electronic mail that no-one wants to throw away; the high price both of searching for information and for not finding information. Concludes by outlining the grounds that exist for optimism for improvement in the future: notably through the use of advanced pattern matching technology.