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Information Professionals

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THE ROLE OF INFORMATION PROFESSIONALS IN GLOBAL

ECONOMIC CRISIS
By Mohammed Nasser Al-Suqri,
Salim Saeed Al-Kindi,
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Abdullah Humood Al-Sarmi
Abstract
It is now generally agreed that better information use in the
financial services sector might have helped to avert the economic crisis

which originated in the U.S. in 2007. Similarly, it is clear that improved
availability and communication of good information could have helped
prevent the types of consumer and investor reactions which spread the

crisis around the globe today. Drawing on a range of existing sources,
this paper considers the impact of information failure and the role of
information professionals in the economic crisis. It then examines how

information professionals can make an important contribution to
economic recovery and sets out recommendations for the profession.
The paper concludes that unless information professionals play a more
proactive role in making good economic and financial information

readily accessible, the risk of recurrent economic crises will be
increased.
Introduction: the causes and evolution of the global economic

crisis
It is now generally agreed that the economic crisis, which
originated in the United States in 2007 and soon spread throughout the
world, was primarily the result of several interconnected factors. First,

recent years had seen an increasing use of high-risk consumer lending
strategies in the financial sector, leading to high levels of “bad”
consumer debt, which borrowers were unable to pay when interest rates

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Nasser M. Al-Suqri The Role of Information Professionals in Global Economic Crisis /
Mohammed Nasser Al-Suqri, Saeed Al-Kindi Salim, Humood Al-Sarmi Abdullah //
Information, Society and Justice. – 2010. – Vol. 3. – № 1. – P. 51-57. – ISSN 1756-1078.
– Available at: http://www.l ondonmet .ac.uk/fms /MRSite /acad / dass/
ISJ%20Journal/V3N1/05_The%20Role%20of%20Information%20Professional%20withi
n%20Economic%20Crisis.pdf