Since 1990 sales have plummeted nearly 50 per cent and the company recently announced that it has disbanded its famous sales force. The CD-ROM products cost pennies to reproduce and are given away free with the purchase of a computer. The quality of the information in the Encyclopedia Britannica and Encarta is not, according to Britannica's management, at all comparable, but the value equation did not work in the marketplace. Technology caused a fundamental shift in the value of the information that was the business of Encyclopedia Britannica. Content took second place to the delivery mechanism, which is reminiscent of Marshall McLuhan's thesis that the medium would become the message.
Travel agencies are another illustration of the shifting values of information caused by technology.
This entire industry is threatened because access to information which was unique, is now universal. Travel agents, who once had exclusive access, are scrambling to redefine their services and charging for what they had been giving away. They are searching for other ways to add value to their role and to the information they provide, and they are hoping that access was not the real value in their service, but analysis and interpretation. For librarians these examples have a familiar pattern. When end users gain the same access to information that has been the exclusive preserve of a profession, profound shifts take place in the role of that profession.