Do you remember a time when mail used to be delivered around the office, accompanied with a magazine and newspaper to which was attached a distribution list?  You were expected to read whatever it was - a financial paper, business review or trade journal - tick your name on the list and then pass it on to one of your colleagues.  This was the age of 'snail mail' and your vital background professional reading was also in printed format and moved around the office as fast as those above you could read, and be bothered to pass it on.

These days your company maybe still has a subscription to many such journals, but I bet that most of them spend a long time in the reception area, where visitors can be impressed by your company's reading material.  Times have indeed changed; as a professional you are now expected to do a lot of your background reading on line.  Search for it yourself, read it yourself, identify the key information and summarise it yourself.

All is not well with this 'distributed model' in which information arrives directly to individuals.  The first problem is 'information overload' - we subscribe to too many newsletters which we never have enough time to read.  The next problem is a shift to superficial reading styles and the ease with which information can be deleted.  We are tempted to save time by deleting newsletters, and very soon it becomes an automatic habit, without necessarily reading them.

There is also a more subtle problem with this way of delivering information.  The advantage of the 'distribution list' days was that your colleague would often write a note on the list pointing out a particular article ("Hey John, have your seen what is happening to our key customer, read page 19!").  The act of being part of a physical chain of information distribution gave you a responsibility to add value in the chain.  SO much more if your boss was at the beginning or end of the distribution list: maybe he passed you the article to read because it was actually important and there was a possibility he might later test you.  He may even pay attention to those who made useful observations in the distribution list.  Your link to the chain was visible, and you got credit for finding useful information.

We are supposedly in an age of collaboration, where 'brain workers' will work together on producing intellectual property on line, in a non-hierarchical and distributed way.  It has worked in 'Open Source' software development, and is expected to make a similar impact on the way many of the rest of us will work.  I think we may need to learn new skills of summarising and sharing, and we will almost certainly need new tools to help us.

Meanwhile, with all the emails flying around we may have forgotten about the physical copies of journals that are held in the reception area.  I believe that many of these may be a particularly valuable and efficient way to get summarised information.  Perhaps it may be worth passing by the reception on a regular basis and reading a journal or two.  Just don't put your feet up on the coffee table and get caught by your boss while doing so.