Navigation Menu Introduction Government Knowledge Academic Knowledge Private Sector Knowledge What is a book? What is a periodical? Government Documents Non-Print Material Quiz

Information Produced in the Private Sector The private sector also produces much of society's knowledge and information. Private sector producers of information include commercial newspapers, magazine and book publishers, the film and television industry, corporate laboratories, and business research firms. Commercial media organizations provide access to knowledge and information for a fee. Newspapers, magazines and books are sold to individuals and libraries by commercial enterprises. If a person wishes to view a movie he will be charged a fee, either at the movie theater or at the video store. Because commercial media enterprises need to make a profit to succeed they sometimes choose not to pursue certain ideas if they feel that those ideas will hurt their business.  Corporate laboratories and business research firms also perform research and publish the results. However, much of this information is not available to the public or to other researchers. Much of the research done by corporate laboratories and business research firms is for the purpose of giving a company a competitive advantage. As a result, these companies go to great lengths to keep their information secret. If companies do publish their results they will often patent or trademark the information. Patents and trademarks give the holder of the patent or trademark exclusive rights to the information. In addition to legitimate trade secrets, some corporations wish to keep their research secret for more political and social reasons. A prime example of this is the research produced by the tobacco companies. For decades the tobacco companies researched the effects of smoking and nicotine on human health. However, the companies refused to acknowledge their research for fear of a public and legal backlash. It wasn't until the Minnesota tobacco trial of 1998 that the tobacco companies were forced to release their research documents to the public. Prior to the release of these documents a person interested in doing research on tobacco was unable to access any of this information. Once again we see that research takes place in a political, economic and social context. Just because research is done does not mean that it will be published or easily available to the public. As student researchers you must consider these issues before you begin your research. You must also be aware of how the knowledge that is produced by the government, academe, or the corporate world is organized by libraries and the information industry. We will consider these issues in Lesson 2.