Guest editorial

Citation

Olden, A. (2012), "Guest editorial", Aslib Proceedings, Vol. 64 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/ap.2012.27664eaa.001

Guest editorial

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Aslib Proceedings: New Information Perspectives, Volume 64, Issue 5

For the Developing World “the problems are those of decision, not of generalization for science”, according to Casley and Lury (1987, p. 68), who ask whether development policies are likely to be more effective if they take into account the findings of a case study than if they do not. There are a number of case studies in this issue, including Mosha and Manda on HIV/AIDS information and changing risky sexual behavior amongst Tanzanian undergraduates, and Nyareza and Dick on the use of community radio to provide peasant farmers in Zimbabwe with agricultural information. The impact of HIV/AIDS on Eastern and Southern Africa over the last 30 years is well known, and it is striking that so many of the findings from Mosha and Manda’s case study of undergraduates on two campuses are mirrored in a newly-published literature review ranging across the whole of Sub-Saharan Africa in the journal Sexual Health (Maticka-Tyndale, 2012).

This special issue of Aslib Proceedings is not based on some narrow interpretation of information management. It ranges much more widely, and is a mix of research papers and viewpoints. The papers do not follow a rigid template: awareness of the literature, for example, is shown by the use made of it throughout a study rather than in a separate literature review section. Seven papers cannot represent a continent, but they can give an indication of what topics are considered important by both established and newer authors. Most come from Eastern and Southern Africa. Contributions from West Africa – from Nigeria, which has a voluminous Library and Information Management literature, and from Senegal – did not materialize.

The issues confronting African authors have been written about over the years, for example the issue of whether to submit work to a local or to a foreign journal. Moahi points out in her essay on Indigenous Knowledge that when Africans publish in foreign journals they are really publishing research findings for the international community – not only because of the language used, but also because the journals are so expensive that they are beyond the reach of many African universities. In Ocholla, Ocholla and Onyancha’s study of the publication patterns of academic librarians from Eastern Africa it is interesting to see that the University of Dar es Salaam Library Journal comes out at the top. Academic librarians in Tanzania – and certainly those at the University of Dar es Salaam – are active researchers. They have academic status, teach on the master’s program in information studies, and need publications for promotion purposes.

Travel difficulties experienced by African scholars are often the subject of discussion at conferences. The essay by Britz and Ponelis is a rare exploration of these difficulties in writing. They propose a Global Knowledge Treaty that would allow African scholars easier access to visas from Western countries. It is true, as they say, that “not all academics are born equal”, but whether their proposal is realistic or not is another matter. One could point out that researchers whose expertise is in particular demand have little difficulty in traveling: in a different context Hastings (2011) has touched upon the competition between the Russians and the Americans at the close of World War II for German nuclear scientists and their research material.

The value of community radio in a rural area is explored by Nyareza and Dick, while the role of the new social media in mobilizing young Tunisians and Egyptians in the uprisings of 2011 is dealt with by Abdelhay. It is worth noting that the popular unrest that led to the overthrow of two presidents in North Africa (or three, if Libya is included, although the Libyan regime change was brought about through force of arms) has not been paralleled South of the Sahara. No doubt Facebook groups exist in Ethiopia, but Demeke and Olden draw on statistics from the International Telecommunication Union to show that the percentage of Ethiopians using the internet is very small – no more than 0.75 percent of the population in 2010. Unlike most of Africa, there has been no liberalization of the telecommunications industry in Ethiopia, and there are particular constraints on conducting research in the country.

Moahi takes aim at both African universities and African libraries in her discussion of Indigenous Knowledge. She says that librarians in Africa complain that governments do not take them or their libraries seriously, but that the libraries contain dated books and government reports rather than current material. In her opinion it is critical to find out why Africa remains a knowledge consumer rather than a knowledge producer.

Anthony OldenGuest Editor

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the following for their assistance: Archie L. Dick (University of Pretoria), Alli A.S. Mcharazo (Tanzania Library Service Board), Dennis N. Ocholla (University of Zululand), Stephen A. Roberts (University of West London), and Paul Sturges (Loughborough University). The author would also like to thank Wendy Lynch at Emerald. This special Africa issue was commissioned by David Nicholas (then at University College London), the former editor of Aslib Proceedings.