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Libraries have generally made the conceptual shift from collections based on “ownership” to more expansive models which incorporate “access” to information. A new set of challenges is emerging as the capabilities of information technology create new potentials for publishing and new models for access. Coupled with significant changes in the scholarly communication arena, research libraries are now challenged to reconceive the prevailing notions of collection development activity and the closely related strategies of providing access. Describes critical technical, cultural, and economic factors in the 1990s, and details an emerging series of tensions which build on the ownership‐access dichotomy of the past.

This study aims to assess barriers in accessing and uptaking climate change adaptation information among smallholder tomato farmers in Tanzania.

This study was conducted in Iringa and Morogoro regions, Tanzania. It adopted cross-sectional research design. Multistage, purposive and random sampling techniques with a sample size of 183 smallholder tomato farmers were used. Questionnaires containing closed- and open-ended questions, interview guide and focus group discussions were used to collect data. To ensure validity and reliability of data collection instruments, pretesting of the questionnaires was conducted by administering them to a small group of smallholder tomato growers. Statistical Product and Service Solutions software was used to analyse quantitative data while NVivo was used for analysing qualitative data.

Lack of clear understanding of climate change information (132, 72.1%), scarcity of libraries and information centres (125, 68.3%), inadequate income (125, 68.3%), lack of trust of sources of information (114, 62.3%), lack of sufficient knowledge about climate change (111, 60%), illiteracy (110, 60.1%), poor distribution of electricity in rural areas (109, 59.6%) and use of jargons (93, 50.8%) in explaining climate change adaptation issues are hindrances for smallholder tomato farmers to access and uptake climate change adaptation information.

This study was conducted in only two districts in Tanzania; thus, the findings cannot be generalized.

The government and relevant agencies are recommended to use appropriate strategies for breaking the barriers that impede easy access and uptake of climate change adaptation information by smallholder tomato farmers as one of the interventions to combat the impacts posed by climate change.

This study has contributed to the ongoing discourses on climate change issues. Such discourses have influenced attention and understanding of the role of access and uptake of climate change adaptation information by smallholder farmers for planning and implementation of adaptation strategies through awareness creation.

This study is in line with goal number 13.3 of Sustainable Development Goals, which vows on taking necessary actions in combating climate change and its impacts. Thus, smallholder tomato farmers’ awareness about climate change through access and uptake of climate change adaptation information is one of the interventions to combat climate change and its impacts.

This chapter analyzes the ways national, international, and library professional policies address Internet access as a human right. This includes documenting the ways rural libraries fulfill their patrons’ human right to the Internet and demonstrating how Mathiesen’s (2014) framework can be used by library professionals and policymakers to ensure that people have physical, intellectual, and social access to the Web. The author’s intention is to help facilitate a more meaningful definition of access that goes beyond just providing hardware access to bridge the digital divide, but instead asserts the need for librarian assistance and technology training if we wish to allow all members of a society, without exception, to fully enjoy their human rights.

The author analyzes existing national and international policies pertaining to providing information and Internet access in rural and otherwise underserved areas, as well as precedents involving the deployment of previous information and communication technologies (ICTs) in rural areas. This segues into an analysis of barriers to rural Internet access using facets and determinants developed by Mathiesen, leading to the argument that rural librarians’ ability to help underserved populations use the Internet is essential to making Web access meaningful.

• The United Nations (UN) has supported arguments that people have a right to information access and the technologies that support this, suggesting that Internet access is a human right.

• The U.S. government has a history of facilitating access to ICTs in rural areas that dates back to 1934 and continues through the present.

• Funding mechanisms that facilitate Web access in the United States focus primarily on making broadband connections, hardware, and software accessible, leaving out the essential training and assistance components that are essential to making many rural residents and other underserved persons able to actually use the Internet.

The United Nations (UN) has supported arguments that people have a right to information access and the technologies that support this, suggesting that Internet access is a human right.

The U.S. government has a history of facilitating access to ICTs in rural areas that dates back to 1934 and continues through the present.

Funding mechanisms that facilitate Web access in the United States focus primarily on making broadband connections, hardware, and software accessible, leaving out the essential training and assistance components that are essential to making many rural residents and other underserved persons able to actually use the Internet.

Scholarship on rural libraries, including some of the research in this volume, has argued that rural public libraries provide an invaluable service by offering both access to and guidance in using the Internet. While these publications commonly discuss the socioeconomic benefits of providing this access, they often treat the motivation for providing such services as self-evident. This chapter analyzes policies and legal precedents to argue that Internet access for rural residents, through public libraries and other means, is not merely a privilege that will benefit people if funded, but instead a human right that cannot be ignored.

Information is the most valuable commodity in the world, but everyone does not have equal access to information. Lack of equal digital access is an information access desert. Libraries should be public spaces to meet the digital needs of the community. Due to socio-political neglect, urban and rural public libraries cannot always meet patron needs. There is a pattern where urban libraries are either closed or cannot meet the demands for digital access until gentrification when upper class people move in and demand new libraries with sufficient digital access. Rural libraries suffer a similar fate with insufficient digital access to meet the economic and educational needs of their communities. Information access deserts identify a crucial issue for equal access to all regardless of economic status.

Factors influencing the use of mobile phone technologies for agricultural market information access remain a mixed debate, and there are contradictive views among studies. This study examined factors influencing the use of mobile phone technologies for agricultural marketing information access. The study is anchored on the technological acceptance model (TAM).

A descriptive cross-sectional research design was adopted with a sample size of 400 grape smallholder farmers. A structured questionnaire and focus group discussions (FGDs) were used to gather data. Descriptive, ordinal logistic regression and thematic approaches were used in data analysis.

The study confirmed grape smallholder farmers generally considered mobile phone technologies as an appropriate communication channel to stay informed about agricultural marketing information. It was found that reliable electricity supply, relevance, timeliness, perceived ease of use (PEOU) and perceived usefulness (PU) of mobile phone technologies influenced the level of agricultural marketing information access.

This research is limited to a selected number of grape smallholder farmers in Dodoma, Tanzania, and leaves out those without mobile phones. Also, the study was cross-sectional in nature, so it may not be necessarily capable of consistently providing critical and consistent information about the same population over a series of times.

This study contributes to the body of knowledge by integrating the use of mobile phone technologies to access marketing information in informing policy and decision-making processes to promote grape marketing.

This paper seeks to examine the further integration of machine translation technologies with cross language information access in providing web users the capabilities of accessing information beyond language barriers. Machine translation and cross language information access are related technologies, and yet they have their own unique contributions in handling information in multiple languages. This paper aims to demonstrate that there are many opportunities to further integrate machine translation with cross language information access, and the combination can greatly empower web users in their information access.

Using English and Chinese as the language pair for studying, this paper looks at machine translation in query translation‐based cross language information access at multiple important aspects, which include query translation, relevance feedback, interactive cross language information access, out‐of‐vocabulary term translation, and data fusion. The goal is to obtain more insights about the wide range usages of machine translation in cross language information access, and to help the community to identify promising future directions for both machine translation and cross language access.

Machine translation can be applied effectively in many places in the whole cross language information access process. Queries translated by a machine translation system are high quality and are more robust in handling potential untranslated terms. Translation enhancement, a relevance feedback method using machine translation generated returned documents, is not only a valid technique by itself, but also helps to generate more robust cross language information access performance when combined with other relevance feedback techniques. Machine translation is also found to play a significant role in resolving untranslated terms and in data fusion.

This set of comparative empirical studies on integrating machine translation and cross language information access was performed on a common evaluation framework, and examined integration at multiple points of the cross language access process. The experimental results demonstrate the value of further integrating machine translation in cross language information access, and identify interesting future directions for both machine translation and cross language information access research.

Mobile computing devices are a significant access point for information activities. Theories and models of human information behaviour have developed over several decades but have not considered the role of the user's computing device in digital information interactions. The purpose of this paper is to explore the information behaviours of young adults when they are given unlimited access to mobile tablet devices.

As information tasks, behaviours and communities shift into digital environments, a researcher of these phenomena is required to mirror that movement with techniques that allow a full exploration of human behaviour and interaction in the online world. Following Kozinets (2009), “netnography” (ethnography in online communities) is applied in this study and all data are collected online from within a community of iPad users, established for the research purpose.

This study reveals that access to mobile tablet devices creates significant shifts in the behaviours of young adults whose lives are immersed in digital information. Mobile tablet devices establish the potential for constant access to digital information and that opportunity is grasped by the participants in this research. Extensive use of mobile device applications or “apps” establishes a more selected and restricted view of information than that encountered in the open and expansive World Wide Web.

This paper invites extension to human information behaviour theories and models to include a consideration of computing access device and of new mobility and constancy of access – all of which changes the circumstances and behaviour of the information actor.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the Republic of Ireland’s National Emergency Coordinating Group performed with respect to ensuring access to emergency information for deaf sign language (SL) users over the course of two emergency situations in 2017 and 2018 as a result of storms. The storms book-ended parliamentary and public debate around the recognition of the indigenous SL of Ireland, Irish Sign Language (ISL). The author explores if/how increased political awareness led to better access in 2018, and how access provision maps to best practice guidelines set out by the World Association of Sign Language Interpreters (WASLI) and the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD).

This paper provides empirical insights about the asymmetrical effort that is required of a minority linguistic community, in this instance, community of deaf ISL users and their allies, to secure provision of access to emergency information that is provided as a matter of course to the wider community of hearing English language speakers. The author draws on parliamentary records, social media and print media to document the political, societal and deaf community discourse around ISL recognition and the emergencies.

The author finds that significant effort was required of deaf people and their allies to secure access to national emergency briefings in 2017, with significant improvement evidenced in 2018 for Storm Emma and the Beast from the East, in the aftermath of the adoption of the ISL Act (December 2017). The author drew on the theory of effortful engaging, which posits that unless we have greater awareness of and pro forma consideration of SLs and deaf people, the burden of work required to ensure appropriate access and participation falls on deaf people.

There is scope for completing a 360° analysis of stakeholders engaged in the process. Further work should also include interviews with deaf community members and emergency response coordinators.

This paper identifies implications for emergency coordinating groups: provision of appropriate interpreting must be a pro forma element in the planning for delivery of any emergency information. Broadcasters must be required to ensure that interpreters are visible on screen at all times during live briefings: what is unseen is “unheard” for SL users. Work remains to ensure that deaf people have access to preparatory information in their language, and that they have ease of access to two-way emergency services. Emergency coordinating teams need to integrate the UNCRPD-mapped WASLI-WFD recommendations into their emergency strategy.

Communities depend on information for their survival in times of crisis. Communication requires comprehension and interaction. For SL users, information in an indigenous SL is a lifeline in a time of crisis. This requires emergency response teams to understand that “language” is multi-modal and embed strategies for engaging with deaf communities in all aspects of their processes, with guidance from deaf community leaders and advocates. There is also a need to consider deafblind people and deaf people who have disabilities, who are more vulnerable in crisis situations.

This is the first analysis of state provision of access to information for the Irish deaf community in an emergency setting. It is one of very few empirical analyses of how deaf communities fare in emergency contexts and the first to evaluate a state’s practice vis-à-vis UNCRPD-led guidelines on best practice issued by the WASLI/WFD. The socio-political context described represents a unique period where the Irish deaf community and ISL were central to political and media discourse because of the ISL Act and the death of two deaf brothers in tragic circumstances in Autumn 2017.

This paper explores how the relationship between freedom of access to information and freedom of expression is expressed across the international library community. Specifically, it analyses this relationship in the setting of Internet access in libraries where the Internet has been seen as a tool for fostering democracy and furthering social inclusion. Using preliminary analysis of data collected from a global survey of Internet access issues within the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) member countries (2003), and by comparing this data with a survey of European library institutions carried out in 2002, the paper shows the extent to which libraries – from the point of view of national associations and national libraries – are able to use the Internet to promote freedom of access to information and freedom of expression despite the existence of barriers to this task.

This is a methodological proposal that describes the access to information as a starting point, and the importance of access to information as the backbone for the values of investment with the notion of culture as shared beliefs, supported by information to communicate and provide awareness about issues related to environmental policy that is consistent with sustainable development. Data collection is done from census data of Cikarawang population, observation and in-depth interviews with informants of community leaders. Constructive theory constructs to identify the diversity of existing construction of and placing in the consensus. The goal of this methodology is to produce an informed and knowledgeable construction of, which simultaneously improving continuously. Constructivists do not intend to predict and control the real world and divert it but to reconstruct the world at the point of its existence: in the mind of the people of the community in Cikarawang village. The view of the importance of cultural institutions and traditional knowledge should not be ignored in reaching the target of practical dissemination of information regarding environmental policy should be conducted for further study the model of and the model for the construction of the constructed. The use of application in documenting myths and rituals of Cikarawang people is enabling the access of information of the people in learning the culture and language of Cikarawang. Moreover, it is the way to reach the goal of sustainable environment for the next generations.

The goal of this methodology is to produce an informed and knowledgeable construction of, which simultaneously improved continuously. Constructivists do not intend to predict and control the real world and divert it but to reconstruct the world at the point of its existence: in the mind of the constructor. In the process related to two aspects, : hermeneutic and dialectical. Aspects of individual construction of hermeneutic describe as compare and contrast to the dialectical aspects of individual construction of, so that each respondent was entered into the construction of another and entirely fused.

The access of information on asri to face global warming is to demonstrate the hybridity and syncretism of this everyday locality and to show how this global sense of place is a progressive sense of place which avoids defensive and exclusionary definitions of place and culture because they cannot be sustained in a world where understanding a place means understanding its connection to other places. However, the youths of Cikarawang are likely to self-identify, as liberals are also more supportive of progressive domestic social agenda than older generations. They are less overtly religious than the older generations.

The access of information, is about trying to establish the existence of the collectivity by defining what makes it a community – isolating national characteristics, defining crucial historical moments or significant places. None of these implies that these meanings can be fixed. There might be useful to think of nations as projects which are never fully achieved. There are always alternative accounts which are being given, and alternative interpretations being made from different positions. Climate information needs to be made in accordance with the local context and activities of both of the content, format, timing and distribution (dissemination).

The undetermined that perceived lack of locals trying to understand the information about weather and climate change are delivered by using technology need to engage their participation to identify and develop adaptation and mitigation strategies. Knowledge about the weather and how to overcome it is also myths about the environment containing taboo and prohibition as well as the annual harvest ritual. Digital technology using application is the nearest object to individual youngsters to access information openly and individually. Access of information using apps and internet is bridging the issues of climate change, myths and rituals about environment, and generation gaps.

The behavior of young people of Generation X are not heeding the ban in the experience of their ancestors. It is not only because of their belief in myth depleted but also in the absence of respected elders. Person figures which are respected as wise men or local leaders to be role models. In the past, knowledge and cultural information are presented, preserved, generated down to future generations. Nowadays, information about climate, weather, cultural knowledge in agriculture, irrigation, daily life, ritual, myth, and kinship is no longer simply rely on figures but the media that they believe in.

It is an interdisciplinary research of global knowledge, memory and communication. Digital technology-based application as the system to support access of information and the effort of documentation on community myths and rituals of remote people may affect on sustainable local wisdoms which protect and sustain the environment to be inherited to next generations. Web, private social networks, wikis and blogs are becoming important corporate tools for communication, collaboration and information-sharing. It is a way of young people in this Generation X most familiar in such as interactive, collaborative, managing knowledge, and managing global system and bridging generation gaps.