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GUEST editor of this South African issue of THE LIBRARY WORLD is Hendrik M. Robinson, Director of Library Services, Transvaal Provincial Administration, Pretoria.

For over two decades, we have known from melding fertility and immigration data, that the population of the United States would become steadily more diverse. Throughout the 1990s it was reported that one in four persons in the nation was a minority. By the time we entered the new millennium, that figure increased to one in three. Now it is predicted that in the year 2030, the emerging majority of Americans will be people of color. No matter the type of library or information agency, in this century all will face the challenge of providing service to population within the context of an entirely new order of pluralism.

The study aims to present a comparative analysis of available Web 2.0 tools in library websites of selected Nigerian and South African universities.

Content analysis was adopted as the design for the study. Twenty university library websites comprising ten top-ranking Nigerian universities and ten top-ranking South African universities were sampled for data collection. Five research questions developed and answered.

The findings show that the use of Web 2.0 tools in the selected universities is encouraging. There are more Web 2.0 tools available on the South African university library websites. The South African university libraries are ahead of their Nigerian counterparts in terms of the integration of Web 2.0 tools, e-resources and e-databases and provide platforms for easy retrieval of information by their users. There are more e-resources available on the South African university library websites compared with their Nigerian counterparts. e-Journals are the most available e-resources in the selected university library websites of both countries. Similarly, more academic e-databases are available on the South African university library websites, whereas only few are listed on the web pages of the selected Nigerian university library websites.

Because available studies seem to ignore the possibility of comparing one university library’s website with another, conducting a study such as this will provide an insight and idea on the types of features, tools and applications to be included on university library websites. This will be useful for university whose library is planning to develop a website.

Because of the wide variation reported in this study concerning available tools and resources on the university library websites in South Africa and Nigeria, it is recommended that African universities should come up with a standard that will mandate universities to have a certain number of tools identified in this study on their various university websites.

The paper presents a literature review on research data management services in African academic and research libraries on the backdrop of the advancing open science and open research data infrastructures. It provides areas of focus for library to support open research data.

The literature analysis and future role of African libraries in research data management services were based on three areas as follows:open science, research infrastructures and open data infrastructures. Focussed literature searches were conducted across several electronic databases and discovery platforms, and a qualitative content analysis approach was used to explore the themes based on a coded list.

The review reports of an environment where open science in Africa is still at developmental stages. Research infrastructures face funding and technical challenges. Data management services are in formative stages with progress reported in a few countries where open science and research data management policies have emerged, cyber and data infrastructures are being developed and limited data librarianship courses are being taught.

The role of the academic and research libraries in Africa remains important in higher education and the national systems of research and innovation. Libraries should continue to align with institutional and national trends in response to the provision of data management services and as partners in the development of research infrastructures.

To explore the relationship between the importance of African studies programs and the acquisition of African imprint titles in four selected American academic libraries.

The paper examines the characteristics of the African studies programs in four universities in comparison with library holdings including the percentage of holdings from four major English‐language African publishers.

The four research libraries acquire substantial numbers of African monographs in keeping with the importance of their African studies programs.

The paper provides information on four major African studies programs and the library holdings that support them.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the invention of computer systems, information and communication technology and the internet as the critical landmarks in the transformation of information processing, storage, retrieval and dissemination.

A survey of 42 librarians in the Nigerian cities of Lagos and Ibadan was carried out, along with information gathered from research on the internet.

The paper reports on how the internet can affect African cultural values in the area of songs/music and dance, theater, dress, languages, arts, housing, marriage, child care, friendship, decoration, religion, politics and personality profile development. Librarians' IT skills, internet literacy and awareness of the implications of the unfolding environment on library and African cultural value systems are discussed.

The paper recommends a set of proactive professional repositioning that African librarians must initiate as custodians of both information and African rich cultural heritage.

The purpose of this paper was to explore African conceptions of digital libraries from the perspective of the historical literature. This paper argues that the concept of digital libraries is a western creation and that there was a need for developing societies to develop their own conceptions to guide their own digital library development agenda.

The paper is based on a literature review. The paper makes use of publicly-available literature on the theme of digital libraries from both the Western and African perspectives. The search terms used were “digital libraries”, “Africa digital libraries”, “electronic libraries”, “information communication technologies/libraries” and “institutional repositories”. A total of 89 publications were examined for this purpose.

The analysis revealed that most of the initial digital library initiatives in Africa emanated from the west with African countries benefiting from international initiatives to expand access to information resources to bridge the global digital divide. However, due to a number of contextual challenges such as lack of sustainable funding and inadequate capacity and strategy, the development of digital libraries was hampered. Thus, even though digital libraries enjoy considerable goodwill, there remain negative conceptions of digital libraries in Africa.

Information institutions in African countries must evolve a unified conception of digital libraries as this would largely drive the direction of digital library development towards achieving the developmental goals of the continent.

The study applies the attributes of innovation to explain contextual factors shaping African conceptions of digital libraries.

This paper investigates the fit for purpose of the flip model proposed by Max Planck Society and Plan S for the African environment. This flipped model is examined against the backdrop of African imperatives, which is much broader than just flipping a journal pricing model from subscription to open access. This paper also seeks a viable alternative model that supports the growth of African scholarship and the dissemination thereof.

This paper adopts a descriptive research methodology, which allows for an in-depth analysis of a phenomenon. By using this method, this paper describes a flip model proposed by global north entities, which do not augur well for the growth of the OA movement in Africa.

The findings demonstrate that the global north centric flipped model exacerbates the inequality in the publishing landscape by further marginalizing the research voices from the global south. Africa is in dire need of an alternative that denorthernizes the publishing landscape, promote equity and equality, and is more inclusive of the research voices from Africa. South African academic libraries have demonstrated their willingness to experiment with and roll-out library publishing services. This proof of concept has been extended into a continental platform for the publication and dissemination of African scholarship.

This paper will be of interest to those who are grappling with viable alternatives to the current flip models, which include, inter alia, university leadership. This paper will also be of interest to global north libraries who are embarking on library publishing without the social justice obligation but are committed to the OA movement.

This study was intended to identify and assess the extent and impact of the emigration of professional librarians on every university library in Anglophone Africa as well as the attitudes of library administrators toward national and international programs that have been or might be designed to make use of the skills of librarians in the African diaspora.

The research was conducted by use of an online survey that was sent to 121 African academic libraries.

The study conclusively demonstrated that African academic libraries have been impacted – both positively and negatively – by the effects of the “brain drain”. It also revealed that the administrators of these libraries are highly receptive to the possibility of working with African emigrant librarians in various forms (i.e. permanent, temporary, virtual) of structured “return programs”.

The survey's relatively low response rate precluded precise determination as to the degree to which the brain drain has penetrated African academic libraries. Additional study will be necessary to clarify the range of its impact and any differences between regions that might exist.

The study's findings strongly suggest that academic libraries in English‐speaking Africa offer a promising environment for return programs designed to ameliorate the effects of the brain drain.

This paper is an original study that fills a gap in the literature of African library administration. It is of value to practicing librarians and researchers as well as individuals involved with international development projects.

The purpose of this paper is to ascertain the information and communication technology (ICT) literacy level among the staff of anglophone (English‐speaking) university libraries staff and their counterparts in francophone (French‐speaking) university libraries in West Africa.

A survey was conducted among the professionals, paraprofessionals and “other” members of staff of 28 university libraries comprising 24 anglophone university libraries and four francophone.

The result of the findings showed that out of about 370 professional librarians, only 179 of them were ICT literate while the remaining 191 professional librarians were ICT non‐literate. This constitutes an overall percentage of 48.38 percent for the literate professionals as against 51.62 percent for ICT non‐literate professionals. Also, out of 526 paraprofessionals, only 84 of them were ICT literate while the remaining 442 were ICT non‐literate. This also constitutes 15.97 percent for the literate paraprofessionals as against 84.03 percent for ICT non‐literate paraprofessionals. Other staff totaled 1,471. Only 190 of them were ICT literate while the remaining 1,281 were ICT non‐literate. This also constitutes 12.92 percent for the literate other members of staff as against 87.08 percent for ICT non‐literate other members of staff.

Only two categories of skills, “literacy” and “illiteracy”, without gradations between these categories could be considered. The questionnaires were not design to catch the grades of these two categories of skills.

The paper concludes that of all the 28 university libraries surveyed, only the 40 Senegal university professional librarians have an ICT literacy level of 100 percent. Thus other West African university libraries should encourage all their professional librarians, as well as other staff, to become ICT literate.

The paper contains original work relating to the differences between English and French‐speaking university staff as regards ICT literacy and as such will be useful for library technology planners and educators.