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The purpose of this article is to examine the inter‐war history of the Raffles Library in Singapore with the aim of understanding what the management of the library believed its role should be as well as the role others in that society considered that it should fulfill.

The article is based on historical research using archival sources.

To a great extent the management of the library narrowly construed the institution's mission in terms of appealing to that class of persons likely to become paying members – that is, the European elite and its high‐level local collaborators. Financial constraints, relations between the library and museum as well as prevalent negative attitudes regarding class and race in colonial society are likely reasons for the lack of sustained attention to non‐European populations.

The library history of much of Asia remains relatively unexplored, especially from a viewpoint that stresses the importance of social context to library structure and operation.

To show how e‐readiness indicators, specifically the Networked Readiness Index (NRI), participate in the work of defining policy problems.

The article critically examines the Networked Readiness Index in terms of its presentation and its underlying model. It relies on an approach to policy analysis that views policy problems as socially constructed.

E‐readiness assessment tools purport to show how ready the nations of the world are to exploit the potential of new information and communication technologies. Yet they do more than that; being actively engaged in constructing policy problems. In the case of the NRI, the problem of the international digital divide is defined in a particular way that privileges certain interests while at the same time legitimatizing its inclusion on the agenda of international organizations as a problem worthy of sustained attention.

The findings of the article suggest a need for alternative indicators that register the voices of a wider range of groups and could therefore create a more inclusive digital divide policy problem.

Little critical (as opposed to technical) analysis of e‐readiness indicators exits in the literature. By focusing on these tools, the article contributes to the debate surrounding the issue of the digital divide.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the Filipino search engine, Yehey! against what has become the industry standard, Google.

A total of 14 queries were submitted to Yehey! and Google. The top ten sites returned from each were examined for dates created and modified, domain name, the presence of dead or advertising links, the quality of the site as indicated by statements of responsibility and purpose as well as credentials, and overlap.

Despite its promise of providing access to Filipino cyberspace, Yehey! fell short on most of the measures used to evaluate the two search engines.

To date, little research has been conducted on local Asian search engines, despite the growth of internet use in the region.

This paper examines the structure of Philippine historiography as viewed by Filipino historians. The purpose of this paper is to develop an understanding of the knowledge domain of Philippine history and in particular how its practitioners organize their field of study in terms of periodization. At the end of the paper an application of this analysis is proposed, the development of an online encyclopaedia of Philippine history.

Interviews were arranged with willing historians at two of the premier institutions of higher learning in the Philippines: the Ateneo de Manila and University of the Philippines. The historians were asked three general questions: what in their opinion, are the key defining events in Philippine history? What are the key historians for each of those events? And what are the key debates regarding these events? For the purpose of this paper it is the results of the first question that are in focus as it deals with one of the fundamental tools of historical analysis, periodization.

Philippine history was found to be periodized in a variety of ways, from the traditional to other approaches that stress either Filipino rather than colonial agency or the uneven trajectories of historical development that depend on region, class, or language group. A final approach viewed Filipino history as a network of relations spanning space and time. Wikis designed around the results of domain analysis make it possible to provide information on topics of importance to a discipline as well as reveal something of its deeper structure. Combined with traditional concerns, such as use of appropriate sources, this would serve to help develop a deeper awareness of the nature of knowledge production.

This paper represents both a contribution to the study of knowledge domains, as well as an application of that study to the work of information professionals. Putting the spotlight on Philippine historians and history also helps the LIS discipline to move away from its traditional North American and European focus. Studies of knowledge producing bodies in the rest of the world are important and overdue.

The purpose of this paper is to show how the library management of the Raffles Library and Museum (the former name of the National Library of Singapore) positioned the library in relation to the wider colonial society of which it was a part. More widely, the aim is to explore the role of libraries within a colonial setting.

The paper takes the form of historical research using archival materials.

The paper finds that the Raffles Library and Museum responded to the needs of two kinds of users: the potentially wayward colonist in need of “wholesome” recreation and the scientist/scholar involved in making Singapore a regional centre for the production of colonial knowledge.

While knowledge‐producing institutions such as botanical gardens, zoological parks, museums of natural and human history, as well as anthropological and geographical societies now feature prominently in discussions of British colonialism, the colonial library has been overlooked. This paper represents a start at bringing the colonial library into focus as an institutional node designed to sustain colonial endeavors.

This study aims to investigate the discourses surrounding the provision of internet access in Singapore through the public library system and to consider what the government, librarians and members of the public consider are the legitimate uses of the internet in Singapore's public libraries, how these compare with what the librarians see as their role in facilitating access and to what extent the internet as an educational tool features in public libraries according to users.

A discourse analysis of public documents and semi‐structured interviews with ten senior librarians, managers, and 40 members of the public were conducted. Observation was also conducted of library users and of their usage at the computer terminals in the library.

Findings from the study throw up very different definitions of what constitutes learning through the internet within the context of a public library. This reinforces conclusions from previous studies that what is termed learning through the internet is variously constructed, and understood in multiple ways. This defies what is often presented of the internet as a technical quick fix of policy makers to help its population leap frog into the future.

While the study provided a glimpse into the discourse surrounding the internet in one country, similar work should be carried in more Asian countries to provide a more comprehensive survey of the region and compare this with findings conducted in an Occidental setting.

The study provides an Asian perspective that complements findings on the various discourses that had surrounded internet technology in the USA and Europe. It also calls for a new spirit of awareness on the part of librarians to the views of library users with regard to internet access.

This study aimed to acquire knowledge about Singapore secondary school (ages 13 to 16 years old) students' skills in searching, evaluating and using information.

A comprehensive instrument encompassing the basic information literacy (IL) skills, as well as a new dimension of ethical usage of information and collaborative information seeking was used for data collection. From August to November 2010, a total of eight schools comprising 3,164 students participated in this study.

It was a matter of concern that various kinds of libraries, including school libraries, were found to be under-utilized. From the test that was administered to assess the IL skills of students, the results were found to be generally unsatisfactory as each of the major categories of IL skills recorded a score that is below 50 (out of a maximum of 100) except for “task definition”. For skills related to “information seeking strategies”, “location & access” and “information use”, the types of schools, academic streams of study, and students' family background seemed to have significant influences.

This study is the first large-scale survey conducted in Singapore that sought to test the IL skills of secondary school students. The findings are useful in assessing the current effectiveness of IL integration, and the need for a more planned approach towards IL competency training within the school curriculum in Singapore.

Knowledge management (KM) is an important consideration in e‐government portals to ensure that knowledge flows efficiently between governments, individuals and organisations. A crucial aspect of e‐government portals that has not been addressed adequately is the extent to which KM mechanisms have been implemented. Specifically, the authors argue that appropriate KM mechanisms are necessary to support the access, creation and transfer of knowledge between these portals and their users. The paper aims to propose an evaluation model for this purpose by first defining the main KM mechanisms and then burrowing deeper into their constituent dimensions.

An evaluation model known as knowledge access, creation and transfer (K‐ACT) is presented which identifies three KM mechanisms for portals: knowledge access, creation and transfer. Each mechanism is characterised by a set of dimensions and sub‐dimensions representing the tools and features for supporting that mechanism. The model was derived from an analysis of the literature and validated by two independent reviewers who were trained in information science, were familiar with the objectives of the project and understood the concepts underlying KM implementation in portals. Using this model, a checklist was developed and applied to 60 e‐government portals in the Asian and North American regions to investigate the extent to which these KM mechanisms have been implemented.

The findings indicate that, on average, e‐government portals featured only about 36 per cent of the KM mechanisms described in the model. Furthermore, no significant differences in the implementation of the KM mechanisms were found between the two regions' portals. The evaluation also offered potential areas for improvement based on the K‐ACT model.

The present work has developed an evaluation model known as K‐ACT which can be used to assess KM implementation gaps in e‐government portals. This model can also be generalised to other types of portals. The evaluation also provides insights into the state of KM processes in the portals of the Asian and North American regions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine motivators that drive Black Wikipedia contribution. The authors explore motivations around content contribution, effects of gender on motivations and self-perceptions of Black Wikipedia labor.

A total of 318 Black American Wikipedia contributors completed an online survey. The authors employed both quantitative and qualitative methods in the study including descriptive statistics, multivariate (MANOVA) and univariate (ANOVA) analysis of variance to examine gender differences in Wikipedia content contribution. In addition, open-ended responses were evaluated, through content analysis, to make inferences on their perceptions of Wikipedia labor.

This paper identifies racial identity and perceptions of information quality as strong motivators in content contribution among Black Wikipedians. Motivators are gender variant; men are more motivated than women with the lone exception being racial identity. Additionally, the study identifies Wikipedia as a contested space among Black contributors and is a site of resistance.

Black Wikipedians information activity is a relatively new and understudied phenomenon. This paper presents new insight and a deeper understanding of Black Wikipedians’ motivations for information sharing behaviors in the most popular encyclopedia on the internet.

To provide an analysis of the notion of “information poverty” in library and information science (LIS) by investigating concepts, interests and strategies leading to its construction and thus to examine its role as a constitutive element of the professional discourse.

Starting from a Foucauldian notion of discourse, “information poverty” is examined as a statement in its relation to other statements in order to highlight assumptions and factors contributing to its construction. The analysis is based on repeated and close reading of 35 English language articles published in LIS journals between 1995 and 2005.

Four especially productive discursive procedures are identified: economic determinism, technological determinism and the “information society”, historicising the “information poor”, and the library profession's moral obligation and responsibility.

The material selection is linguistically and geographically biased. Most of the included articles originate in English‐speaking countries. Therefore, results and findings are fully applicable only in an English language context.

The focus on overlapping and at times conflicting discursive procedures, i.e. the results of alliances and connections between statements, highlights how the “information poor” emerge as a category in LIS as the product of institutionally contingent, professional discourse. By challenging often unquestioned underlying assumptions, this article is intended to contribute to a critical examination of LIS discourse, as well as to the analysis of the discourses of information, which dominate contemporary society. It is furthermore seen to add to the development of discourse analytical approaches in LIS research.