Search results

This article is intended to stimulate theoretical reflection in international comparative studies in library and information science (comparative LIS).

The need for theory is emphasized and shortcomings in comparative LIS in respect of theory are identified. On the basis of literature from other comparative disciplines, a framework for examining issues of metatheory, methodology and methods is constructed. Against this background the role of theory and metatheory in the literature of comparative LIS is evaluated. General observations are illustrated using examples selected from comparative studies in LIS.

Much of the literature of comparative LIS is atheoretical and based on assumptions that reflect naive empiricism. Most comparativists in LIS fail to link their work to that of colleagues, so that no body of theory is built up. Insufficient use is made of theory from other social science disciplines. There is a little evidence of awareness of metatheoretical assumptions in the sociological, teleological, ontological, epistemological and ethical dimensions.

While general observations are presented about the literature of comparative LIS, this is not a bibliometric study. Issues of methodology and method are not dealt with.

Recommendations are made for improving teaching and research in comparative LIS. Concepts presented here are of value to the wider LIS community, particularly in internationally oriented research and practice.

Since the 1980s there has been very little conceptual and methodological reflection on comparative LIS. This article alerts the LIS profession to new thinking in other comparative disciplines.

This long awaited and welcome publication fills a gap in our comparative librarianship literature. The author, who has been associated with the subject for a number of years, analyses existing writings, draws on the experience of other comparative disciplines and puts forward some personal views with the aim to ‘describe and demonstrate deficiencies, suggest reasons for them, propose amelio‐ration’ (p. ix). In preparing it he read five hundred works and spent a year in thinking and writing. The result is a scholarly study which will be read eagerly by anybody interested in the subject. Containing personal views it is bound to give rise to controversies and it is some of the controversial points that I would like to deal with in this review.

This study takes the position that the vitality of academic libraries is grounded in the working experiences of its librarians. It suggests that a full understanding of problems facing contemporary information professionals in the post-industrial workplace requires an analysis of the labouring aspects as well as the professional nature of their work. The study of changes in the academic library work experience thus depicts the state of the library, and has implications for other intellectual workers in a social environment characterized by expanding information technologies, constricted economic resources, and the globalization of information production. Academic librarians have long recognized that their vocation lies not only in the classical role in information collection, organization, and dissemination, but also in collaboration with faculty in the teaching and research process, and in the contribution to university governance. They are becoming increasingly active in the protection of information access and assurance of information quality in view of information degradation on the Internet and various compromises necessitated by interaction with third party commercial information producers.

Discusses issues relating to professional development and manpower training in Kenya. Provides background information on the libraries and information sciences training programmes situation. Gives attention to issues and trends affecting the information profession in training, curricula development, application of information technology, cost of information materials and the crisis in supply and demand in regard to manpower development in the information profession. Suggests that institutions for training information professionals need to observe the supply and demand trends in their environment and to adjust both the curricula and intake of trainees to the national situation. The training institutions also need to broaden the courses offered in their programmes to include computer skills, communication studies, economics of information, marketing, research methodologies, management, publishing and booktrade, resource sharing and continuing education. The market for information professionals needs to be provided with products with diversified knowledge and skills. Concludes with observations on how the problems of manpower development and training in information sciences in Kenya may be handled.

LIS departments in English speaking countries frequently neglect the study of foreign languages. Argues that this is short‐sighted. Information professionals will be increasingly required to analyse and organise information from different cultural backgrounds, and to disseminate their own materials to an international and hence culturally diverse user group. The first section demonstrates the extent to which the English language dominates international communication. The second section shows that this problem is largely ignored by English language publications regarding the future of the LIS profession. Section three makes six positive suggestions of how to integrate new modules into current LIS courses to overcome the Anglo‐American bias and thus to educate students to become true experts in the multicultural information.

This progress report attempts to chart the main trends in professional education during the 1970s and to identify the major problems facing curriculum planners for the rest of this decade—and beyond. Although the work is based on United Kingdom educational practice, developments in other countries are noted whenever it is felt that a helpful comparison may be made. The citations do not represent a bibliography of professional education: such a compilation has already been accomplished in the researches of Burrell, and to a lesser extent in Clough. Writings on professional education in librarianship and information science tend to date rather quickly; especially if they deal with information technology or technical services. Theoretical problems remain more durable and usually reappear in different guises. Both information science and librarianship are bracketed together whenever they interrelate or overlap, or whenever logic and common sense dictate. In no way is it implied that they are both one and the same thing; the terms denote different areas of professional application and activity.

COMPARATIVE STUDIES, whatever the subject, can bring enlightenment and new thoughts on old ideas. To investigate, and to find from written evidence, different approaches to similar problems or familiar practices in a new setting, engenders a feeling of professional kinship and often the pleasurable discovery of some original application or circumstance. The advantages of the academic pursuit of comparative librarianship are sufficiently well known. They have their most comprehensive summation and exposition in J Periam Danton's recent The dimensions of comparative librarianship.

As a research topic within the field of LIS, programs in public libraries are underexplored, and the question of user fees for programs has not previously been addressed.

This article compares data collected from two individually conducted studies of public library programs in North America and Denmark to enrich our understanding of user fees in relation to programs.

The comparative analysis shows both similarities and deviations regarding the levying of fees for library programs. While paying a fee to attend a program is rather normal in Denmark, it is more of a fringe idea in North America.

By exploring a previously understudied facet of contemporary public librarianship, this article opens up new avenues for inquiry regarding how the relative accessibility and availability of programs relate to theoretical discussions about programs as public library services.

This article provides library managers with needed information about how to conceptualize the roles of programs as public library services.

As programming surges to the fore in contemporary public librarianship, the levying of user fees has social implications in terms of social equity and the public library ethos of free and equal access for all.

This article is the first study of user fees for public library programs, as well as among the first cross-national comparisons of programming as a dimension of public librarianship.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a selected bibliography of recent resources on library instruction and information literacy.

The paper introduces and annotates periodical articles, monographs, and audiovisual material examining library instruction and information literacy.

Information is provided about each source, and the paper discusses the characteristics of current scholarship, and describes sources that contain unique scholarly contributions and quality reproductions.

The information may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

THE IFLA Conference—or to be more precise—the 34th Session of the General Council of IFLA—met at Frankfurt am Main from the 18th to the 24th of August, 1968. Note the dates, for they include the 21st of August, the day when the delegates heard, as did the rest of the world, of the invasion of Czechoslovakia. Until then the Conference had been proceeding happily, and with the smoothness inborn of German organisation. During and after that date, a blight was cast over the proceedings, and although the Conference carried out its formal and informal programmes as planned, concentrations were disturbed as delegates sometimes gathered round transistor radios, their thoughts on Eastern Europe.