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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.

The purpose of this paper is to review the websites of 22 national libraries in Ibero-America to determine whether and how effectively they display these organisations’ mission statements, as well as any convergence/divergence among these texts.

A review was conducted of the national library websites of ABINIA’s 22 members to locate their respective mission statements. The statements identified were analysed and evaluated against the positioning and presence criteria and wording proposed by experts.

Website content clearly attests to national libraries’ eagerness to publicise their mission statements, which are readily accessible in most cases. Their functions are represented to a more or less standard pattern. Most are portrayed as institutions responsible for custodying, enriching, preserving and disseminating their countries’ cultural legacy. Other purposes mentioned include the promulgation of and accessibility to the heritage custodied.

The paper may prove useful for professional librarians involved in drafting or revising their organisation’s mission statement in the wake of changing circumstances or on the occasion of the formulation of a new strategic plan.

Of the very short number of analyses of libraries’ mission statements published to date, none discusses national libraries. This is the very first study of national library mission statement in Ibero-America. It forms part of a line of research dealing with national library mission statements defined and available on institutional websites for countries anywhere in the world.

Self-service libraries (SSLs) have been regarded as an effective approach to provide convenient book services to the enormously large populations of China’s cities. These SSLs are in fact automatic book service machines, which provide a combination of services, including reading card issuing, book lending and returning, and book reservations and collection. However, despite acclaimed success, SSL services are not well received by patrons and are underutilised. The purpose of this paper is to identify and understand the causes of the underutilisation of SSL services in Chinese cities.

This study adopted an inductive approach and a case study research design. The SSL services in Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei Province, were adopted as the case study, in which 20 public librarians, SSL workers and managers, and library patrons were approached and interviewed using semi-structured question scripts. The interview data were analysed using a thematic analysis approach.

The analysis pointed to 13 causes in three main themes: management problems, service limitations, and the implicit role of government. Further conceptualisation of the findings revealed that the underutilisation of SSL services has resulted from the absence of a patron-centric perspective and the negligence of patrons’ needs and requirements. Therefore, to increase the popularity and usage of SSLs, it is necessary to develop patron-centric management mechanisms through which patrons’ needs and requirements can be effectively understood and responded to.

This study aims to develop specific suggestions to improve the usage of SSLs. Furthermore, although this study focuses on SSL development in China, this research can provide useful suggestions and implications that can be shared across international borders.

The paper reviews some theoretical approaches that have been adopted for understanding the drivers and achievements of the Chinese professional project and the challenges it faces for the future, as a complement and a contrast to previous histories of China and to studies of other developing economies.

Based mainly on evaluating the information as obtained from the interviews in mainland China, in Hong Kong and in London reported by Macve (2020), complemented by other published histories.

China remains a paradox. Since the “reform and open” policy began in 1978 it has been transformed from one of the poorest countries to one of the economically most powerful in just some 40 years. However it remains (per capita) a “developing country”/”emerging economy” and ideologically a Communist country. While the accounting profession in the USA and UK has developed “from the bottom up” over more than a century and a half, the Chinese profession has effectively been created “from the top down” in under 25 years. The paper outlines alternative theorizations of the major stages in this achievement, in the context of the continuing rapid growth of China's economy and its stock markets, and of the overseas expansion of its manufacturing and increasingly service-oriented base.

Space has restricted the analysis here to a general overview. Application of Gramsci's hegemony theory is argued to be inappropriate in the context of understanding China's professional project. Instead, this study is framed within the neo-institutional theory of “linked ecologies” originally developed to examine “Western” developments and extended to the emergence of glocalization, while offering a comparison with related theorization of Russia's post-Communist development. Further theoretical development outside the Western neo-liberal context is called for.

The paper demonstrates how accounting and auditing's development in this globally significant context has differed from that in other developing and transitional economies, reflecting in particular the proactive agency of the state. Given China's economic power, fuller understanding of the interrelated factors shaping its development is important for understanding the likely future shaping of the worldwide profession.