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This study aims to assess the information and communications technology (ICT) proficiency of library and information science (LIS) professionals working in Tangaza University College (TUC) Library, Kenya.

A qualitative research design using a single case study was adopted in the study, which gathered data through a census. Data were collected using a structured interview.

The study findings indicated that the majority of TUC librarians have very high ICT competence in basic ICT and some Web technologies; however, they lack technical ICT skills. Furthermore, though ICT courses are offered during LIS professional training, TUC librarians lack opportunities to implement some of their advanced ICT skills. Lack of funding, time, practical lessons, personal interest, training opportunities and ICT obsolescence were highlighted as challenges librarians encounter in their pursuit of acquiring ICT skills.

The study recommends that regular ICT-related training programmes be conducted for librarians and be offered in the form of workshops, seminars and conferences. Furthermore, there is a need for an academic curriculum in LIS schools to have more practical ICT-related components. Library staff should be encouraged to develop a personal interest in pursuing ICT skills, and librarians should also make use of ICT training opportunities that are freely available online for personal development.

The study is beneficial to those concerned with developing training programmes for librarians to strengthen areas deemed to have shortcomings.

Information and communication technology (ICT) development in South African libraries cannot be understood outside the context of the post‐apartheid period. The society consists of a technologically sophisticated sector, and an underdeveloped Third World sector. Higher education and other libraries attempt to straddle this divide. Government policy emphasises the importance of connectivity in redressing inequality. Policy is a contested area, and investigations have been conducted with little concrete result. The main development has been the emergence of academic library consortia, which have succeeded in attracting funding from the USA and other foundations. But without information literacy, these developments will have little impact. There are grounds for techno‐pessimism, as digital information resources are seen by advanced countries as commodities for which payment must be made, even if knowledge production originally took place in the South.

Academic library consortia in South Africa are indeed beasts whose time has come at last, although whether they constitute a second coming for our profession or our end‐users remains to be seen. They can probably be described as a group of diverse entities, rough and as‐yet unsure of their destination. In this descriptive text, we attempt to outline, for a mainly North American audience, the specifics which distinguish the developing consortia in a newly democratic and newly globalised South Africa from those in other more economically advantaged parts of the world. It remains to be seen whether the center will in fact hold. Letting go reluctantly of this literary conceit, for the time being at least, we describe the all‐important social and political background in which our institutions must operate, moving on to an analysis of the impulse to cooperate and the obstacles that have emerged to stifle that impulse. In our conclusion we risk some predictions about where academic library consortia may be headed in our part of the world.

Examines the four books published by Tom Peters (In Search of Excellence, A Passion for Excellence, Thriving on Chaos, and Liberation Management), a major contemporary contributor to management thinking, and relates these new approaches to the management of Library and Information Services (LIS), using examples from Britain, North America, and Australia. The main areas of enquiry (based on the “prescriptions” from Thriving on Chaos) are the importance of customer responsiveness, innovation, empowerment of people within the LIS workforce, dynamic leadership, and appropriate systems.

Discusses the need to re‐examine the education and training systems for adaptability to issues of institutional change and economic advancement and development, with special reference to Africa. Reports the outcomes of a consultative study involving persons associated with ILS education and training around the globe. The paper was presented at SCECSAL 13 on the 27 July to 1 August 1998 held in Nairobi, Kenya.

The Library Business Corners (LBC) service for entrepreneurs in the Western Cape of South Africa uses public libraries as a channel for information and expertise. It is a “grass roots”, community‐driven, approach which has been adopted elsewhere in South Africa. Similar services have appeared addressing the same, or similar, groups of users, often concentrating on the use of information and communication technology.

Developing an effective service for entrepreneurs depends critically on the quality of staff and their contacts. The opportunities and problems of the LBCs’ approach are identified and a response to the emergence of similar services is considered. The “balanced score card” model is used to explore the vision and strategy of the present services and the potential contribution of information literacy.

Financial support for LBC work is scarce and unlikely to increase. The challenge is to create a sustainable service by the LBC team as points of presence, using the existing or reduced financial base. Concentration on increasing capacity at the point of delivery of information through knowledge of the business environment and information literacy is essential.

The paper describes the first application of the “balanced score card” technique to a public library business information service in South Africa.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between different aspects of public library use with elements of economic growth and development.

Statistical correlations were performed to uncover statistically significant relationships.

Relationships are not uniform: strongly positive relationships exist between education and visits, circulation and library programmes, savings and visits and circulation and programmes, and a strongly negative relationship exists between health and circulation.

Only one proxy variable for each of the economic development indicators was used, including the fact that others might have revealed other information.

The revealed relationships should be kept in mind by librarians and policymakers as decisions to change library services that might trickle down to citizens through economic growth and development.

This paper brings together a variety of economic growth and development factors and several aspects of public library use in a single framework.

This chapter examines the efforts undertaken to restructure the legal education system in South Africa and Nigeria. It investigates the connection between contextual influences and professional development, particularly with respect to the concept of legal information literacy and the value of acquired educational skills in the context of legal practice. The chapter provides insights to the needs and challenges for graduate requirement for legal information literacy skills in the effort to ensure productivity in the legal education system in Africa. Data were obtained using both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Outcomes from the study were supportive of the importance of information literacy as central to the development of professional competence. Findings also point to a need for greater collaboration between the legal education system and the legal profession in narrowing the gap between the teaching and practice of law specifically in the design and implementation of an information literacy framework for the legal education system.

Paul Outlet. International organisation and dissemination of knowledge: selected essays of Paul Otlet translated and edited with an introduction by W. Boyd Rayward. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1990. xi, 256 pp. $115.50/Dfl.225. 0 444 88678 8. (fid 684) Paul Otlet was born in Brussels in August 1868 and died there in December 1944. A lawyer who grew to be ‘bored with the law’ and became absorbed with books, libraries and information, he is probably principally remembered in connection with the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC).