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Nigeria is a developing country where the majority of the population live in rural areas. The majority of these rural dwellers are either non‐literate or semi‐literate. The need to involve them in the national development process cannot be overemphasized. This can be achieved through the identification of the information needs of rural dwellers and the provision of innovative rural public library services to improve their level of literacy and education and to enhance their ability to use practical information relevant to their daily lives.

To provide background on how the Kitengesa Community Library in rural Uganda, which serves as both a community library and a school library, might be seen as a model for other similar libraries in developing countries. To use a case study of the library to highlight certain characteristics of rural libraries as developed by B.J. Mostert and presented in his 1998 article.

The information in the article comes from a two‐year study of the Kitengesa Community Library. The methodology included focus groups, interviews, door‐to‐door visits, questionnaires, examination of library circulation information, and many hours of observation. Information from the study was then used to support the comparison to Mostert's characteristics of the rural community library. A review of the professional literature is also provided.

Findings indicate that the Kitengesa Community Library is a successful working model that might be used in other similar rural villages to serve both schools and the community. Implications of the findings are discussed in detail.

Future research might include the impact of the library on the achievement of students, and the impact of the library on the teaching and learning practices of users.

The information presented in this paper offers some basic considerations in terms of the implementation of rural library services. Provision of such services is becoming increasingly important as more and more of the world's population becomes literate, and more of the world's attention is focused on the welfare of those living on the African continent.

The study itself is unique in that the data hail from a two‐year study of a small village library. Literacy is a major factor in terms of development in underdeveloped nations, and libraries have the potential to play an important role in the eradication of illiteracy, and provision of services for the “newly literate”.

This research paper explores alternatives to the mobile library service in providing a public library service to rural communities in England and the impacts of best value, public library standards and social inclusion policy on provision. A questionnaire survey was completed by librarians in public library authorities in England with rural hinterlands. The data derived were supplemented by follow‐up case studies. It was found that achieving social inclusion objectives and the results of best value reviews were the greatest motivating factors for much of the development of alternative library service delivery in rural areas, and that village halls were the most popular place for co‐location of library services. ICT was felt to have impacted positively on rural library service delivery and its use was demonstrated in co‐location facilities and learning centres. However, some authorities fail to consult users and non‐users in rural locations. This paper provides public library practitioners and researchers with a picture of public library service provision to rural area communities and shows the impact of Government‐driven policy. It appears that there is varying appreciation by public library authorities of rural communities’ distinct nature.

This paper aims to describe the library services available to rural dwellers and a summary of focus groups discussions (FGD) conducted in northern districts of Bangladesh.

This paper is divided into two sections. The first section describes rural library services in Bangladesh. The second section discusses the results of FGDs carried out separately in ten rural communities in northern areas of Bangladesh.

The results of FGDs highlight the general information needs of rural communities, their reading, listening and viewing habits and awareness of rural library activities. The findings suggest that the rural libraries largely meet the informational needs of the local community and play a crucial role in the educational advancement of local people.

This is the first time an effort has been made to assess the impact of rural library activities using FGDs in Bangladesh. This paper shows that FGDs could be an effective way to assess the impact of rural library activities.

This article identifies factors that affect the provision of information in rural Kenya as: government’s limited support of the information sector, male dominance, conflict of interests of information providers, media interests, and nepotism. It shows ways to remedy the situation by recommending the need to recognize women’s groups’ role in providing information structures and systems relevant to information use among rural communities. It concludes by urging researchers in information and communication fields to consider the pursuit to investigate new roles of women in communication.

While working in a rural district library system, the question of planning library/information services to meet the needs of the population was always of foremost importance. Community profiles of the region had been conducted continuously for ten years, and during the eleventh year it was decided to survey the entire area in a methodical way to search for the information needs of the population. The purpose of the study was to identify information needs in a specific rural area in Israel in order to design a plan for library/information provision to meet those needs. The study consisted of a literature search of relevant material on information needs in rural areas and less developed countries and a multi‐level field survey in one specific rural area of Israel.

Discusses alternative methods of providing a public library service to one‐house stop clients of south Lincolnshire’s mobile libraries. A literature review revealed a lack of up‐to‐date cost information for alternative methods of service provision. Four methods were selected for further investigation: books by mail; village shop libraries; extending the housebound service; and transporting clients to the library. Annual cost and cost per issue were calculated and compared to the cost of the mobile library. Staff and users were also surveyed for their opinions of the current service and the alternative methods proposed. The results of the costing exercises showed that transporting users to the library was the most cost effective method but this was not popular with the current users of the service. Services considering replacing the one‐house stop mobile service will also need to consider issues including social inclusion, best value and the public library standards.

This is the second article focusing on rural library services in Bangladesh. The main aim of this paper is to empirically measure the performance and impact of rural library activities in northern districts of Bangladesh.

The study was carried out separately in ten rural communities with library facilities. Background data about library collections were collected. Point‐of‐exit interviews with library users were carried out to gather their opinion on library collections, performance and impact.

The point‐of‐exit interview highlights the users' demographic characteristics, their library use and information needs, and their opinion on library collections, performance and impact. The constraints faced by users in using these libraries are also identified. The results show that most users are generally satisfied with the performance and impact of these libraries.

This paper is the first attempt to measure empirically the performance and impact of rural library activities in Bangladesh. The authors expect more research on impact assessment of rural library activities in other developing countries.

Studies the libraries in the Nigerian rural set‐up. Personal observations and surveys as well as documentary literature were used in the study to acquire state‐of‐the‐art information. The peculiar nature of library branches in the different states of Nigeria made the study cover the country as a case study. The rural libraries′ efforts in their various roles have been discovered to have complementary efforts from such organizations as: MAMSER and DFRRI. Better co‐ordination of rural service by any organization can best be done through RDUIs. Gives various recommendations on how better library and information service could be given to the ruralites.

Discusses the impediments to rural information services for community development in Nigeria. Highlights the nature and characteristics of a community as well as community information needs and services. Four components of community information were identified. They are information itself, the sender, the medium or channel of communication and the final consumer. Poor perception and deep‐seateded scepticism of the ruralities towards information, the deplorable state of rural roads, nonchalance of government officials, rivalry among the inhabitants of the communities were the major obstacles to community information service. Recommends, amongst other things, that traditional institutions and town development associations be effectively utilised to disseminate information to the people.