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World
information
report
1997/
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report
1997/98
U N E S C O
P u b l i s h i n g
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General editor: Yves Courrier
Editor: Andrew Large
The designations employed and the presentation of
material throughout this publication do not imply the
expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of
UNESCO concerning the legal status of any country,
territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning
the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.
The authors are responsible for the choice and the
presentation of the facts contained in this report and for
the opinions expressed therein, which are not necessarily
those of UNESCO and do not commit the Organization.
Published in 1997 by the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization,
7, place de Fontenoy, 75352 Paris 07 SP (France)
Cover photo © René Burri/Magnum
Graphic design by Jean-Francis Chériez
Composed by Asco Trade Typesetting Ltd, Hong Kong
Printed by Imprimerie Darantiere, Quétigny (France)
ISBN 92-3-103341-7
© UNESCO 1997
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Preface
Developments in information processing and communication are
at the heart of many of the transformations that have marked the
latter half of the twentieth century. The phenomenon of the
Internet highlights the accelerating pace of these developments and
their potential impact on economic, social and cultural life. We are
embarked upon an information revolution that promises to open a
new era in human history, with consequences as far-reaching as
those of the agricultural and industrial revolutions.
In the fifty years of its existence, UNESCO has always been
active in the information field. Its responsibilities in this regard are
clearly stated in its Constitution, which assigns UNESCO the role
of encouraging the international exchange of books and
information as part of its task of promoting peace through the
sharing of knowledge and the free flow of ideas. Two pioneers in
this domain were Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine, who helped
to lay the foundations of information work by their tireless
activities at the end of the nineteenth century. As well as
establishing the Institut International de Bibliographie (1895),
publishing the Universal Decimal Classification and organizing
international congresses on bibliography, these two Belgian friends
were closely involved in the creation of the League of Nations.
Otlet had published in 1914 a Traité de paix général in which he
proposed the creation of such an international body; and La
Fontaine – Nobel Peace Prize laureate in 1913 and subsequently a
Belgian delegate to the League of Nations – was instrumental in
creating the Bureau International de la Paix. They are names to
be remembered in the history of international intellectual
co-operation in the service of peace-building.
In keeping with this tradition, the General Conference of
UNESCO at its twenty-eighth session decided to address the
crucial issues raised by the most recent technological
developments in the information field. More particularly, Member
States asked the Secretariat to provide the relevant support for
their activities and in so doing to concentrate on the linguistic,
cultural, social and ethical impact of the proposed information
highways and of the new information and communication
technologies. The Organization is thus accepting expanded
responsibilities in a field in the process of radical transformation,
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where the opportunities for enhanced communication among
individuals and communities are matched by the challenges to
human solidarity inherent in technological progress.
At the start of a new information era, it is instructive to look
back to the invention that was to have such a decisive influence on
human communications in Europe and later in the world at large –
Gutenberg’s movable types. No one at the time of its invention
could have foreseen the full impact of the printing press, which by
facilitating the accumulation and spread of knowledge worked
fundamental changes in the dynamics of intellectual and social life.
Similarly, it is difficult from our present vantage-point to gauge
all the likely cultural consequences and spin-off of the new
information and communication technologies. However, the
World Information Report should meet a real need in providing
systematic information – to politicians, decision-makers,
information professionals and the public at large – on some of the
significant changes taking place in the information field and in
highlighting major issues posed by the new technologies.
The Report begins with a region-by-region survey of
information realities throughout the world – archives, libraries,
information services, databases, networks, legal frameworks,
professional associations and training programmes. It goes on to
describe the main infrastructure components of information work
– the computer, multimedia and telecommunication technologies,
the Internet, and the buildings that continue to house collections
of books, journals, audiovisual materials and so on. It presents an
overview of the most recent developments in relevant technologies
together with an assessment of their potential. The third part of
the Report examines issues arising from the convergence of
information technologies, including topics such as the information
society, information highways, the role of information in
economic intelligence, the future of the book and the complicated
problem of copyright in the electronic age. The Report concludes
with a brief account of international co-operation and assistance in
the information field.
Within the compass of such a publication, it has obviously
not been possible to offer an exhaustive treatment of all the topics
covered. However, it is hoped that the reader will find in the
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World Information Report a useful selection of up-to-date
summaries by highly qualified specialists from all parts of the
world. We hope finally that the Report will serve as a reminder that
the new information technologies, over and above their
contribution to personal and national development, should serve
to promote the goals proclaimed in the United Nations Charter
for the peoples of the world as a whole – peace and its essential
concomitant of ‘social progress and better standards of life in
larger freedom’.
Federico Mayor
Director-General of UNESCO
13 November 1996
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Contents
Acknowledgements 10
Introduction
Yves Courrier and Andrew Large 11
Part One: Information services worldwide
A. Libraries and information services
Chapter 1. East Asia and Oceania
Josephine C. Sison 21
Chapter 2. South Asia
Abhijit Lahiri 33
Chapter 3. The Arab States
Mahmoud A. Itayem 47
Chapter 4. Africa
Wilson O. Aiyepeku and Helen O. Komolafe
62
Chapter 5. Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth
of Independent States
Alexander V. Butrimenko 72
Chapter 6. Western Europe
Giuseppe Vitiello 84
Chapter 7. Canada and the United States
Carole R. Moore, Peter I. Hajnal and Ralph
W. Manning 98
Chapter 8. Latin America and the Caribbean
Estela Morales Campos 107
B. Archives
Chapter 9. Asia
Maria Helena Lima Évora 127
Chapter 10. The Arab States
Moncef Fakhfakh 136
Chapter 11. Africa
Peter Mazikana 144
Chapter 12. Europe and North America
Trudy Huskamp Peterson 155
Chapter 13. Latin America and the Caribbean
Jorge Palacios Preciado and Victoria Arias
Roca 167
Chapter 14. Audiovisual archives worldwide
Helen P. Harrison 182
Part Two: Infrastructures for information
work
Chapter 15. Computer developments
Lucy Tedd 193
Chapter 16. Multimedia technologies
Ching-Chih Chen 206
Chapter 17. Telecommunication technologies
Martin B. H. Weiss 226
Chapter 18. The Internet
Blaise Cronin and Geoffrey McKim 240
Chapter 19. Design criteria for large library buildings
Harry Faulkner-Brown 257
Part Three: Issues and trends
Chapter 20. The information society
Nick Moore 271
Chapter 21. Information highways
Mary Dykstra Lynch 285
Chapter 22. Economic intelligence
Philippe Clerc 304
Chapter 23. Book publishing
Philip Altbach 318
Chapter 24. Access to archival holdings and unique
library materials
Michael Cook 328
Chapter 25. Preservation of archival holdings and
unique library materials
Hartmut Weber 338
Chapter 26. Copyright in the electronic age
Charles Oppenheim 349
Chapter 27. International co-operation and assistance
Arashanipalai Neelameghan 361
Index 381
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Acknowledgements
The editors would like to thank all those who contributed in one
way or another to the preparation of the World Information
Report. Mrs Suzanne Richer, President of the Intergovernmental
Council for the General Information Programme, launched the
project and followed it most carefully to the end.
The members of the Advisory Board gave unreservedly of
their advice and assistance in planning the outline, selecting the
authors and reviewing the papers, as follows: Getachew Birru,
Dean, School for Information Studies for Africa, Addis Ababa
University, Ethiopia; Michel Cartier, Professor, Department of
Communications, Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada;
Khalifa Chater, Director, Institut Supérieur de Documentation,
Université de Tunis, Tunisia; Christoph Graf, Director, Swiss
Federal Archives, Switzerland; Wolfgang Klaue, former President
of the International Federation of Film Archives; Maurice Line,
Information and Library Consultant, United Kingdom; Antonio
Miranda, Director, School of Information Science, University of
Brasilia, Brazil; Arashanipalai Neelameghan, Honorary Visiting
Professor, Documentation Research and Training Center, Indian
Statistical Institute, India; and Tibor Vamos, former Director,
Computer and Automation Research Institute, Hungarian
Academy of Science, Hungary.
Ben Goodegebure, from the International Federation for
Information and Documentation, George McKenzie and Michael
Roper, from the International Council for Archives, and H. Sene,
from Cheik Anta Diop University in Dakar, also made a
significant contribution.
Within UNESCO itself, a large number of units and
individuals contributed, often very significantly, at various stages
in the preparation of the Report, from reviewing the original
outline to final form. The enterprise would not have been possible
without their willing collaboration and assistance throughout the
process. Finally, special mention should be made of Francine
Barral and Khalissa Ikhlef for the wide range of skills they
displayed in the course of this undertaking, and above all for their
untiring patience. ■■
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Introduction
by Yves Courrier
Division for Information and Informatics, UNESCO
and Andrew Large
McGill University, Canada
S
ome words are used more frequently than
others, and information clearly belongs to the
first group. If, prima facie, everyone seems
to be concerned with information, nevertheless
different people will have different views of what is
information. A physicist, an engineer, a computer
scientist, a psychologist, a journalist, a decisionmaker, a librarian, an archivist or a documentalist –
all of these professionals and many others deal in
some way with information. What makes a difference is not the subject of their concern, information
per se, but how they handle it and for what purpose.
The physicist studies the relationship between
order and energy, the telecommunication engineer
measures the uncertainty of a message, the computer
scientist designs ways and means to process bits,
the psychologist describes how the human mind
functions, the journalist makes news out of facts,
while the decision-maker interprets facts and data
to take decisions. The primary role of librarians,
archivists and documentalists is to provide information for these and all other kinds of information
users. They identify, acquire and organize information (or the documents containing that information)
so that it can be supplied to clients on demand to
meet business or leisure needs. In this broad and
complex information domain, the World Information
Report has been designed with a clear purpose in
mind: to present to non-specialists, and particularly
to decision-makers and the public at large, the wide
reality of information provision as it is found
throughout the world today and as it is being
transformed by the technological, social and political
developments of tomorrow.
The starting-point is recorded information, that
is, information which is already present on some
medium. The medium itself can be varied: stone, clay,
parchment, paper, slide, film, magnetic disk, optical
disk or whatever. The information content can be
fixed in space, as in the case of information recorded
on stone walls, or available around the world, as in
11
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the case of information on an Internet site. Recorded
information can appear as a single, unique document
of great historical or artistic value, as, for example, in
archive or museum collections, or it can be published
in millions of copies, as with newspapers or paperback books. Information can be highly transient, as
in a telecommunication broadcast, or highly durable,
as with Sumerian clay tablets.
Several professions are concerned primarily
with handling recorded information. Some, like
archivists and librarians, will give more attention to
documents which are unique; others, like information or computer scientists, will aim principally at
transmitting highly selected data as rapidly as
possible. Professional principles as well as practices
may differ. The present Report has been designed on
the assumption that all the professions concerned
with recorded information share some principles and
concerns for one very simple reason: they all provide
information services. In 1931 Ranganathan wrote his
five laws of librarianship and the first one reads:
‘books are for use’ (Ranganathan, 1988). Three years
later, in 1934, Otlet wrote: ‘The purpose of organizing documents is to make it possible to offer, on
any fact or item of knowledge, relevant information
. . . for the benefit of the largest number of users’
(Otlet, 1989). As Taylor (1986) pointed out, the
unique principle underlying information services is
the provision of added value to information. This
value is added as a result of the various functions
performed by information professionals: the acquisition, selection, organization, storage and dissemination of documents in whatever form they
might take.
Other professionals, of course, are concerned
with adding value to information. Accountants and
statisticians, for example, manipulate figures for
accounting or statistical purposes. They can construct tables, graphs and charts from raw figures –
recorded information – which make those figures
more meaningful for their clients. Journalists also
add value to information by tracking it down,
filtering and assembling it to provide news stories
for their audience. In a different way, publishers,
booksellers and telecommunication network operators add value to information by linking potential
users from all over the world with that information.
‘Information’ is the middle term in this work’s
title: the other two words are ‘Report’ and ‘World’.
This is a report on the state of information provision
today, with some explanation of how this state was
reached and predictions about the direction in which
developments are leading. The boundaries of the
information-provision community are neither clearly
defined nor stable at a time of rapidly developing
information technologies. The World Information
Report is precisely an attempt to reflect this moving
reality as the twentieth century draws to a close.
Starting with a description of information services as
they are now, it also considers the technological
developments that are set to modify this description
in the years to come and the economic, legal and
political consequences of these developments now
and in the future. Authors were asked to eschew the
scholarly paper approach, replete with quotations
and citations. Instead they were asked to provide an
overview of their field of expertise with a few further
readings where applicable so that readers could
pursue individual topics further should they so
choose.
There are currently around 200 countries in the
world. This Report attempts to give a summary of
information provision from a global perspective. A
glance at the Index will reveal that reference is made
to most, if not all, of these countries at one place or
another. It seems safe to assert that few other books
have dealt with this topic from such an international
perspective. Nevertheless, it would be an exaggeration to claim that all countries have been
afforded equal space. In the first place, published
accounts of information systems and services,
including statistical data of various kinds, are more
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plentiful for some countries than for others. Second,
although information is a crucial ingredient for the
successful development of economic, social and
political life in all countries, whether developed,
developing or underdeveloped, it is not the case at
present that all countries have established such
systems and services to the same degree. Third,
although the authors have been selected on the basis
of their international experience as well as knowledge of their chosen topic, it is understandable
that authors will have more familiarity with conditions in some countries than in others. Taken
together, however, the twenty-seven chapters in the
World Information Report provide a comprehensive
account of information provision around the world
in the final years of the twentieth century.
The World Information Report is divided into
three parts. Part One provides a description of
information services throughout the world. It is
divided into two sections. Section A (Chapters 1 to
8) concentrates on libraries and information services. It adopts a geopolitical approach, dividing the
world into eight regions, arranged from east to west:
East Asia and Oceania; South Asia; the Arab States;
Africa (south of the Sahara); Eastern Europe and the
Commonwealth of Independent States; Western
Europe; Canada and the United States; and Latin
America and the Caribbean. Although each author
has chosen a slightly different approach, in general
the following areas are addressed in these chapters:
national libraries and information systems, academic
libraries, public libraries, school libraries, specialized library and information services, professional
associations, and education and training programmes for information personnel. Other topics
such as information marketing, publishing and
research are included in some of the chapters. Within
this framework, authors discuss topics such as the
introduction of information and telecommunication
technologies into these regions, bibliographic control,
database production and international collaboration
both within the region and between countries of the
region and the outside world. The focus is on the
present reality, and on the provision of facts,
including statistical data, wherever possible. What is
offered, in other words, is a description of the
institutions, the people and the legal environment
which together make up the information scene
around the globe. This is a complex and contrasting
reality, exhibiting at one and the same time impressive achievements and, on occasion, serious
problems yet to be surmounted.
Section B of Part One deals with archives. It
adopts a similar approach for archival systems and
services as in the previous section for libraries and
information services. A geopolitical organization is
used for Chapters 9 to 13, but the division of the
world is slightly broader than in Section A: Asia;
the Arab States; Africa (south of the Sahara); Europe
and North America; and Latin America and the
Caribbean. Topics dealt with include archival
legislation, standards, institutions and holdings,
technical facilities (including information and telecommunication technologies), budgets, education
and training, and professional associations. Several
authors discuss the related topic of records management. Chapter 14, in contrast, adopts a thematic
rather than a geographic focus: issues concerning
archival holdings of audiovisual rather than printbased materials.
After this survey of information services
throughout the world, Part Two (Infrastructures for
Information Work) turns to technical matters.
Information providers utilize a wide range of technological tools. The World Information Report
presents in three separate chapters state-of-theart surveys of the most relevant technologies:
computers, multimedia and telecommunications.
Chapter 15 on computer developments begins with
an overview of computing technology before
examining computerized library systems, information
retrieval, interface design and the human aspect of
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computerization. Multimedia information sources
are of growing importance. Chapter 16 on multimedia technologies discusses the technology
required both to use multimedia sources and to
create them. The theme of Chapter 17 is telecommunication technologies. It outlines the components of any network as well as the role of
standards and the various organizations designated
to approve them. Although using all these three
technologies, the Internet has been awarded its own
chapter (Chapter 18) as a measure of its current and
future importance in information delivery. Despite
the undeniable importance of telecommunication
networks in general, and in particular those networks linked to form the Internet, a majority of the
world’s recorded information is still to be found on
paper, microform, slides or film stored in buildings.
The final chapter of Part Two is therefore dedicated
to library buildings, or more accurately to the design
issues related to large library buildings (archival
buildings, with their somewhat different requirements,
are not discussed here).
Part Three (Issues and Trends) does not take a
descriptive approach but rather discusses a number
of important issues of contemporary concern.
Several of these issues are related to technological
developments, but others have a political, social or
legal focus. Chapter 20 deals with the information
society, whose characteristics are that information is
used as an economic resource, that the general public
is making increasing use of information as consumers, and that an information sector is developing
within the economy. The chapter examines the
origins and causes of the information society, and
discusses information as an organizational resource.
It also discusses the relationship between information and citizenship. Chapter 21 concentrates on
information highways, the metaphor coined in
the United States to describe the technological
revolution in information processing and delivery
that is sweeping the globe. The technological aspects
of networks and the specific impact of the Internet
were covered earlier in Chapter 18. Chapter 21, in
contrast, considers the broad political, economic and
social implications of the new technologies that
promise to reshape all our lives.
Chapter 22 has a sharper focus: economic
intelligence, whose objective is to give decisionmakers in enterprises or in government the
knowledge to understand their environment and to
adjust their strategies accordingly. It is argued that
the effective use of economic intelligence can
produce large dividends both for developed and
developing countries. The topic is of relevance to
this Report because economic intelligence is based
upon the identification, collection and analysis of
information. Economic intelligence is a relatively
new concern, but one which seems set to become
decisive in the years to come. With an estimated 200
million personal computers in the world (Cartier,
1996), and close to 40 million Internet users, is there
a future for the printed book? Answers to this
question undoubtedly vary, but Chapter 23 offers
one response from a book publisher’s perspective.
The author believes that books remain a primary
means of communication and are central to providing information, entertainment and education to
millions worldwide. The chapter discusses publishing from the perspectives of developed and
developing countries, including the role of new
technologies in book production. It argues that
books are simply too convenient and too affordable
to disappear.
Chapters 24 and 25 both deal with issues of
the utmost importance for all information professionals, but especially for archivists: access to
and preservation of archival material. The potential
conflict between the need to preserve for future
generations rare or unique materials and the need to
make such materials available now to users is
discussed in both chapters. Chapter 24 deals with
topics such as the appraisal process, legislation and
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standards for collection, preservation and access, and
bibliographic control. The focus in Chapter 25 is on
conservation and preservation techniques. Despite
the potential of optical storage media for archival
storage, it is argued that microfilm continues to
provide a highly reliable and inexpensive storage
medium for archival holdings and unique library
materials.
Copyright safeguards the rights of authors and
publishers to reap dividends from their labour. But
its abuse acts as a deterrent to freedom of access to
information. Libraries in particular can encounter
considerable copyright problems when seeking to
provide clients with photocopies of copyrighted
material. Even greater copyright problems are
now being raised by electronic publishing, where
authorship and ownership are less well-defined
concepts than in the traditional world of publishing.
These issues are explored in Chapter 26.
Finally, to emphasize the global perspective of
the World Information Report, the last chapter
describes international co-operation and assistance
in this area. The roles of the many international and
regional agencies active throughout the world are
discussed; the exemplary solidarity of information
professionals and their strong concern for international co-operation have led to many co-operative
efforts and produced impressive results.
A work such as this emphasizes both the
similarities and the differences between individual
countries and regions. Many examples could be
drawn from the Report to illustrate this point. No
chapter can ignore the role of computing and telecommunication technologies in the provision of
information. These technologies occur again and
again as one reads through the twenty-seven chapters.
Yet the level of technological development differs
markedly between regions and between individual
countries. To take a very different example, the need
to provide effective access to information is of paramount importance to all information professionals,
but the problems in realizing this goal as well as the
means of realizing it differ from country to country.
Copyright is a recurring theme, but national
legislation on this issue varies. It is intriguing to
follow through the Report these intertwined themes,
and to appreciate the commonality of the problems
but the multiplicity of the solutions necessary to fit
widely differing political, economic and social
environments.
This last point leads to a brief discussion of
how this Report can be used. The chapters in Part
One primarily deal either with libraries or with
archives in specific regions of the world, and within
these regions individual countries are examined. But
many national and regional examples can also be
located in Parts Two and Three even though they do
not have location as their primary focus. Likewise,
individual chapters in Part Two deal with specific
information technologies, with the Internet and with
library architecture. But again, numerous references
will be found to these topics in Parts One and Three.
Finally, Part Three emphasizes issues and trends in
information provision, yet such issues are encountered repeatedly also in discussing regional concerns
in Part One or infrastructures in Part Two. Copyright, for example, has an entire chapter devoted to
it; nevertheless, many examples of copyright issues
will be found in other chapters scattered throughout
the Report. Whenever possible, links between the
treatment of similar topics in different chapters are
made by cross-referencing within the chapters
themselves. The role of the Index is to supplement
these cross-references by concatenating subjects that
have been dispersed by the Report’s structure.
If the overall logic of the Report led to a
particular order of presentation of the topics, the
reader, of course, is free to travel through it in any
way. For instance, Chapter 20 (The Information
Society), could be the starting-point, in which Nick
Moore defines precisely what is meant by this term
and indicates the economic factors which describe
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the phenomenon. This then sets the overall social
framework within which the information professions must redefine their roles, giving a particular
importance to this chapter. Another approach is to
go directly after Part One to the final Chapter 27 by
Professor Neelameghan on international co-operation
and assistance. This sequence will emphasize the
social importance of information work at the local,
national, regional and international levels. The
detailed description of the institutions and the professional groups in charge of providing information
to all segments of society, for research, education,
work or leisure, for profit-making or free public
service, indicates that even though the impact of the
new information technologies might be immense,
certain basic principles and tried methods are still
valid throughout the world, and may remain so for
some years to come.
In this kind of work, selection of one topic for
inclusion inevitably means the exclusion of another
topic (as it is, the World Information Report, by any
account, represents a very substantial volume in
terms of sheer pagination). For instance, access has
been studied from the standpoint of rare books and
archival material only. Universal access to publications has not been included even though tremendous
efforts have been made in the last twenty years in
this area. Similarly, the concept of a universal digital
library and its impact on the future of libraries, free
versus fee-based information services, problems of
standardization and compatibility, the conversion of
all preserved material to a digital format, education,
training and human resource development for information professionals, digital publishing, and the
role of information for development are just some of
the important topics that have not been allocated a
specific chapter in the Report (although most of them
are touched upon within individual chapters). They
represent topics which could be covered in any
subsequent volume of the World Information Report.
The authors were asked to follow certain
guidelines in the preparation of their chapters. First,
as mentioned above, the chapters were expected to
be factual and precise, but easy to read: they were
not intended to resemble scholarly papers. Second,
authors were requested to provide up-to-date and
reliable statistical data whenever possible. The
difficulty of meeting this objective was recognized
from the outset: in too many cases data simply are
not available; in other cases different data sets, even
within the same section of one chapter, cannot
directly be compared because they were collected
using slightly different parameters. Overall, the
authors have responded to this requirement with
laudatory success. Third, authors’ attention was
drawn at the outset to the many areas of potential
overlap between individual chapters, but they were
compelled to write their own chapter without the
benefit of seeing anyone else’s chapter. The editors
have done their best to eliminate needless overlap
(some repetition, of course, is essential both to treat
properly a topic of relevance to two or more
chapters and to present the same topic from the
different perspectives of several chapters). The blame
for any remaining redundancy must therefore lie
with the editors and not with the authors. Fourth,
authors were asked to adopt an international approach in their coverage, drawing examples from a
broad spectrum of countries wherever feasible (see
above). The final requirement – probably most
irksome of all for the authors – was that of confining
their coverage to a very restricted number of pages.
As experts in their fields the authors undoubtedly
would have found it easier to write an entire book on
the topic than fifteen or so pages! In many cases they
were compelled by the editors to delete fascinating
and relevant sections from their draft chapters
simply to prevent the Report from reaching monumental proportions.
In an endeavour of this kind, the editors must
perforce rely upon the co-operation of their authors
in meeting initial deadlines, submitting any revisions,
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and answering lingering questions which inevitably
arise at the final editing stage. Without exception the
authors have proved a remarkable team to work
with, and the editors at this point would like to
express their gratitude to them (full acknowledgements to the many people who made this Report
possible are included elsewhere). The preparation of
the Report involved thirty-two authors and two
editors scattered over seventeen countries and five
continents. It is difficult to contemplate such an
international endeavour taking place over a short
time-span without the contribution of information
technology. Even though it was not made an
essential requirement, in the event more than twothirds of the authors and both the editors could
be reached by electronic mail. The same is true for
the members of the Advisory Board, who were
instrumental in the overall design of the Report, in
the selection of authors and in the evaluation of the
submitted chapters. All the texts without exception
were submitted on diskette as well as on paper.
Overall, the time saved in the preparation of the
printed publication by the use of new information
technologies can be estimated conservatively at
between three and six months. To organize meetings,
contact authors, obtain texts and clarifications, the
Internet proved to be an extraordinary instrument:
easy to use, accurate, most of the time reliable and
above all terribly fast. Moreover, after careful consideration, it was decided to put a selected number of
the papers in the Report onto the World Wide Web
in English; this was completed by the end of
November 1996. The texts which are on the Web
(http://www.unesco.org/cii/wirerpt/vers-web.htm)
have not been edited. They are the authors’ texts,
sometimes revised better to meet the guidelines
provided to the authors, but without the careful
and time-consuming work of editing, proof-reading,
composing and printing. The assumption is that
this selection will raise the interest of potential
readers for the edited and complete version.
Comments to UNESCO, in writing or by e-mail
([email protected]) are most welcome and will
make the World Information Report an ongoing
project. ■■
References
CARTIER, M. 1996. Le nouveau monde des infostructures.
Montreal, Fides, 192 pp.
OTLET, P. 1989. Traité de documentation. Le livre sur le
livre. Liège, Centre de Lecture Publique de la Communauté Française de Belgique. 445 pp.
RANGANATHAN, S. R. 1988. The Five Laws of Library
Science. Bangalore. 450 pp.
TAYLOR, R. S. 1986. Value-added Processes in Information
Systems. Norwood, New Jersey. 258 pp.
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I n18t r o d u c t i o n
Yves Courrier obtained a maîtrise en
Andrew Large is a professor at McGill
philosophie from the Université de Paris
University (Montreal) and Director of
X (Nanterre) in 1968. He then studied
its Graduate School of Library and
library sciences at the École Nationale
Information Studies. He has presented
Supérieure des Sciences de l’Information et des
conference and seminar papers in North America, the
Bibliothèques (Paris) and at the University of
Caribbean, Europe, Africa and Asia, and is the author
Pittsburgh. He holds a Ph.D. in Information Science
of around 100 books or papers. He is co-editor of the
from the same university. He has been professor
quarterly journal, Education for Information. Andy
(1971–78) and Director (1977–78) of the École de
Large has acted as a consultant for the Canadian
Bibliothéconomie et des Sciences de l’Information of
International Development Agency, the International
the Université de Montréal. He has published many
Development Research Centre, the British Overseas
papers on the foundations of information science,
Development Administration, the British Council and
linguistic theory and computerized information
UNESCO, and is currently presenting a series of
retrieval, education, training and human resources
workshops in Eastern Europe for the Open Society
development in information science. He joined
(Soros Foundation). Before moving to Canada, he
UNESCO in 1978.
taught at the College of Librarianship Wales.
Yves Courrier
Andrew Large
Programme Specialist
Director
Division for Information and Informatics
Graduate School of Library and Information Studies
UNESCO
McGill University
1, rue Miollis,
3459 McTavish Street
75732 Paris, Cedex 15, France
Montreal, Quebec,
Tel: 1-45-68-45-27
Canada H3A 1Y1
Fax: 1-45-68-55-82
Tel: (514) 398-4204
E-mail: [email protected]
Fax: (514) 398-7193
E-mail: [email protected]
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Part One.
Information services
worldwide
A. Libraries
and
information
services
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Chapter 1
East Asia
and Oceania
Josephine C. Sison
SEAMEO Regional Center
for Graduate
Study and Research
in Agriculture,
Philippines
T
he geographic areas covered in this chapter
include the East Asian countries of China,
Japan, Mongolia and the Republic of Korea,
on the one hand, and Australia, Fiji, New Zealand,
Papua New Guinea and the twenty-one other small
island countries in the Pacific, on the other hand. It
gives only a general overview of the current state of
library and information systems and services in these
countries, discussed under the subheadings of
national libraries and information systems, professional associations, education and training
institutions and programmes, library acts and
communications policy development, and information networking initiatives. Some indications of the
main characteristics of professional practice in each
country, where available, are also given, as are
problems and trends.
National libraries and information
systems
Among the East Asian countries, Japan is by far the
most advanced in terms of using information
technology to provide the best possible information
services to its users, although the Republic of Korea
would almost be on a par with Japan. China, for its
part, is still very much in the process of laying down
the infrastructure in its bid to become a networked
society in the near future.
There are several major libraries and information centres in Japan involved in the provision of
science and technology information as well as related
information services. The National Diet Library
(NDL) was established in 1948 to serve the Japanese
Diet (Parliament) and the public. All publications
produced in Japan are deposited in this library. It is
the largest library in Japan with about 6,189,470 book
volumes and 141,529 periodical titles. It currently
has a staff of 850. The NDL provides all kinds of
library services to the public, but research and
legislative reference services are rendered exclusively
to Diet members. The NDL collects 23,000 science
21
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and technology journal titles and technical reports
from overseas, and publishes the Directory of
Japanese Scientific Periodicals as well as the Japanese
Periodicals Index: Science and Technology.
Another major national information system is
the Japan Information Centre of Science and
Technology ( JICST). Established in 1957 by law as a
public corporation under the auspices of the Science
and Technology Agency, its main objective as an
information centre is to promote the development of
science and technology in Japan. JICST collects,
processes and disseminates scientific and technical
information published in Japan as well as that
published in other parts of the world. It is currently
generating about 50% of its income from its services;
the other 50% is provided by the Japanese Government. JICST has highly qualified staff numbering
320 at the present time, with a budget of 18.10 billion
yen for the fiscal year 1995/96.
The main activities and services of JICST
include scientific information gathering, information
processing and dissemination, library services and
online information services. The JICST Online
Information System (JOIS) makes available seventeen bibliographic and factual databases produced
by JICST as well as 150 databases loaded on the
Scientific and Technical Information Network (STN)
International, a worldwide integrated online system
sponsored by JICST.
Another important organization in Japan
providing vital information services is the National
Centre for Science Information Systems (NACSIS),
which is one of the inter-university research institutes under the Ministry of Education, Science and
Culture. NACSIS operates the Science Information
Network linking university libraries, university
computer centres and university research institutions to provide scholarly information to academic
researchers. The centre provides a cataloguing information service, NACSIS-CAT, which uses a
shared bibliographic description scheme, as well as
information retrieval services called NACSIS-IR.
Among the twenty-five databases NACSIS maintains are KAKEN (abstracts of annual reports of
grants-in-aid subsidized by Monbusho), GAKUI
(index to doctoral theses submitted to Japanese
universities), and GAKKAI (academic conference
papers).
Finally, the Japan Patent Information
Organization, or JAPIO, ought also to be described.
Established as a non-profit organization in June
1971, JAPIO is the largest provider of online, print
and CD-ROM patent information services in Japan.
Online information on Japanese patents, designs and
trademarks is available through PATOLIS (Patent
Online Information System). The staff of JAPIO is
300 and the budget for the fiscal year 1995/96 is
approximately 23 million yen, entirely financed from
its various patent information services.
In China, the Institute of Scientific and
Technical Information of China (ISTIC) is one of
the largest information services in that country.
Established in October 1956, ISTIC is under the
auspices of the State Science and Technology
Commission or SSTC. ISTIC at present has a staff in
excess of 1,100, and an annual allocation of funds
averaging about 15 million yuan. The allocation
covers about 70% of the budgetary requirements of
the institute; the other 30% is generated from
income from its information services.
Dedicated to China’s economic, social, scientific
and technical development, and to decision-making
in matters related to science and technology, ISTIC
provides the following services: information retrieval;
information research; document delivery; technical
information and consulting; education and training;
publishing, printing and reproduction; and international exchange and co-operation.
In the Republic of Korea, the government
rationalized the various information services along
specialized lines in 1990, with the rapid growth of
its information industry. One of the foremost is
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KINITI (Korea Institute of Industry and Technology Information), created in 1991 and responsible
for industrial and technological information. ETRI
(Electronic Technology Research Institute) responds
to the industrial information needs, and KORDIC
(Korea Research and Development Information
Centre) is the national science and technology
information service system.
KINITI is a non-profit organization under the
umbrella of the Ministry of Trade, Industry and
Energy, and has 208 staff members at present. Its
annual budget is US$12 million, and it is financed by
governmental support (70%) and from fees collected
from its various services (30%). Its goal is to acquire
industrial and technological information from home
and abroad, and to offer access to users through
various means appropriate to their needs. KINITI
offers a wide range of services such as collection of
information resources, information processing and
database construction, a computer-based information service network (KINITI-IR) for online
information retrieval, an information search and
analysis service, a Technical Information Management
System (TIMS) for use by small and medium-scale
companies, a document delivery and publication
service, information marketing, and user training
programmes.
KORDIC was established by the Ministry of
Science and Technology in 1993, mandated to
function as a centre for database development and
services in the Republic of Korea. KORDIC
developed and maintains the Science and Technology
Information System (STIS), a project that aims to
establish information-sharing channels among research institutes and universities, at the forefront
of which would be the resources of their libraries.
Through the STIS project, KORDIC developed its
online retrieval system called the Korea Research
Information of Science and Technology Access Line
(KRISTAL), which currently contains twenty-two
national databases containing about 600,000 records.
As a country with a highly developed information infrastructure, New Zealand’s two major
information providers, the National Library of New
Zealand and the Crown Research Institutes, will be
briefly described.
The mission statement of the National Library
of New Zealand is to contribute to the building of a
learning society and enterprise economy within
New Zealand by supporting the creation of an
environment where information is readily available
and widely used. It collects, preserves and makes
accessible an important part of the documentary
heritage of New Zealand. The National Library is
the principal adviser to government on library policy
and information issues. It makes available an
authoritative record of New Zealand publishing
through the legal deposit requirements of the Copyright Act.
The National Library makes available a
reference collection of some 1.5 million book and
non-book materials, as well as 8,670 current journal
titles and monographs-in-series. Its services include
loan and copy services, database services (New
Zealand Bibliographic Network and Kiwinet), and
publications such as bibliographies and training
guides. The National Library is responsible for the
maintenance of the New Zealand National Bibliography and Index New Zealand (INNZ) which is a
subject index to the contents of New Zealand
general and scholarly serials, newspapers, theses and
conference papers.
The ten Crown Research Institutes (CRIs)
provide excellent research and related services for
the benefit of the country, each of which is based
around a productive sector of the economy or a
grouping of natural resources, like the Horticulture
and Food Research Institute of New Zealand
Limited (HortResearch) and Industrial Research
Limited (IRL). They have their own libraries which
provide computer-based information services, and
are linked to an online system called CRInet. Other
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online systems that each of them can access include
NZBN (New Zealand Bibliographic Network) and
KIWINET in New Zealand, as well as other online
services from Australia and elsewhere.
The functions of the National Library of
Australia (NLA) parallel those of the other countries
already discussed. The NLA maintains the
Australian Bibliographic Network (ABN) national
bibliographic database, which now contains over 11
million records. The utility has over 1,400 institutional clients. The NLA is responsible also for
Ozline, an online retrieval service providing access
to thirty-five Australian databases.
The NLA is now engaged in the complete
redevelopment of ANB and Ozline. Undertaken in
partnership with the National Library of New
Zealand, the National Document and Information
Service Project (NDIS) is a major A$14 million
project which will result in a new service to be
marketed under the name World 1. World 1 will
provide access to information via an integrated
approach where information services will be
available from just one place (the ‘one-stop’ approach), instead of users having to go to several
places. It will replace and extend the services
currently provided by ABN and Ozline and plans to
be operational by the end of 1997.
In common with New Zealand, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) Information Services is the mainstay
of the information infrastructure for science in
Australia. It publishes fourteen independently reviewed journals of Australian science, the Australian
Bibliography of Agriculture, an index to all CSIRO
publications, the Australian Rural Research in
Progress database, Science and Geography Abstracts
(SAGE), some thirty book titles a year and about
twenty video titles a year, and provides access to
nearly thirty databases on the Ozline network. With
regard to the dissemination of science and technology information, CSIRO co-ordinates, for all its
thirty-five libraries scattered throughout the
country, the purchase of their journals (in 1995/96
amounting to A$7 million of journal subscriptions),
manages the quality control of CSIRO’s library network catalogue and develops services which improve
access to the resources in these libraries.
Finally, worthy of mention in this section is the
National Library of Papua New Guinea. Although
formally opened only in 1978, the National Library
Service has been playing a key role in enhancing the
social, economic and educational development of the
people of Papua New Guinea. Aside from being a
depository library for everything published in that
country, the National Library also provides the same
kinds of services already described in the foregoing
countries in this section, like inter-library loans,
computerized literature searching, database development and online access to remote databases in
Australia and elsewhere.
Professional associations
The value of having professional associations in
library and information science to ensure the highest
quality of performance among its practitioners
has long been recognized in the region. The Japan
Library Association ( JLA), for instance, was
established as early as 1892, and is thus the third such
association in the world to have been founded in the
nineteenth century, after the American Library
Association and the Library Association of the
United Kingdom.
In New Zealand, the New Zealand Library and
Information Association (NZLIA) is interested in
promoting the importance of the profession in the
country. Its role is to look for and react to any
developments which may affect its members and
their institutions, and to oversee the development of
library and information services in the New Zealand
community as a whole.
The Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA), for its part, sets and maintains
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professional standards by regularly assessing courses
in library and information studies. The ALIA
recognizes the courses offered that allow graduates
to be admitted as associate or technician members of
the association. The recognition process is designed to
foster excellence in the provision of education for the
Australian library and information services sector.
There are four library associations in the South
Pacific region: the Fiji Library Association (FLA),
the Papua New Guinea Library Association
(PNGLA), the Western Samoa Library Association
(WSLA) and the Vanuatu Library Association
(VLA).
In addition, the Northern Pacific region has a
group called the Pacific Islands Association of
Libraries and Archives (PIALA), which includes
libraries and librarians in the Marshall Islands, Palau,
Guam and the Federated States of Micronesia.
Education and training institutions
and programmes
The education and training of librarians and
information professionals in East Asia and Oceania
seems to be a major preoccupation in all the
countries under review. Both formal degree programmes and short-term non-degree programmes
are well established.
As far as Japan is concerned, Matsumura (1995)
thinks that the state of library and information
science (LIS) education is rather contradictory.
Although a total of eight universities (four national
and four private) offer formal professional
programmes of study for the education of library
and information specialists, the provision of the
Japan Library Law still authorizes a short course of
nineteen credits, the completion of which also
provides a means of professional qualification. As
educational programmes vary widely in quality,
there are many ways of becoming a qualified
librarian – a situation that lowers the standard of
qualified personnel in the profession.
The major university-based full educational
programmes in Japan are currently being offered by
the Keio Gijuku University, Faculty of Letters,
School of Library and Information Science
(undergraduate, Master’s and doctoral levels); the
University of Library and Information Science
(ULIS) (undergraduate programme since 1980, and
MA programme since 1985); the Aichi Shukutoku
University School of Library and Information
Science within its Faculty of Letters (undergraduate
programme since 1985, Master’s programme since
1988, and doctoral programme since 1991); the
University of Kyoto, Faculty of Education
(undergraduate and postgraduate programmes since
1951); and the University of Tokyo, Faculty of
Education (undergraduate- and graduate-level
programmes since 1952).
Prior to 1978, library and information science
education in China was available only at Wuhan
University and Beijing University. In 1978, Wuhan
University established a department of library and
information studies offering programmes at both
undergraduate and postgraduate levels. In the same
year, ISTIC also began to train postgraduate
students. Many universities or institutions of higher
education started to offer library and information
specialization during the next ten years and some
major information institutions set up education and
training programmes to train information personnel.
At present, a total of about seventy universities
and colleges offer information studies programmes
in China. These institutions are distributed over
twenty-three provinces, autonomous regions and
municipalities. According to available statistics,
these institutions enrol about 4,000 students per
year. Master’s degrees are awarded in twenty
information education institutions, which include
universities such as Beijing University, Wuhan
University, Jilin University of Technology and
Nankai University. Others are research institutes
such as ISTIC, the Documentation and Information
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Centre of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the
China Defence Science and Technology Information
Centre. Doctoral programmes in information studies
were initiated only in 1991, with only two institutions offering them: Wuhan University and Beijing
University. Two more universities now also offer
doctoral programmes.
Richardson (1995) reports that there are two
main providers of formal librarianship training in
New Zealand, although the New Zealand Library
and Information Association (NZLIA) has a continuing education officer who co-ordinates, organizes
and publicizes other training courses, meetings and
initiatives. Other universities and polytechnics are
also increasingly providing courses in areas such as
records management and information systems that
are of interest to librarians. Established in 1979, the
Department of Library and Information Studies,
Victoria University, currently offers a one-year (three
semesters) Master’s in Library and Information
Studies as the base-level postgraduate qualification
in New Zealand. Since 1992, it has also been possible
to complete the department’s diploma programme
by distance education; it comprises specially developed coursebooks and a series of teleconferencing
sessions held in centres throughout New Zealand.
The Master’s programme is also planned to be made
available by distance education. For its part, the
Wellington College of Education provides the New
Zealand Library Studies Certificate, a non-graduate
programme for international-level staff. This twoyear distance education programme is for applicants
who are already working in libraries but do not have
any relevant qualifications.
At the time of writing, education for library
and information personnel in Australia is being
offered at thirty-four institutions. The programmes
prepare graduates for employment in many types of
organizations and in all sectors of the economy.
Some schools teach records management and archives
streams as part of their total programme offerings.
One of the outcomes of ALIA’s course
recognition process has been that qualifications are
portable across Australia. Education for the sector is
carried out at the Associate Diploma level for
Library Technician, the Bachelor’s level for Librarian
and Teacher Librarian, and the Graduate Diploma
level for Librarian and Teacher Librarian. The
Master’s level is obtained by course work or research
and the doctoral level by research.
Education for the library and information
sector in Australia is continually being improved and
some innovative courses are being offered, with
emphasis on the provision of continuing professional development courses and of education for
people in isolated areas of Australia.
In the Pacific, two institutions offer education
and training for library and information work: the
University of the South Pacific (USP) in Fiji, and the
University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) in Papua
New Guinea. USP offers a degree-level diploma
programme in Information and Library Studies. The
UPNG, for its part, provides library and information studies through its South Pacific Center for
Communication and Information in Development
(SPCenCIID). Its librarianship programmes are
offered at three levels: Certificate, Diploma and
Bachelor’s degree. A Certificate in Information
Studies (Records Management) is offered by the
centre, as well as a specialist Diploma in TeacherLibrarianship and a B.Sc. in Information Management. These correspond to position levels within
libraries across Papua New Guinea.
The range of problems in the region related to
education and training is rather wide: nonstandardized curricular offerings in training institutions, leading to the uneven quality of graduates
(Japan); the uneven quality of instruction provided
by training institutions, and their pressing need for
more financial support (China); the acute lack of
training institutions and teachers (Papua New
Guinea); and the need for more and better distance
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education programmes to train librarians in far-flung
areas (New Zealand and Australia).
Public library acts and information
policies
The purpose of the Japan Library Law, enacted in
1950 and with amendments over the years up to
1985, is to provide for the establishment and
operation of libraries, and to promote their sound
development, thereby contributing to the enhancement of the education and culture of the nation, in
accordance with the spirit of the Social Education
Law of 1949.
A major UNESCO initiative in the region
deserves mention: the on-going Study on the
Information Infrastructures for Planning Information Systems and Networks in Asia and the Pacific
Countries (SISNAP), taking place under the auspices
of the General Information Programme’s Regional
Network for the Exchange of Information and
Experience in Science and Technology in Asia and
the Pacific (ASTINFO). This international research
project is funded by the Japanese Ministry of
Education, Science, Sports and Culture and is being
carried out by the University of Library and
Information Sciences of the Philippines. Initiated in
April 1994, the aims of the three-year study are: to
look at the status of national information infrastructures and services, the results of which will be
useful for formulating national policy to guide the
development of national information infrastructures;
and to enable the developing countries to keep
abreast of developments and lessen the gap between
information-rich and information-poor countries,
and more importantly to make them effective
partners in developing resource-sharing mechanisms
and networks in the region. It is also expected that
the study will result in developing a conceptual
model of how national information infrastructures
and services should be developed and managed.
Among the South Pacific countries, five have
National Library Acts: Cook Islands, Kiribati,
Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu.
The National Library and Archives Act 1993 of
Papua New Guinea officially established the Office
of Libraries and Archives, the National Library
Service and the National Archives and Public
Records Service, and identified their functions.
In New Zealand, a number of laws govern the
provision and management of information. Some of
the more significant are the Public Libraries Act of
1869, the Archives Act of 1957, the Copyright Act of
1994, the Local Government Act of 1974 (and
amendments), the National Library Act of 1965, the
Official Information Act of 1982, and the Privacy
Act of 1993. In terms of policy, the New Zealand
Government adopted in 1993 Path to 2010 as a
general statement of government policy and a strategic vision. In it, information is recognized as a key
element in developing New Zealand’s future. Communication and information technology are seen as a
crucial part of the national infrastructure that will
enable the country to take advantage of the technological revolution currently sweeping the world.
Despite several reports, studies and submissions, little progress has been made towards the
formulation of a national information policy in
Australia. The latest such report was submitted to
the House of Representatives, Parliament of the
Commonwealth of Australia, in 1991 and rejected,
based on the perception that it was not an important
enough issue. Other sectors of Australian society,
however, see the urgent need to work towards an
integrated and interrelated set of information
policies that will enhance the accessibility and
usefulness of information and assure Australia’s
competitiveness internationally.
No country in the Pacific Islands group has a
national information policy. Papua New Guinea,
however, came out in 1993 with the first draft of its
National Policy on Information and Communication. Discussions are also ongoing for the final-
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ization of the National Policy for Libraries and
Archives in that country.
National research and information
networks
Most of the major countries in East Asia and
Oceania are either starting or are already at an
advanced stage in networking their libraries and
databases. This is due partly to the importance
attached by these countries to information as a tool
for national development. Nowhere is this more
apparent than in Australia and New Zealand, where
information industries are at advanced stages of
development.
In 1995, operational control of AARNET, a
high-speed computer telecommunication network
that connects Australian users to the Internet,
was taken over by Telstra, Australia’s major telecommunication carrier. The NLA’s online catalogue
and all the major Australian databases are accessible
via AARNET.
In New Zealand, NZBN is an online computer
system that links most public, university, government and special libraries in New Zealand to a
central bibliographic database maintained by the
National Library. NZBN’s prime function is to
support libraries throughout New Zealand in their
reference, interloan, cataloguing and acquisitions
activities. There are over 260 member libraries.
Kiwinet, the National Library’s online database
service with a focus on New Zealand information,
supports thirty-two databases of published information covering current affairs, New Zealand
law, proposed legislation, politics, science, trademarks, education and health. World 1, mentioned
earlier, will absorb both NZBN and Kiwinet by
1997. Tuianet is the New Zealand research and
academic network, and comprises the universities,
the Crown Research Institutes and the National
Library. Other networks include CRInet, Pacnet,
New Zealand Online, and PlaNet.
In the Pacific, Fiji, Noumea, Tonga, Vanuatu,
Papua New Guinea and other countries have access
to Internet services and are connected by e-mail.
Fax, e-mail and the Internet provide the main routes
through which information is communicated, disseminated and delivered. Currently existing regional
information systems are the Pacific Information
Center (PIC), the Pacific Islands Marine Resources
Information System (PIMRIS) and the Population
Information Center for the South Pacific (Pacific
POPIN), all based at the University of the South
Pacific in Suva, Fiji. Table 1 shows a matrix of
information systems and services available in the
Pacific.
In China, the fastest developing data communications centres are Beijing and Nanjing,
although in South China cities like Shanghai and
other free trade zones are not lagging behind. The
most prominent service providers at present are the
China National Public Data Network (CNPAC),
CHINAPAC, Springnet International, Beijing Posts
and Telecommunications Public Mailboxes, the
Internet, and Finance and Trade Networks. Local
initiatives in networking, most of which use
CHINAPAC, are the National Computing and
Networking Facility of China (NCFC), the
Tsinghua University Network (TUNET), the Chinese
Academy of Sciences Network (CASNET), Peking
University Network (PUNET) and the Chinese
Education Research Network (CERNET). At
present, PUNET users can access one of the largest
scientific literature collections in China. In addition,
a major library information retrieval system is being
developed under the auspices of Beijing University.
Japan embarked in 1994 on the establishment
of the Inter-Ministry Research Information Network (IMnet), envisioned to be a seamless research
information network that links national research
institutes and other public research organizations,
both in the country and abroad. The network is
promoted under the co-ordination of all ministries
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and agencies, and financed by the Special Coordination Funds for Promoting Science and
Technology of the Science and Technology Agency.
Table 2 shows the various research-oriented information networks in Japan which are at the present
time connected to the Internet.
In Mongolia, a project is currently under way
at the Centre for Scientific and Technical Information to develop a nationwide library network,
involving the libraries of the Mongolian Technical
University, the Mongolian Agriculture University,
the Ministry of Health and the Centre for Scientific
and Technical Information.
The Republic of Korea, like Japan, has a welldeveloped information industry, with the natural
consequence that it has well-established national
information networks. For instance, the Korea
Research Environment Open Network (KREONet)
and the Korea Education Network (KREN) are
public-based communication networks for science
Staff in
training
Population
No. of
libraries 3
Land area
(sq. km)
Technical
staff 2
Capital
Prof.
assn.
Status
Professional
staff 1
Table 1. State of library and information services in the Pacific islands, 1996
National
library
J-8594/1
American Samoa
Unincorporated US territory
Pago Pago
199
50 923
No
No
2
2
0
0
Cook Islands
Self-governing in free
association with New Zealand
Avanua
236
20 000
Yes
No
1
8
34
3
Fed. States of
Micronesia
Self-governing in free
association with United States
Palikir
702
115 000
No
No
2
4
10
0
Fiji
Independent republic
Suva
18 274
750 000
No
Yes
23
138
100
130
French Polynesia
Overseas territory of France
Papeete
4 000
206 000
No
No
0
0
0
0
Guam
Unincorporated US territory
Agana
541.3
142 000
No
Yes
10
0
0
0
Kiribati
Independent republic
Tarawa
811
75 000
Yes
No
1
4
10
1
Marshall Islands
Self-governing republic in
free association with US
Majuro
182
48 000
No
No
2
0
3
0
Nauru
Independent republic
Yaren
New Caledonia
Overseas territory of France
Noumea
Niue
Self-governing in free association
with New Zealand
Alofi
Papua New Guinea
Solomon Islands
21
10 000
No
No
0
4
6
2
19 060
183 000
No
No
1
2
5
0
260
2 200
No
No
0
3
3
0
Independent state
Port Moresby 462 840 3 950 000
Yes
Yes
20
0
0
0
Independent state
Honiara
28 896
330 000
Yes
No
1
8
15
5
Tokelau
Dependency of New Zealand
–
10 159
1 700
No
No
0
0
0
0
Tonga
Independent monarchy
Nuku’alofa
750
94 000
No
No
0
14
32
5
Tuvalu
Independent state
Funafuti
24
10 000
Yes
No
1
0
0
0
Vanuatu
Independent republic
Port Vita
12 200
155 000
Yes
No
0
3
21
4
Western Samoa
Independent state
Apia
2 831
168 000
No
Yes
2
18
25
2
1. Trained staff: at professional library level with degree and experience. About 50% have postgraduate qualifications.
2. Trained staff: with Diploma or Certificate and experience.
3. Including all types of libraries: schools, special, academic, public. Estimates only are given.
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Information services
w 30o r l d w i d e
information. Both of these networks were
established to serve the information needs of the
academic and research communities. The goal of
KREONet, started in 1988, is to connect all the
computing facilities of R&D institutes in the
Republic of Korea (120 organizations currently are
connected and the network is operated by the
Systems Engineering Research Institute (SERI)).
KREN was established in May 1990 and is
supported by the Ministry of Education. It has three
components: the inter-university network, the
library network and the educational administration
network. The library network component of KREN
includes all national libraries, major public libraries,
university/college libraries and special subject
libraries. The goal of the library network is to connect by 1997 the 350 libraries scattered throughout
the Republic of Korea using nineteen regional
switching centres. The effort, which is being coordinated by the National Central Library, has to
date already standardized the KOMARC (Korean
MARC) format to KS (Korean Standard), developed
six domestic bibliographic databases, developed and
distributed the library application software KOLAS
for personal computers, and distributed UNIXbased software.
Finally, the DNS (Dacom-Net Service) is the
most popular data communication network in the
Republic of Korea today. It is operated on a
commercial basis by the Data Communication
Corporation of Korea (DACOM). DACOM had a
monopoly of the country’s data communication
market since its establishment in 1982, but with
government deregulation of such services in 1991,
more than ten companies have started to provide
similar services.
Table 2. Japan: research-oriented networks (funded by ministries and agencies)
Backbone network
Ministry/agency network
IMnet
SINET
STAnet
MAFFIN
RIPS Network
Fund
Special Co-ordination
Funds for Promoting
Science and Technology
(Science and Technology
Agency)
The Ministry of
Education, Science
and Culture
Science and
Technology Agency
Ministry of
Agriculture, Forestry
and Fisheries
The Ministry of
International
Trade and
Industry (MITI)
Operation
Nippon Telegraph and
Telephone Co. (NTT)
Kokusai Denshin;
Denva Co. (KDD), etc.
National Centre for
Science Information
Systems (NACSIS)
NEC Co.
Computer Centre for
Agriculture, Forestry
and Fisheries Research
(CCAFFR)
RIPS Centre
(Agency of
Industrial Science
and Technology,
MITI)
AUP
(Acceptable
Use Policy)
For research
Non-profit
University researchers
and research supporting
staff/researchers of
national research
institutes/academic
societies/joint research
groups
For research
Non-profit
Researchers and
research-supporting
staff of Science and
Technology Agency
Researchers and
research-supporting
staff of Ministry of
Agriculture, Forestry
and Fisheries
Researchers and
researchsupporting staff
of Agency of
Industrial Science
and Technology,
MITI
Protocol
TCP/IP, DECnet
TCP/IP
TCP/IP, DECnet
TCP/IP
TCP/IP, SNA,
FNA
Start
1995
1992
1994
1991
1989
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East Asia
a n d O c e a n31i a
Conclusions
From this brief account of the existing information
infrastructure in East Asia and the Pacific, we can
draw the following two conclusions. First, while the
developed countries like Japan, the Republic of
Korea, Australia and New Zealand already have
well-established infrastructures for the provision of
information services, the less-developed countries
in the region are also taking decisive steps in developing their own systems in aid of their national
development programmes. Second, the countries in
the region under review recognize that the use of the
new information technologies adds tremendous value
to the information services they are able to offer to
their users, and therefore strive to take full advantage
of these, even in the face of severe financial constraints and lack of technological know-how. ■■
References
ANON. 1995. The Present State of Information Resources
for R&D in Japan. Country paper presented at
the Second International Workshop on SISNAP,
Tsukuba, Japan, 21–25 August. 21 pp.
——. 1995. Library Networking in the Republic of Korea.
Country paper presented at the Second International
Workshop on SISNAP, Tsukuba, Japan, 21–25
August. 6 pp.
DORJBAL, T. 1995. A Status Report on S&T Information
Systems and Services in Mongolia. Country paper
presented at the ASTINFO Consultative Meeting
and Regional Seminar/Workshop, Beijing, China,
18–23 September. 5 pp.
EU-JAPAN CENTRE FOR INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION.
1995. EU-Japan Centre Directory of Sources of
Japanese Information on Trade and Technology.
Tokyo.
GARTON, A.; JAGDISH, P.; SUCHIT, N.; FERNANDEZ, L.
1995. Pan Asia Networking: An Asian Survey.
Ottawa, IDRC. 56 pp.
HORIUCHI, S. 1994. JICST Standing at the Turn of the
Century. Paper presented at the Third Annual STICA
Conference, Taipei, Taiwan, 1–2 March. 12 pp.
KOREA RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT INFORMATION
CENTER. 1995. Infrastructure for Research Information in Korea. Country report at the Second
International Workshop on SISNAP, Tsukuba,
Japan, 21–23 August. 13 pp.
MATSUMURA, T. 1995. Study on the Information
Infrastructures for Planning Information Systems
and Networks in Asia and the Pacific Countries
(SISNAP). Country report presented at the Tenth
ASTINFO Consultative Meeting and Regional
Seminar/Workshop, Beijing, China, 18–23 September.
5 pp.
NEES, J. 1995. The New Zealand Information Infrastructure. Report presented at the Second International Workshop on SISNAP, Tsukuba, Japan,
21–23 August. 20 pp.
OLDEN, A; WISE, M. (eds.). 1993. Information and
Libraries in the Developing World. 2: Southeast
Asia and Oceania. London, Library Association
Publishing. 249 pp.
PAPUA NEW GUINEA. MINISTRY FOR INFORMATION
AND COMMUNICATION SERVICES. 1993. National
Policy on Information and Communication of Papua
New Guinea. Waigani, Papua New Guinea. 82 pp.
PARK, HONG-SHIK. 1994. Recent Developments of
KINITI’s Information Activities. Paper presented at
the Third Annual STICA Conference, Taipei,
Taiwan, 1–2 March. 12 pp.
POUSTIE, K. 1995. Status Report on the Education and
Training of Library and Information Personnel in
Australia. Country report presented at the Tenth
ASTINFO Consultative Meeting and Regional
Seminar/Workshop, Beijing, China, 18–23 September. 4 pp.
RICHARDSON, A. D. 1995. Education for Librarianship. In: A. D. Richardson (ed.), Library Service in
New Zealand: New Zealand Libraries in the 1990s.
New Zealand, Wellington College of Education. 302
pp.
WILLIAMS, E. 1996. A Status Report on Library and
Information Services in the Pacific Countries. Suva,
Fiji, University of the South Pacific. 5 pp.
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w 32o r l d w i d e
Josephine C. Sison holds a Master’s
degree in Library Science and a
doctorate in Development
Communication from the University of
the Philippines, with Information
Science as a co-major, which she took at the University
of Pittsburgh (United States). For the past eighteen
years she has managed the Agricultural Information
Bank for Asia (AIBA), a computer-based regional
resource centre for agriculture and related fields. As a
member of the graduate faculty of the University of
the Philippines, she has been handling courses on
information systems planning and management and
scientific and technical information processing, on a
part-time basis since 1989. She joined the university as
a professor on a full-time basis for the academic year
1996–97. She has undertaken numerous consultancies
since the 1980s, on assignment in such countries as
Indonesia, China, the Philippines and Fiji, as well as
short-term assignments in other South-East Asian
countries. She has served as a member of the Executive
Board of the International Association of Agricultural
Information Specialists (IAALD) since 1990.
Josephine C. Sison
Project Officer
Information Resources Unit
SEAMEO Regional Center for Graduate Study
and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA)
Los Banos, Laguna 4031, Philippines
Tel: (94) 2361/2363/2365/
Fax: (2) 813-5697/(94) 2914
E-mail: [email protected]
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Chapter 2
South Asia
Abhijit Lahiri
Ministry of Science and
Technology, India
S
outh Asia demonstrates variety in geomorphology and in political and socio-economic
status. The region includes both mainland and
island states, and for the purposes of this chapter
comprises the following countries: Afghanistan,
Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia,
India, Indonesia, the Lao People’s Democratic
Republic, Malaysia, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal,
Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka,
Thailand and Viet Nam.
It has some of the most populous states in the
world, with India topping the list at 884 million in
1992, followed by Indonesia (189 million), Pakistan
(129 million) and Bangladesh (113 million), as well as
sparsely populated island systems like Maldives
(230,000) and Brunei Darussalam (270,000). Excepting Singapore, the bulk of the population lives in
rural areas, for example Bhutan (94%), Nepal (88%),
Bangladesh (83%), Afghanistan, Thailand and
Cambodia (81%), the Lao People’s Democratic
Republic and Viet Nam (80%). These rural areas are
much poorer than urban areas in terms of physical
infrastructure.
The literacy rate, which does not necessarily
signify full reading and writing capabilities, varies
widely. While literacy in the Maldives, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Viet Nam
is above 90%, it is only between 30% and 40% in
Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan. India
has one of the world’s largest populations of qualified
scientific and technical personnel, yet about half its
people cannot even sign their names. This widespread illiteracy, while dampening demand for printed materials, calls for extensive information transfer
through audio, video and multimedia products.
Most of the countries have introduced vernacular languages in official work and higher education,
and others are making efforts to do so. However, a
knowledge of English is fairly widespread, except in
countries like Viet Nam and Indonesia, where the
early colonial rulers were French and Dutch respec-
33
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tively; these countries also have introduced English
as the second language in their education systems.
Such foreign-language proficiency has prompted
several transnational information companies to set up
a base in the region for their international operations.
Politically, the region has experienced turbulence from the time the countries were freed from
the shackles of colonial rule soon after the Second
World War. While Viet Nam, the Lao People’s
Democratic Republic and Cambodia are still striving
hard to recover from the damage inflicted on their
socio-economies by prolonged war and civil
conflicts, a civil war still rages in Afghanistan. The
other countries currently have more or less stable
political systems, except for sporadic militancy and
separatist movements.
The fast-growing economies of Indonesia
(6.7%), Malaysia (8.9%), Singapore (10.2%) and
Thailand (7.4%), popularly known as the Asian
Tigers and officially called the Newly Industrialized
Economies, are now the focus of world attention.
Side by side, there are countries which are far from
being well-off in terms of per capita Gross National
Product (1992), such as Bangladesh (US$220),
Bhutan (US$180), the Lao People’s Democratic
Republic (US$250) and Nepal (US$170), and
relatively affluent countries such as Singapore
(US$15,750), Malaysia (US$2,790) and Thailand
(US$1,840). In spite of its Gross Domestic Product
(GDP) being the highest in the region, India figures
near the bottom in terms of per capita income
(US$310). In all these countries, wealth is not evenly
distributed across the population. The position of a
large proportion of the population is much worse
than these per capita GDP figures would suggest. In
these circumstances, the role of information in mitigating the day-to-day problems of mere subsistence
is open to debate. For sure, the conventional and
modern information products and services (élitist!)
discussed in the following sections do not have any
place in the lives of many citizens.
Table 1. Sectoral contribution to GDP
Country
Bangladesh
GDP
(US$ billions)
Agriculture
sector (%)
Industry
sector (%)
Services
sector (%)
23.8
34
17
49
0.2
42
27
31
India
214.6
32
27
40
Indonesia
126.4
19
40
40
Bhutan
Lao People’s
Democratic
Republic
1.2
–1
–
–
Malaysia
57.6
–
–
–
Myanmar
37.7
59
10
31
2.8
52
18
30
Pakistan
41.9
27
27
46
Philippines
52.5
22
33
45
Singapore
46
0
38
62
Sri Lanka
8.8
26
25
49
Thailand
110.3
12
39
49
Nepal
1. Figures not available.
Source: UNDP, Human Development Report 1995.
The sectoral contribution to GDP also varies
(see Table 1). Some of the countries, like Bhutan
(42%), are heavily dependent upon the agricultural
sector, whereas Singapore draws 62% from the service sector, followed by Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and
Thailand (49%), Pakistan (46%) and the Philippines
(50%). Since the propensity to use information in
agriculture is lower than in manufacturing and services, the higher sectoral contribution to agriculture
would signify a low demand for information.
One could infer from the above that the
demand for information, especially library-based
information, may not be high. This apart, the low
investment capacity has been a constraint on growth
of information access and communication facilities.
Only three countries, namely Brunei Darussalam,
Malaysia and Singapore, are reasonably well-placed
in terms of radio, television receivers and telephones.
Even in these countries access to daily newspapers
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S o u t h A s35i a
•
Table 2. Access to information and communication
facilities, 1992 (per 1,000 inhabitants)
Country
Volumes
in public
libraries
Copies of
newspapers
Radio
receivers
TV
Main
receivers telephone
lines
Afghanistan
–1
12 2
123
10
Bangladesh
5
6
46
5
2
Bhutan
–
–
16
–
2
Brunei
Darussalam
1
1 059
74
271
238
176
Cambodia
–
–
105
8
1
India
–
31
79
37
8
Indonesia
32
24
149
61
9
Lao People’s
Democratic
Republic
–
3
125
6
2
433
117
430
150
112
Maldives
–
13
117
24
37
Myanmar
–
7
82
2
3
Nepal
–
7
34
2
3
Pakistan
12
6
87
18
10
Malaysia
Philippines
97
50
142
46
10
Singapore
–
336
648
380
415
Sri Lanka
28
27
199
49
8
Thailand
342
85
189
112
31
Viet Nam
–
8
103
42
2
1. Figures not available.
2. 1980 figures.
Source: UNESCO, World Education Report 1995.
is fairly low. One out of three Singaporeans reads
a newspaper; in Malaysia and Brunei Darussalam
the figure is even lower: 12% and 7% respectively.
Technologically advanced countries like India,
Indonesia, Pakistan and the Philippines are also no
better off; they have 8 to 10 telephone lines per 1,000
population. Table 2 reveals the sad state of affairs in
this region with regard to information-access facilities.
To sum up:
•
The bulk of the population is not informationdependent in day-to-day work and living.
A large proportion of the population cannot
consume information, especially if it is delivered in written form.
•
The vast majority of the population does not
have the means to access information.
•
People in general are not accustomed to pay,
cannot pay or are unwilling to pay for information. In fact, information does not even figure
in their list of wants.
•
The existing pattern of economic activities does
not favour a growth in information consumption.
•
The countries do not have sufficient capacity to
invest in infrastructural development.
The resultant scenario of feeble demand and lack of
capacity to mitigate the hardship is unlikely to
change in the near future. The discussions that
follow should be viewed against this backdrop.
Information publishing
Book production (in annual number of titles) from
this region is fairly high (see Table 3): India (14,438
in 1991), Indonesia (6,303 in 1992) and Thailand
(7,626 in 1992); countries like Malaysia and Sri
Lanka with smaller populations of around 18 million
published about 4,000 titles. Although in some
countries nearly one-third (Indonesia) to two-thirds
(Thailand) of titles covered pure and applied sciences
and social science, the growing demand for quality
textbooks is none the less far from satisfied and
the student population largely needs to depend
upon foreign or locally reprinted foreign books.
According to available statistics, publication activity
has yet to gather momentum in countries like
Pakistan and the Lao People’s Democratic Republic.
Language proficiency, especially in English,
would definitely help the countries of South Asia
in their globalization process. Their foreignlanguage publications demonstrate the capabilities;
for example, in 1991, 1,015 Malaysian titles out of
3,748, and 632 Sri Lankan titles out of 2,535, were
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Table 3. Production of and international trade in books
Country
Afghanistan
Book production
International trade in books (US$ millions)
Reference year
Titles in science
and social science
Total titles
Reference year
Export
1990
1 850
2 795
–1
–
–
–
–
–
1985
0
1.2
Bangladesh
Import
Brunei Darussalam
1990
13
25
–
–
–
India
1991
7 465
14 438
1992
13.1
39.8
Indonesia
1992
2 166
6 303
1992
0.7
17.4
Lao People’s Democratic Republic
1990
22
109
–
–
–
Malaysia
1991
1 615
3 748
1985
4.1
30.4
Nepal
–
–
–
1985
0.1
1.8
Pakistan
1992
32
70
1992
1.5
9.5
Philippines
1991
421
825
–
–
–
Singapore
–
–
–
1992
231.5
104.4
Sri Lanka
1992
2 680
4 225
1992
0.2
5.7
Thailand
1992
5 167
7 626
1985
0.3
8.2
1. Figures not available.
Source: UNESCO, UNESCO Statistical Yearbook 1994.
in English. In spite of a strong local language base,
40% to 50% of Indian books are published in
English.
Statistics on periodical publications, especially
professional journals, are very sketchy. In this case,
however, it is the quality and timeliness rather than
the number that counts. For example, while about
2,000 science and technology journal titles are published in India, only 174 are listed by the British
Library Document Supply Centre, twelve are covered by the Science Citation Index, fifteen by
INSPEC and nineteen by MEDLARS. Authors
from developing countries usually send their good
papers for publication in foreign journals to gain
better visibility. The resulting low quality of papers,
lack of editing facilities, high cost of production and
low market potential dampen the spirits of local
publishers.
School libraries
The state of school libraries in the region is more or
less uniformly poor. When some of the schools do
not even have trained teachers, it is too much to
expect that they will have professional librarians. If
by chance they do have a ‘librarian’, it is one of the
teachers in the school who is given the additional
charge, with or without proper training, of managing
the library. When many schools cannot afford to
provide appropriate furniture for their students, setting up libraries is well beyond their dreams. With
the limited resources at their disposal, they can
acquire only a few textbooks and cheap story books.
Only a country like Brunei Darussalam can well
afford to create library facilities in all the newly built
schools. There are also other exceptions. For example, in Viet Nam the total of 16,500 schools can boast
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S o u t h A s37i a
13,000 libraries run by as many as 13,819 staff, of
whom nearly 4,000 are professional librarians.
Similarly, 8,435 government schools in Malaysia
(6,965 primary schools and 1,470 secondary schools)
have school resource centres, and personnel at various levels are trained on a regular basis.
In India the implementation of the National
Literacy Mission has brought out the need to provide reading materials at the school and village levels;
how this will be organized remains to be seen. The
National Library of Indonesia’s scheme of providing
short introductory training for teachers with the
possibility to accumulate credits, and the endeavour
of the Centre for Library Development to set up
model school libraries in twenty-six provinces, are
experiences to learn from.
Strengthening higher education libraries in
Indonesia started as late as 1988 with World Bank
support. Now all forty-five universities and institutions have well-developed libraries. Progress has
been equally marked in the nine university libraries
of Malaysia. The libraries in Thailand are well-developed in terms of services. A process of organization
is under way for the 105 university and college
libraries of Viet Nam. In Myanmar, lack of funds has
constrained library development in the three universities and specialized institutions.
However, irrespective of the attention that
library development received, the tale of woes, such
as lack of financial resources, dearth of space and
shortage of trained staff, remains more or less the
same across the countries of the region.
Academic libraries
National and public library systems
After gaining independence, the new governments
undertook the task of strengthening their academic
and research infrastructure.
In Bangladesh, the National Science and
Technology Policy announced in 1986 aimed at
attaining a strong S&T capability. It provided for a
three-tier national S&T information system, with
the Bangladesh National Scientific and Technical
Documentation Centre (BANSDOC) at its apex. In
India, since independence in 1947 there has been a
proliferation of universities and R&D organizations.
However, in terms of collections, very few universities are information-rich. The disparity is more pronounced when they are compared with professional
institutions like the five Indian Institutes of
Technology – each with annual acquisitions of over
US$500,000 – and the Indian Institute of Science
with US$1 million. Even in terms of services, the
academic libraries are way behind the community of
national laboratories – the forward-looking step of
the small Gulbarga University in subscribing to CDROMs in place of print products may be cited by
way of exception only.
Differing perceptions of the role that the national
library and the public library system should play in
intellectual, societal and literacy development, and
varying levels of investment and workforce inputs,
have given rise to widely dissimilar patterns of development. At one end is the Perpustakaan Negara
Malaysia (National Library of Malaysia) which
spearheads the library movement of the country, and
on the other the Nepal National Library that is
being revamped with UNESCO-DANIDA (Danish
International Development Agency) support. The
Perpustakaan Negara Malaysia has over 1 million
books, adequate space for 1,000 readers and the necessary facilities for the handicapped. Equipped with
a local area network (LAN), it prepares a wide range
of computerized products and assumes the co-ordination responsibilities for the national library networking project.
The high point in national and public library
movements is found in Singapore. The report of the
Library 2000 Review Committee in 1994, the IT
2000 plan, and an information technology usage survey in 1992 had set the pace for the development of
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w 38o r l d w i d e
the National Information Infrastructure. The Library
2000 plan will see the establishment of a constellation of libraries of all kinds. The Tampines Regional
Library offers a wide array of state-of-the-art information delivery systems: CD-ROMs, interactive
television, laser disk players, a public view data service, online public access catalogue, remote dial-up
access to the library catalogue, and so on.
In contrast, the National Library of India provides only traditional services. The Indian National
Bibliography of the Central Reference Library is
way behind its schedule. The national libraries in
specific subject areas – that is, science at the Indian
National Scientific Documentation Centre (INSDOC), medicine at the National Medical Library
and agriculture at the Indian Agriculture Research
Institute – are in a better state. INSDOC publishes
Indian Science Abstracts, which is now on schedule
and compiles the National Union Catalogue of
Scientific Serials in India, available online.
The National Library of Pakistan, on the other
hand, was inaugurated as recently as 1993. The
computerized preparation of the Pakistan National
Bibliography and special directories has been initiated.
Since 1992, in Viet Nam, all provincial public
libraries have been provided with PCs for the creation of local databases. After establishing linkages
with the National Library in 1994, the provincial public libraries derive assistance for database development from the National Library and in return contribute new records to the national union catalogue.
The existing Nepal National Library is being
reorganized to contribute to the improvement of literacy through pilot public and school library services, in close association with the Basic and Primary
Education Programme.
As in the case of India, the public library
service in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand
is thinly spread. The units are understaffed and
underfinanced. It is proposed to improve outreach to
rural areas, which is low, by using bookmobiles.
Specialized information services
Specialized services are offered by organizations of
diverse legal and economic status. The most prominent of these are the national information and
documentation centres such as BANSDOC in
Bangladesh, INSDOC and the Defence Scientific
Information and Documentation Centre in India,
the Centre for Scientific Documentation and
Information (PDII-LIPI) in Indonesia, the Pakistan
Scientific and Technological Information Centre
(PASTIC), and the National Centre for Science
and Technology Information and Documentation
(NACESTID) in Viet Nam. These national centres
are better endowed in terms of financial and human
resources, and better equipped. Their activities usually include partly or fully computerized library services, database development and database services,
document supply services, specialized training, compilation of the national union catalogues, and the
like.
Library and information units attached to
national laboratories, industries, government departments and executive agencies provide information
services in specific subjects; for example, the petroleum company and law library in Brunei Darussalam,
the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council, the
National Chemical Laboratory, Central Leather
Research Institute, Central Food Technological Research Institute, Central Manufacturing Technology
Institute and National Institute of Immunology in
India, the rubber and palm oil institutes in Malaysia,
the Royal Nepal Academy of Science and Technology and the Agricultural Projects Services Centre
in Nepal, the Pakistan Forest Institute, the Natural
Resources Energy and Science Authority of Sri
Lanka (NARESA), and the National Research
Council of Thailand. These organizations generally
have enough resources to invest in information
materials, equipment, space and human resources.
In the larger national interest, the resources of
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such closed groups should be made accessible to a
wider user base. A forward-looking step in this
direction has been taken by the following
Government of India programmes: the National
Information System for Science and Technology
(NISSAT), the Bio-technology Information System
(BTIS) and the Environmental Information System
(ENVIS), which support specialized information
facilities around existing nuclei and enable their services to extend to the national community of users.
The Philippines also has programmes of a similar nature. The Science and Technology Information
Network (SciNet-Phil) is a consortium of libraries
and information centres in twenty-one agencies
under the Department of Science and Technology. It
has been designed to promote and improve the flow
and use of scientific and technical information
through resource-sharing.
In Pakistan, development has followed two
paths: one for science and technology, covering
major sectors like agriculture, industry, energy,
medicine, water resources and general science and
technology; and the other including the National
Library, the National Documentation Centre and
the National Archive Centre.
International assistance has helped to develop
similar facilities in the Sri Lanka Scientific and
Technical Information Network (SLSTINET), Viet
Nam’s (NACESTIO) and Indonesia’s IPTKnet.
Information technology applications
Computer applications in the region were at a low
level until the advent of micro CDS/ISIS, software
developed by UNESCO. Because it is distributed
free of charge, its use has grown at an exponential
rate in the region.
In India, the CDS/ISIS installation base has
grown to about 1,300, with about 3,000 application
specialists trained through about 200 low-cost workshops. The software is used for database development, maintenance of personnel records, patient
records in hospitals, and so on. A comprehensive
library automation package called SANJAY, based
on CDS/ISIS, has been developed for small and
medium-size libraries. Interfaces for local language
handling have been developed in India, Thailand and
Viet Nam.
MINISIS, a package developed by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in
Canada, is also popular in the region, but the growth
in its applications base is constrained owing to the
relatively uncommon hardware platform (Hewlett
Packard 3000 series) that it requires.
Some more affluent institutions use software
like VTLS, ATLAS, URICA, TINLIB and TECHLIB in minicomputer, mainframe computer, network
and client-server environments (Malaysia, Pakistan
and Sri Lanka).
Few countries in the region have made efforts
to develop library software indigenously.
Development of library networks
Growing awareness of the need for resource-sharing,
the all-round resource shortage, an increase in computer installations or access facilities in libraries, an
enhanced skill base, and improved telecommunication facilities within and across geographical regions
have been responsible for the recent spurt in library
networking activities.
In Bangladesh a comprehensive project on automation and networking of science and technology
libraries is currently under implementation. In contrast, India has adopted a three-pronged approach:
metropolitan library networks in major cities; countrywide networks of academic and research institutions, such as INFLIBNET; and sectoral networks
on bio-informatics and the environment.
The Jaringan Ilmu project in Malaysia is planning to establish a countrywide library network
which will include academic institutions, fourteen
state public libraries and thirty selected government
libraries. Additionally, a government information
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system called Civil Service Link was launched in
1994 to facilitate access to government information.
The PHnet, managed by the Philippine Network Foundation Inc., connects leading academic
and research institutions.
In Thailand, the Provincial University Library
Network (PULINET) for provincial universities,
and THAILINET (Metropolitan) for twelve universities in Bangkok, piggy-back on the computer network of the National Electronics and Computer
Technology Centre. The population network –
THAIPOPIN – links eighteen institutes. The Asian
Institute of Technology has created the Thailand
Inter-University Network (ATUNET).
The VESTENET (Viet Nam EconomicsScience-Technology-Environment Network) being
developed by NACESTID links nearly 100 organizations in Viet Nam today.
Connectivity to the Internet has assumed the
utmost significance for the countries of the region.
While most of them have basic access only, a few
like India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore
and Thailand have full facilities. It is believed that
research and development workers, and the business
community – especially stock-market operators
and marketing people – are the most prolific users.
But the home pages on popular events like the
1996 World Cup Cricket Tournament played in
India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and the 1996 Indian
national parliamentary elections were big hits and
helped to bring the Internet revolution closer to the
people.
Computerization and database
development
Examples of the whole range of computerized information activities can be found in the region: management of routine housekeeping functions (Brunei
Darussalam), creation of catalogues for public access
(India, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand), shared
cataloguing (Singapore, Malaysia), facilitating the
book trade through networking (Singapore), and
preparation of a national union catalogue of serials
(Indonesia and India).
Databases covering periodical articles and/or
research reports or conference proceedings are
compiled in India, Bangladesh and Indonesia.
Preparation of national bibliographies apparently
gets lower priority these days.
Of late, there has been a spurt in the production of directories in various forms. Their coverage
of topics like information on local periodicals, scientific and technical institutions, libraries, research
projects and subject experts is common to almost all
countries. However, the depth and segmentation
may vary. It is worth while to recall the recent decision of the South Asian Association for Regional
Cooperation (SAARC) Chamber of Commerce and
Industry to set up an electronic database of business
information with the participation of seven member
countries, namely Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the
Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
Enthused with the success of their database
development efforts, some countries in the region
have taken up the task of creating subject-specific
databases of both national and international information. The most notable venture is the Asia Pacific
Information Network on Medicinal and Aromatic
Plants (APINMAP) in which a number of South
Asian countries actively participate. Starting on a
low key, the database development activities by the
IDRC-supported consortium have matured to such
a level that an internationally marketable CD-ROM
product, Asian Health, Environmental and Allied
Databases (AHEAD), could be generated, thereby
ensuring APINMAP’s self-sustainability.
The stimuli behind local database ventures
originate from the need for information in areas for
which the global databases do not give in-depth
treatment or where local information has greater
importance than international information. For
example, while several databases on textiles are avail-
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able, the Ahmedabad Textile Industry Research
Association, India, complies a separate database
incorporating information on natural fibres, handlooms, etc. Similarly, the Thai National Documentation Centre has prepared compilations on
village technologies, rubber products and Indexes
to the Royal Decree, Legislation, Declaration,
Ministerial Regulation and Industrial Standards
related to Science and Technology (1993). The Palm
Oil Research Institute of Malaysia maintains PALMSEARCH. The Ministry of Trade and Industry,
Singapore, generates the PATS database. It appears
that agriculture is one subject on which almost all
countries have databases in some form or another, as
well as the magnum AGRIASIA database produced
by the Agricultural Information Bank for Asia
(AIBA).
It is true that as yet no database from the region
has been a blockbuster in the international market.
Nevertheless, a potential does exist. The countries in
the region have been successful partners in international database efforts like AGRIS, INIS and
INFOTERRA. It is also understood that some wellknown Western database producers get part of their
work done on contract from various public and private enterprises in the region. Proficiency in English,
a capability in computer applications, subject knowledge, a vast number of educated but unemployed or
underemployed people, and by and large cheaper
labour could help the countries in the region to
strike it big in the global information market.
CD-ROM and online applications
Since the beginning of the 1990s, the use of CDROM databases has grown at a rapid pace. This was
catalysed by UNESCO, which provided workstations complete with CD-ROM drive and selected
CD-ROM databases to a few expert institutions in
the region; these small facilities had a great demonstration value. Now, of course, utilization of CDROM products such as MEDLINE, AGRICOLA,
AGRIS and CABI is relatively common in almost all
countries. Perhaps MEDLINE has the largest installation base, owing to the generous support provided
by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Conversion of databases to CD-ROM has yet
to take off, as large databases that can reasonably
occupy an entire CD-ROM are few, unless collaborative inputting arrangements like those of AHEAD
are arranged.
Accessing database hosts in Europe, North
America and Japan may not be a technical problem
for the South Asian countries, but payment for
searches could be. As yet no large commercial host
has appeared in the region.
Information market development
Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka and
Viet Nam have taken measures to develop the
national information market. The most notable
endeavour is the Industrial Technological and
Market Information (ITMIN) network of Sri Lanka.
This network of databases is a public limited-liability company whose shareholders are a mix of public
and private agencies. The company, also assisted
by the United Nations Development Programme
(UNDP), the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the Government
of Sri Lanka in the initial stages, is mandated to set
up the backbone for a national information infrastructure, to strengthen and upgrade industrial, technological and commercial information activities in
the country, to enhance professional capabilities in
related spheres, to facilitate the sharing of knowledge
and skills among information technology professionals and end-users, and to provide information
services to foreign investors. The experiment will
help to establish the viability of the market-oriented
approach to information management at the national
level.
In India commercialization is being independently pursued by almost all programmes, including
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the National Information System for Science and
Technology (NISSAT) and the National Informatics
Centre (NIC), and some of the larger libraries
have opened their facilities to outside clientele on a
daily/monthly/annual fee basis or on a block-grant
basis.
The concept of marketing is widely discussed
in various forums. This is just the beginning. The allround budget crunch and consequent need to supplement resources through revenue generated by
selling information products and services, the general demand to improve access to information for a
wider user base, and increased appreciation of the
fruitful role that information could play in decisionmaking systems will invariably force greater use of
marketing concepts in the future.
Education and training
The region also displays a wide diversity in education and training (see Table 4). In the Philippines formal library education started as early as 1914 at the
University of the Philippines, and in India in 1937 at
the University of Madras (non-formal training was
Table 4. Formal library and information education
facilities in South Asia, 1995
Country
Bangladesh
Postgraduate
Master’s Bachelor’s
level
level
Diploma Certificate
1
1
0
3
1
30
32
78
0
0
Indonesia
0
1
3
8
0
Malaysia
0
3
1
0
1
Nepal
0
0
1
0
0
Singapore
1
1
0
0
1
Sri Lanka
1
0
1
1
1
Thailand
1
6
8
0
0
Viet Nam
0
1
3
0
1
India
Source: Papers presented at the Regional Seminar on Information
Education Strategies for the 21st Century, Beijing, September 1995.
initiated in 1901 at the National Library, Calcutta).
In contrast, a Bachelor’s level course was introduced
in Nepal only in 1995/96 at Tribhuvan University.
The numbers of library schools are also impressive:
for example, India has seventy-eight and the Philippines fifty. The professional associations in this
region, like those elsewhere in the world, also play
an important role in library education by organizing
short courses, seminars, etc. The Sri Lanka Library
Association (SLLA) and the Library Association of
Bangladesh (LAB) shoulder an additional responsibility by participating in the conduct of formal
courses as well.
In Sri Lanka, in addition to the degree and
postgraduate diploma courses, the University of
Colombo also offers a three-part certificate course
for working librarians. Interestingly, the Computer
and Information Technology Council of Sri Lanka
(CINTEC) uses a bus equipped with computer network facilities that goes from place to place conducting training courses.
The Library Association of Bangladesh (LAB)
plays an important role in library education by running a one-year postgraduate diploma course (since
1989) and conducting a six-month certificate course
twice a year in four different cities. The National
Administration of Educational Management has
an elaborate programme for school librarians.
Library Science is also a part of Bachelor of Education
courses.
In India, an entire range of facilities for formal
education is available today, but only those offered
by INSDOC and the Indian Statistical Institute’s
Documentation Research and Training Centre keep
in step with technological developments. Efforts
made by regular university departments to modernize are handicapped by poor budgetary support.
Among several distance educational facilities, the
one run by the Indira Gandhi National Open
University (IGNOU) is worth mentioning for its
excellent course materials which include television
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broadcasts, video clips and contact programmes run
by its regional centres.
The Philippines also has a wide variety of educational facilities. Apart from the regular university
programmes, the Institute of Library Science offers
sectoral specializations in law and health sciences
librarianship. In six years about 150 information specialists from fourteen countries were trained in the
UNDP-UNESCO nine-month, non-degree, postgraduate training course for science information specialists. The Department of Science and TechnologyScience and Technology Information Institute
(DOST-STII) conducts training courses and seminars of one to two weeks’ duration on data communication, database management, local area networks
and the Internet. The Philippine Professional
Regulation Commission has issued guidelines which
encourage continuing professional education for
registered librarians.
In Malaysia, the Perpustakaan Negara Malaysia
provides in-service training, professional development of library staff and induction training for new
recruits of all ministry and federal department
libraries.
A comprehensive assessment of information
education facilities in Asia and the Pacific was made
at the Regional Network for the Exchange of
Information and Experiences in Asia and the Pacific
(ASTINFO) Regional Seminar on Information
Education Strategies for the 21st Century, held in
Beijing in September 1995. The following problems
were identified by various countries:
•
Shortage of information professionals skilled in
using information technology.
•
Lack of in-service training facilities for librarians in computing and telecommunications.
•
Insufficient attention to the needs of the various sectors of the economy, especially those of
industry.
•
Lack of attractiveness of the information science programme for the best students.
•
•
•
Infrequent revision of existing curricula.
Shortage of qualified teachers.
Paucity of financial resources for both teaching
institutions and students.
The countries agreed on a regional project to prepare information professionals for the twenty-first
century.
International support
Mention of the kind of expert guidance and financial
and infrastructural support received by the countries
in the region from external sources for the development of their information systems, centres and services has already been made above in the relevant
sections. However, the picture is not complete
without particular mention of the services rendered by UNESCO and its regional programme,
ASTINFO.
Apart from germinating and nurturing the
National Information System (NATIS), UNESCO
has also been providing the building blocks, such
as the CDS/ISIS software for information storage,
processing and retrieval, and the Common Communication Format (CCF) for the exchange of data
(now de facto standards in South Asian countries).
The UNESCO programme also helped in popularizing CD-ROM and online technologies, and in the
development of skilled information professionals.
The study on the Information Infrastructures for
Planning Science Information Systems and Networks in Asia and the Pacific (SISNAP) was jointly
formulated by the University of Library and Information Science, Tsukuba, Japan, and UNESCO
PGI/Bangkok within the framework of ASTINFO,
and is funded by the Government of Japan. It will
result in the development of methodologies supported by case-studies and background reports that can
be used for planning and resource mobilization
efforts in the countries of the region (to start with,
Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and
Viet Nam, as well as New Zealand and Fiji). Trans-
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Community Learning and Resource
Centres (CLARC)
country programmes like APINMAP helped in
identifying common problem areas and in exploring
solutions on a co-operative basis, thereby providing
an ideal ground for testing the concept of Technical Co-operation among Developing Countries
(TCDC). Further details can be found in Table 5.
CLARC, an initiative taken by the General
Information Programme of UNESCO, aims at
improving the downstream information services, in
INIS
HELLIS
RINSCA
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
Afghanistan
Bangladesh
Bhutan
3
3
3
3
Brunei Darussalam
3
Cambodia
3
3
India
3
3
3
3
Indonesia
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
Lao People’s Democratic Republic
Malaysia
APCTT
TIPS
3
APINESS
AGRIS
3
ENSICNET
INFOTERRA
3
SAARC/DS
ASTINFO
Country
APINMAP
Table 5. Participation in international information ventures
3
Maldives
Myanmar
Nepal
3
3
3
Pakistan
3
3
3
3
3
Philippines
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
Singapore
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
Sri Lanka
3
3
3
3
3
Thailand
3
3
3
3
3
Viet Nam
3
3
3
3
3 = Participating countries.
ASTINFO: Regional Network for the Exchange of Information and Experiences in Asia and the Pacific
INFOTERRA: Information Referral System for the Sources of Information on Environment
AGRIS: Agriculture Information System
TIPS: Technology Information Promotion System
INIS: International Nuclear Information System
HELLIS: Health Information System
RINSCA: Regional Informatics Network for South and Central Asia
SAARC/DS: South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation/Documentation System
ENSICNET: Environmental Sanitation Information Centre Network
APINESS: Asia Pacific Information Network in Social Sciences
APINMAP: Asia Pacific Information Network for Medicinal and Aromatic Plants
APCTT: Asia Pacific Centre for Transfer of Technology
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
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parallel with the development of library and information institutions at the national level. The pilot
projects of CLARC were conceptualized to develop
an approach that would make literacy classes better
understood and appreciated by the target group –
that is, people in rural, isolated and depressed areas
of developing countries. The objective was also to
strengthen institutional linkages between the target
community and existing resources and facilities at
the national and local levels. After case-studies in
Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand,
the concept was implemented in the Lao People’s
Democratic Republic, the Philippines and Viet Nam.
CLARC has been used most notably to develop a
project for nineteen depressed provinces of the
Philippines under the Social Reform Agenda of the
President.
Conclusions
This discussion presents a picture of abundance and
deficiencies in information resource development
and utilization in the region. While some countries
are surging ahead in information development in
tandem with their rapidly growing economies,
others are still bogged down with subsistence problems. Irrespective of the state of socio-economic
development in these countries, a vast section of the
population as yet is untouched by the informationtechnology revolution. It will require a lot of ingenuity on the part of information scientists and technology developers to find ways and means to reach
the entire population so that they also taste the fruits
of modern developments.
A broad knowledge base of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, economics, political
science, arts, architecture and humanities has
accumulated through the thousands of years of
civilization of which the region can justifiably boast.
This knowledge base, if systematically collected
and organized, would complement modern knowledge development. But this would call for the
development of new information models, tools and
techniques. ■■
Further reading
ASTINFO. 1995. Information Education Strategies for the
21st Century. Report on the 10th ASTINFO Consultative Meeting and Regional Seminar, Beijing,
China, 18–24 September 1995. Bangkok, UNESCO/
PGI. 139 pp.
HEPWORTH, M.; CHENG, M. 1995. Librarianship and
Information Work in Southeast Asia. In: Maurice B.
Line (ed.), Librarianship and Information Work
Worldwide, pp. 233–57. London, Bowker-Saur.
LAHIRI, A.; SUNDER SINGH, B. G. 1990. Bibliographic
Databases and Networks: Indian Scenario. In: S. S.
Murthy et al. (eds.), Bibliographic Databases and
Networks. Proceedings of the International Conference, New Delhi, India, 22–25 February 1989.
Part 1, pp. 41–65. New Delhi, Tata McGraw-Hill.
Study on the Information Infrastructures for Planning
Information Systems and Networks in Asia and the
Pacific Countries (SISNAP). Report of the 2nd
International Workshop. Tsukuba, 1995. 21 pp.
UNDP. 1995. Human Development Report 1995. New
Delhi, UNDP. 230 pp.
UNESCO. 1994. UNESCO Statistical Yearbook 1994.
Paris, UNESCO. 964 pp.
——. 1995. World Education Report 1995. Paris,
UNESCO. 144 pp.
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Abhijit Lahiri obtained his Ph.D. on
Computer Applications from the Indian
Institute of Technology, Kharagpur in
1972, and then joined the Operations
Research Group (ORG), Baroda. In
ORG, he was primarily involved in studies on systems
analysis and long-range forecasting. His present
assignment with the Indian Ministry of Science and
Technology includes design and development of
information and data systems of various kinds. He also
heads the National Information System for Science and
Technology (NISSAT). He has been a consultant for
UNEP and UNESCO on information systems in
developing countries. In 1990–91 he was awarded the
Senior Scientist Bursary by the Commission of the
European Communities, and during this period he
worked with INFOTAP S.A., Luxembourg. His special
interests include information marketing and information
systems in science and technology.
Abhijit Lahiri
Adviser
Department of Scientific and Industrial Research
Ministry of Science and Technology
Technology Bhavan, New Mehrauli Road
New Delhi 110016, India
Tel: 662626 (PABX)/667373 (EPABX)
Fax: (11) 6960629/6514567/6511682
E-mail: [email protected]
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Chapter 3
The Arab States
Mahmoud A. Itayem
Expert and consultant, Jordan
H
istory and archaeology testify to the fact that
most Arab countries are located on the sites
of various ancient civilizations containing
seats of learning with libraries that have contributed
to the development of world civilization. In the
Middle Ages book production flourished to the
extent that in Andalusia (in present-day Spain) there
was a catalogue comprising more than 56 volumes,
each containing 400 pages on each of which were
listed 20 entries (Al-Ishsh, 1991). Mosques also
served as repositories of human knowledge and
played important cultural and educational roles similar to those of present-day schools and public
libraries. Two current Arab universities – Zeituna in
Tunisia and Al-Azhar in Egypt – date back to that
era. Many Arab libraries, particularly national and
academic libraries, are attempting to reassemble their
former manuscript collections that are now scattered
all over the world. The Arab League Educational,
Cultural and Scientific Organization (ALECSO)
established the Arab Manuscript Institute for this
purpose. The Al-Albait Foundation in Amman,
Jordan, has collected 1,600 catalogues of Arabic
manuscripts.
Arabic books were first printed in Europe in
1514 (Rome) and 1620 (Paris). Printing was first
introduced to the region itself in Syria in 1706, followed by Egypt in the late eighteenth century, Iraq
in 1830, Palestine in 1847, Algeria and Oman in the
mid-nineteenth century, Tunisia in 1861, Saudi
Arabia in 1882, Jordan in 1992 and Kuwait in 1947
(Ali, 1992).
This study does not concern itself with history,
however; those interested in this topic can find
numerous sources, including those published in the
Encyclopedia of Islam.
Arab libraries and information centres in their
present sense date back to the nineteenth century, or
even more commonly to the present century.
Presently all types of libraries are represented in
most Arab states, with variations in levels of
47
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progress, as will be detailed below. It should be
noted, however, that no Arab state as yet has established any information policy or introduced overall
legislation for the various types of libraries.
National libraries
Overview
Five Arab states, namely, Djibouti, Kuwait, Oman,
the Sudan and Yemen, do not have a national library,
although Oman has the nucleus for one, and Kuwait,
the Sudan and Yemen have libraries or information
centres that perform part of a national library’s
functions. Moreover, the national libraries in Lebanon
and Somalia have suffered great damage from civil
war.
The first national library in the region was that
of Algeria, established in 1835, while the most recent
is the Jordanian National Library, established in
1990. Some are also national archives as in Egypt,
Iraq, Jordan and Morocco. Most national libraries
are responsible to the Ministry of Culture (Algeria
(1835), Egypt (1875), Jordan (1990), Lebanon and
Mauritania (1965), Morocco (1962), Somalia (1986),
the Syrian Arab Republic (1984) and Tunisia (1910)),
two to the Ministry of Culture and Information
(Iraq (1920), Qatar (1962)), and one to the Ministry
of Education (Bahrain (1990)). In the Libyan Arab
Jamahiriya the National Library (1950) is responsible to the Centre of Green Book Studies, in Saudi
Arabia (1990) to the Presidency of the Council of
Ministers and in the United Arab Emirates (UAE)
(1981) to the Cultural Foundation. Every library has
legislation (law or regulations) defining its objectives, functions and organizational structure.
Functions
Preservation of national heritage
With the exception of the UAE, all Arab states with
or without national libraries have legal deposit laws
or regulations. Jordan’s law is the only legislation
that covers computer software. In the Sudan, with
no national library, legal deposit is entrusted to the
National Archives. But enforcement of legal deposit
legislation is far from satisfactory in the region as a
whole, particularly concerning official publications,
and comprehensive coverage of all types of materials
produced in the country has not yet been achieved.
Dissertations, for instance are entrusted to the EinShams University Library in Egypt, and printed
music to the National Music Conservatoire in
Tunisia. Moreover, all national libraries, except in
Morocco, claim that they collect materials relating to
their respective countries or written by their citizens
and published elsewhere, but it is evident that they
all lack the mechanisms for doing so.
Few Arab countries have copyright laws. An
Arab copyright agreement, however, was signed in
1981 by fourteen states.
Bibliographic activities based on national products
All national libraries except in Lebanon, Mauritania
and Somalia publish national bibliographies. They
differ in frequency; all are annual except Algeria
(semi-annual), Egypt (quarterly) and Tunisia (three
times per year). The contents also vary as most cover
commercially published materials while some cover
government publications, school textbooks, periodicals and dissertations. The size of the publishing
industry, however, is very small, as indicated in the
following figures (annual number of titles): Algeria
506 (1992), Egypt 2,599 (1991), Iraq 540 (1992),
Jordan 500 (1993), Kuwait 196 (1992), Oman 24
(1992), Qatar 368 (1993), the Syrian Arab Republic
598 (1992), Tunisia 539 (1993) and the UAE 293
(1993); the total production of the Arab states ranges
between 6,500 and 8,000 titles, less than 1% of world
production. International Standard Book Numbers
(ISBNs) have been applied in Egypt, Morocco
and Saudi Arabia, while Jordan and Tunisia are
in the process of introducing them. An Arab standard (ASMO 521) is available for ISBN, but
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few Arab states have introduced it as a national
standard.
Lists of periodicals are separate from the
national bibliographies and tend to be published at
irregular intervals. No such lists have been published
in Bahrain, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya or
Mauritania. Algeria and Morocco have ISSN databases. The estimated number of periodicals published in the region is 2,600 titles, according to current Arab newspapers and journals at ALECSO.
International Standard Serial Numbers (ISSNs) are
comprehensively applied only in Morocco and Saudi
Arabia. Some journals have been assigned ISSNs
directly from the International Serial Data System in
Paris. An Arab standard (ASMO 581) is available for
ISSN, but again few Arab states have introduced it as
a national standard.
Although some states have made attempts to
publish indexes of periodical articles, mostly through
centres other than national libraries, the national
libraries in Saudi Arabia and the Syrian Arab Republic
are the only ones doing this on a regular basis. The
former comprehensively covers Saudi Arabian serials
(202 titles), while the latter covers eighteen newspapers and fifty-two journals and is published
quarterly. Partial indexes are published, mostly
commercially, but some have failed to continue.
Bibliographic activities based on
holdings
Only the Saudi Arabian and the UAE national
libraries compile union lists of periodicals, and this
illustrates the secondary role played by Arab national libraries on the national scene. Elsewhere, data are
collected by other centres such as: the Abdul
Hameed Shoman Library in Jordan, the Egyptian
National Scientific and Technical Information
Network (ENSTINET), the Centre National de
Documentation (CND) in Morocco and the Kuwait
Institute of Scientific Research (KISR). The latter
used to issue a Gulf list as well. The Saudi Arabian
King Fahed National Library is now in the process
of achieving this and it has been under consideration
in Jordan since 1972.
Specialized bibliographies and/or indexes are
published irregularly by the national libraries of
Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, the
Syrian Arab Republic and the UAE. Other publications such as research reports, annual reports, directories, library literature and publicity materials may
be found in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Syrian Arab
Republic and the UAE.
Services
The national libraries of Bahrain, Egypt, Mauritania,
Morocco, Qatar, the Syrian Arab Republic and the
UAE also act as public libraries. Three of them
extend to branch library service: Bahrain (ten
branches plus a mobile library), Egypt (twenty-six
branches in Cairo) and Qatar (six branches). Others
do not allow external circulation.
Moreover, all national libraries offer a reference
service, although quantitative statistical data are not
available.
The national libraries of Algeria, Bahrain,
Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, the Syrian Arab Republic,
Tunisia and the UAE are willing to receive staff from
other libraries for training (but other institutions are
competing actively with them in this field).
The national libraries of Qatar, Saudi Arabia
and the Syrian Arab Republic play an active role in
organizing local, regional and international book
exhibitions.
Resources
Table 1 lists the human resources, collections and
physical facilities of the various Arab national
libraries.
In addition to the various national developments, ALECSO decided in 1991 to establish an
Arab regional library in Tripoli. The Government
of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya has provided the
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Kuwait - Staff: 50 ; Books: 187,000 ; Periodicals: 446 ; Audio-visual: 5,000;
Manuscripts: 59; Area (m²): 9,000; Seats: 80
Table 1. Resources of Arab national libraries
State
Staff
Collections
Books
Algeria
–1
Periodicals
950 000
–
63
218 000
625
1 090
697 795
7 750
Iraq
95
575 744
Jordan
70
50 000
Bahrain
Egypt
Theses
Audiovisual
–
Premises
Manuscripts
Maps
Others
Area (m2)
Membership
Seats
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
...
...
...
...
–
–
–
–
30 309
57 000
–
–
–
5 000
–
120
15 280
5 298
–
41 400
–
111
600
–
377
10
–
50
...2
4 205 8 060 615 3
30
3 000 4
2 000 5
Libyan Arab
Jamahiriya
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Mauritania
8
10 000
–
–
–
4 000
–
–
–
–
–
83
500 000
600
7 185
400
10 994
600
Qatar
137
354 327
–
306
4 125
1 821
–
Saudi Arabia
204
232 417
789
11 817
22 805
850
6 070
Morocco
2 000 6
–
51 306 7
–
1 672
–
–
10 875
–
28 000
200
–
Syrian Arab
Republic
302
170 374
2 476
3 103
8 755
19 114
114
–
22 000
42 373
650
Tunisia
148
1 500 000
13 000
15 000
–
40 000
5 000
–
6 000
7 500
250
54
310 000
2 000
–
13 500
9 000
–
–
5 000
1 000
360
UAE
1. Figures not available.
2. Not applicable.
3. Original documents administered as archives. This is in addition to 4 million pages on 2,000 reels of microfilm and 68,652 microfiches.
4. Reports.
5. A new building of 16,000 m2 is being planned.
6. Linear metres of archive shelving.
7. Government and private documents. The library also has a collection of 19,000 coins and 1,000 CD-ROMs.
Source: Wise and Olden (1994), partly updated.
premises, but implementation of this project appears
to be slow.
National scientific and technical
information centres
It is difficult to define accurately what is meant by
‘national scientific and technical information centres’,
as these vary in their designation, objectives, status,
types of collections and services. Some have the term
‘national’ distinctly in their names, sometimes to signify national subject coverage, national services, or
both. Some have libraries as physical stores of materials, but some do not or are restricted to certain
forms such as microfiche. The rest are just special
libraries but providing national services. In terms of
affiliation, they can belong to a ministry, public institution or a university, or be autonomous. They also
differ in the level of sophistication of their automation. Few centres are also responsible for national or
sectorial networking. Table 2 shows available information on such centres in those states that have
them. Three national scientific and technical information centres are doing relatively better than the
others and are directly involved in information networking, both internally and externally. The
Moroccan National Documentation Centre has
seven regional nodes in the country, and links with
international information systems such as the
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Table 2. Arab national scientific and technical information centres
States
Specialization and number
Science
and
technology
Agriculture
Economics
Humanities
Collections
Law
–1
Medi- Sciences
cine
Databases
Books
Periodicals
Others
Bibliographic
Factual
2
Algeria
1
1
1
1
–
–
–
–
–
10
Bahrain
1
. . .2
...
...
...
...
...
–
–
–
–
–
Egypt3
54
1
...
...
...
1
2
–
–
–
11
6
Jordan5
1
1
1
...
...
...
...
72 300
1 988
500
3
...
Kuwait
1
...
...
...
...
...
...
–
–
–
–
–
...
...
...
...
2
...
...
–
–
–
2
2
Libyan
Arab Jamahiriya
26
...
...
...
...
...
...
–
–
–
2
...
Morocco
1
1
...
...
...
...
1
–
–
–
–
–
Saudi Arabia
17
...
1
1
...
...
...
–
–
–
–
–
Sudan
1
...
...
...
...
...
...
–
–
–
–
–
Syrian Arab
Republic
1
1
...
...
...
...
...
–
–
–
–
–
Tunisia
1
1
...
...
...
...
1
–
–
–
–
–
...
...
...
...
...
...
8 121
750
250
–
–
Lebanon
UAE
18
1. Figures not available.
2. Not applicable.
3. Egypt has two networks: ENSTINET and the Cabinet Information and Decision Support Centre (IDSC).
4. Includes one on industry and another on energy.
5. Jordan has now a National Information Centre as co-ordinator only.
6. One as a national information centre and the other for industry.
7. King Abdul Aziz City of Science and Technology.
8. National Medical Library of the United Arab Emirates University.
International Information System for Agricultural
Sciences and Technology (AGRIS). The ENSTINET
network in Egypt has a focal point for seven sectorial nodes – science and technology, agriculture, energy, industry, social and criminological research, medicine and reconstruction – and now publishes the
Arab scientific abstracts. But the most advanced of
them all is the King Abdul Aziz City for Science and
Technology (KACST). This City is linked internally
to all university libraries and many ministry
libraries, is the focal point for GulfNet, and has
access to many online services throughout the world.
The centres in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, in con-
trast to other states, are effective in documenting
grey literature, particularly in agriculture, and publicity publications in their respective countries (Wise
and Olden, 1994).
School libraries
Education has progressed relatively fast during the
second half of this century. Table 3 summarizes the
size of school populations in the Arab region as stated in the UNESCO Statistical Yearbook 1995.
Nevertheless, illiteracy is still high at more than 43%
of the population at the age of 15 years and over.
This rate varies a lot among individual states, as it is
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Education is developing quantitatively rather
than qualitatively. Schools ignore, for instance, individual learning and a shift from a teacher-oriented to
a student-oriented educational system. School
libraries are not contributing to the educational
process in its modern sense. Most existing libraries in
the preschool and first levels are no more than a cupboard in an inaccessible office of the school.
The other weak point is the staffing, sometimes
non-existent, but mostly only part-time or insuffi-
Table 3. Enrolment and teachers in first and second levels
of education
Level
Enrolment
Teaching staff
1st
32 834 000
1 401 000
2nd
16 642 000
981 000
49 476 000
2 382 000
Total
Source: UNESCO, UNESCO Statistical Yearbook 1995.
more than 60% in Mauritania and Somalia, but only
7.8% and 13.4% in Lebanon and Jordan respectively.
Table 4. School libraries in the Arab region
State
Schools
No.
Algeria
Bahrain
Djibouti
Kindergarten
1st level
2nd level
Staff
Libraries
No.
Libraries
No.
Libraries
No.
Libraries
Full-time
Part-time
2 355
–
–
13 970
–
–
–
–
–
254
–
64
–
167
162
23
23
139
–1
. . .2
Qualified
–
...
–
–
–
–
56
–
–
–
–
–
Egypt
22 940
–
1 569
–
15 861
–
5 510
–
–
–
–
–
Iraq
10 879
–
554
–
7 611
–
2 694
1 925
–
–
131
341
Jordan
3 943
–
634
–
2 514
1 577
795
611
880
1 345
Kuwait
465
465
120
120
258
258
87
87
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
2 100
–
–
–
–
–
–
Lebanon
Libyan Arab
Jamahiriya
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Mauritania
–
–
–
–
1 635
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Morocco
Oman
Palestine
Qatar
–
–
–
–
4 420
–
–
–
–
–
618
–
10
–
494
–
110
–
339
–
–
1 910
–
436
–
1 141
796
333
278
–
–
–
380
–
57
–
256
–
67
–
131
–
–
Saudi Arabia
–
–
–
–
10 228
–
–
–
–
–
–
Somalia
–
–
–
–
1 224
–
–
–
–
–
–
Sudan
–
–
–
–
8 016
–
–
–
–
–
–
14 653
1 129
982
–
12 152
–
1 519
199
1 618
–
–
–
–
–
–
4 201
–
–
–
–
–
–
Syrian Arab
Republic
Tunisia
UAE
Yemen
801
–
–
–
401
–
400
357
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
1. Figures not available.
2. Not applicable.
Source: UNESCO, UNESCO Statistical Yearbook 1995, and annual statistical reports from some countries.
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ciently qualified. Moreover, concern about school
libraries only starts at the second level, when it is too
late for the student. The shift from a traditional school
library to a resource centre is very rare; instead, some
resource centres are established outside the school
environment, presumably to serve a number of
schools (Jordan has established three such centres).
Added to this, students are not given enough time to
use their libraries. As a consequence, in all Arab
states that allow private schools, their libraries are
doing much better than those in the public schools.
Table 4 summarizes the quantitative situation.
The size of school library collections is not
available, but the following figures may serve as indicators: Iraq 1,500,000 volumes at the second level;
Jordan 3,570,172 at the first and second levels;
Kuwait 1,550,272 at all levels; Oman 132,000 at the
first and second levels; Qatar 471,000 at the first and
second levels; Tunisia 1,036,000 at the second level;
and the UAE 667,000 at the second level. This means
that the highest rates of books per student, three
and five books in Jordan and Kuwait respectively,
are still too far from well-established international
standards.
Table 5. Universities and university libraries in the Arab region
State
Universities
Libraries
Students
Teaching
staff
Collections
Library staff
Books
Journals
Others
Algeria
6
–1
237 379
15 450
–
–
–
Bahrain
22
–
7 531
457
–
–
–
–
14
226
687 200
38 828
2 655 000
11 930
30 000
–
Iraq
10
117
130 433
–
2 273 159
–
–
717
Jordan
18
–
60 664
2 832
1 258 847
9 439
–
400
Kuwait
1
–
20 026
970
700 000
–
–
–
Lebanon
4
74
85 490
5 400
1 100 000
–
–
–
Egypt
–
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya
5
–
72 899
–
–
–
–
–
Mauritania
1
–
6 747
248
–
–
–
–
Morocco
7
–
234 946
7 777
–
–
–
–
Oman
1
–
3 615
–
–
–
–
–
12
–
29 380
1 220
401 706
2 068
13 750
–
Qatar
1
–
7 351
637
–
–
–
–
Saudi Arabia
7
–
174 788
12 669
–
–
–
–
Somalia
1
–
15 672
817
–
–
–
–
Sudan
5
–
59 824
2 043
–
–
–
–
Syrian Arab Republic
5
–
178 516
5 997
–
–
–
–
Tunisia
6
42
63 000
4 000
–
–
–
–
UAE
1
–
8 000
750
300 000
2 000
–
–
Yemen
2
–
53 082
1 800
–
–
–
–
Palestine
Total
2 132 171
1. Figures not available.
2. One is a college.
Source: UNESCO, UNESCO Statistical Yearbook 1995; Wise and Olden (1994); and national statistics.
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One may reasonably assume that many problems encountered by libraries in general are linked to
the insufficient development of school libraries in
particular.
Academic libraries
University libraries
The Arab universities differ in their library organization as some have autonomous faculty libraries with
or without a central library, while others are fully
responsible to the central library. All library operations are decentralized in the former case, while fully
centralized in the latter. Table 5 summarizes the situation of university libraries and the population they
serve. University education is almost free in all state
universities except in Jordan. Private universities
(which of course are not free) are rather few in number except in Jordan and Palestine: there is one in
Egypt and in Iraq, two in Lebanon, seven in
Palestine (no state universities as yet) and ten in
Jordan. One more is under construction in Palestine,
as are two state universities in Jordan. The only Arab
state without any higher education institute is
Djibouti.
An astonishing feature of university libraries in
the region is the lack of co-operation even within the
same university, particularly in the case of those with
decentralized faculty libraries. In spite of formal
agreements within a state hardly any aspect of cooperation exists. This has led to a lot of wasted effort
and resources, particularly in acquisition and technical processing. One positive stand is the agreement
for interlending between Gulf university libraries,
signed in 1985. These universities are also linked to
GulfNet.
Except for Gulf university libraries, automation is rather slow. The packages used so far are:
MINISIS, DOBIS/LIBIS, CDS/ISIS (mini-micro
version) and VTLS. Some institutions have developed local packages; others are linked to online services either directly or through the national informa-
tion centres in their respective states. Some of these
are also connected to the Internet, while many have
expressed interest in CD-ROMs and even acquired
some titles, particularly bibliographic databases.
Another serious problem is the lack of professional staff and recognition of their status: many
library directors are non-professionals. It is not even
unusual to find only two to three professionals in a
library with more than 100 members of staff.
The Union of Arab Universities (UAU) signed
an agreement in 1986 with the University of Jordan
Library naming it as depository library for Arab theses. Since then, the library has issued an index of
deposited titles, and some 6,000 titles have been
received.
Other higher education institutions
Various other higher education institutions offer
post-secondary education for a period of two to
three years, or technical degrees. They are mostly
state-financed, except in Egypt and Jordan where
some are private, and concentrate mainly on vocational and technical education. Their problems are
identical to those of university libraries, but more
serious in respect of collections and staffing. Table 6
summarizes the situation.
Public libraries
Adult public libraries
As mentioned above, national libraries function also
as public libraries, and Bahrain, Mauritania and
Qatar have no other public library system. Djibouti,
Somalia and Yemen have no public library systems at
all. The situation in the remaining Arab States is
summarized in Table 7.
No legislation organizing the overall public
library services exists in any Arab state. Responsibility is distributed among different government
agencies in most states: municipal, local government,
ministry of education or ministry of culture. In a few
cases, however, libraries are private. No kind of co-
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Table 6. Other higher-education institutions and libraries
State
No.
Students
Teachers
Collections
Library staff
Books
Journals
21 849
2 143
–
–
Algeria
–1
Bahrain
–
767
95
–
–
–
Djibouti
. . .2
...
...
...
...
...
–
Egypt
98
260 603
–
–
–
–
Iraq
30
49 209
–
374 826
–
106
Jordan
48
–
–
557 721
1 691
109
Kuwait
–
8 373
–
–
–
–
Lebanon
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya
–
–
–
–
–
Mauritania
–
820
18
–
–
–
Morocco
–
–
–
–
–
–
8
3 025
296
–
–
9
19
4 110
401
237 366
1 246
–
1
Oman
Palestine
Qatar
1
179
11
–
–
Saudi Arabia
–
17 837
2 134
–
–
–
Somalia
–
–
–
–
–
–
Sudan
–
5 576
589
–
–
–
115
19 594
1 660
–
–
41
Tunisia
–
14 163
879
–
–
–
UAE
–
1 737
354
–
–
–
Yemen
–
–
–
–
–
–
Syrian Arab Republic
1. Figures not available.
2. Not applicable.
Source: UNESCO, UNESCO Statistical Yearbook 1995; and national statistics.
ordination or co-operation exists. Human resources
are very inadequate. Services are very traditional
except in a few instances, such as the King Abdul
Aziz Public Library in Saudi Arabia and the Abdul
Hameed Shoman Foundation Library in Jordan,
both of which are fully automated using MINISIS.
The latter offers a unique service by having a computer library with fifteen computer workstations for
both adults and children.
Most users are students from all levels of education, emphasizing the educational rather than the
recreational function of the public library.
C h i l d r e n ’s l i b r a r i e s
Children’s libraries may be part of the public library,
whether separate or sharing the same premises, or
independent. Interest in children’s literature and
libraries is rather unsatisfactory, as reflected in
Table 8.
Sponsorship from top-level personalities such
as Queen Nour of Jordan, Mrs Suzan Mubarak in
Egypt and Sheikha Fatima Zayed of the UAE is a
very interesting recent feature for children and their
libraries.
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Table 7. Adult public libraries
State
No.
Collections
Books
Others
–
–
–
–
–
4 611 395
–
–
2 496
63
1 019 806
Egypt
–
489 2
Journals
–1
Algeria
Iraq
Staff
–
Jordan
86
476 667
1 520
1 165
210
Kuwait
1
(18 branches)
272 000
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Lebanon
119
–
–
–
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya
–
–
–
–
–
Morocco
–
–
–
–
–
Oman
–
–
–
–
–
Palestine
41
248 208
571
3 010
131
Saudi Arabia
68
1 129 598
1 099
294
262
Sudan
–
–
–
–
–
Syrian Arab Republic
–
–
–
–
–
261 3
2 492 957
–
–
590
11 4
–
–
–
–
Tunisia
UAE
1. Figures not available.
2. Branches for municipalities and/or local governments.
3. Including twenty-one mobile libraries.
4. Including four branches of Dubai Municipal Library.
Source: UNESCO, UNESCO Statistical Yearbook 1995; national statistics; Wise and Olden, 1994.
Special libraries
Special libraries are those found in government and
public agencies as well as private ventures such as
banks, chambers of commerce and industry, companies, societies and research centres. They all tend
to be rather small, varying in quality and size from a
few hundred to tens of thousands of volumes, but no
data are available from any Arab state.
As compared to others, some of these libraries
are advanced as regards automation and link with
online services, and are interested in the Internet.
Most of the more advanced ones are from the public
sector: central bank libraries in Egypt, Jordan,
Kuwait, Morocco and Tunisia; the Ministry of
Finance in Saudi Arabia and the Ministry of
Planning in Kuwait. In the private sector, libraries in
commercial banks, business and industry are now
feeling the pressure to provide effective information
services.
Workforce development
Library and information science schools
With the exception of Morocco (where the school
reports to the Ministry of Planning which has been
recently disbanded), the schools of library and information science are all university departments, mostly
in faculties of arts, but also in faculties of social
sciences or education. There is no such school in
Djibouti, Mauritania, Somalia, the UAE or Palestine.
Kuwait has one post-secondary department and
Jordan has two, while Algeria, the Sudan and Tunisia
have a diploma programme in addition to formal
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Table 8. Children’s literature and libraries in the Arab region
State
Children’s
books
Children’s magazines
Weekly
Children’s
libraries
Books
Journals
Others
Algeria
17
–1
–
–
–
–
–
Bahrain
55
1
5
8
–
–
–
Djibouti
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Egypt
63
2
3
–
–
–
–
Iraq
42
1
...2
2
–
–
–
Jordan
23
1
1
30
78 000
54
–
Kuwait
...
...
1
...
–
10
3
Lebanon
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya
Mauritania
Morocco
Monthly
Collections
73
–
–
–
–
–
–
12
1
4
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
22
2
1
27
–
–
Oman
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Palestine
–
–
–
50
54 524
64
1 160
–
Qatar
Saudi Arabia
Somalia
Sudan
Syrian Arab Republic
Tunisia
UAE
Yemen
4
...
1
1
–
–
27
2
2
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
7
6
5
14
–
–
–
34
...
6
161 4
–
–
–
129
1
4
28
–
–
–
20
1
1
5
–
–
–
–
–
2
12
–
–
–
1. Figures not available.
2. Not applicable.
3. In addition to the mobile library service run by the Institute of Women Studies in the Arab World.
4. Most are either at the cultural centres or the mobile library service.
Source: Arab Council for Childhood and Maternity Annual Statistical Report 1994; and some national statistics.
university study. Unfortunately, Jordan has suspended its postgraduate diploma as of 1995. The situation
of the university departments is summarized in Table 9.
Teacher/student ratios are below international
standards in most schools. The curriculum is mostly
unbalanced as courses unrelated to librarianship and
information science account for about 43% of the
entire BA programmes. Modern information technology is creeping slowly into the curriculum, with
the Moroccan school the best equipped.
A recent development, hopefully signalling
better co-operation, co-ordination and harmonization, is the formation of the Society of Arab Library
Schools (1993), located in Rabat, Morocco.
Continuing education
As the role of library schools in training is too often
unsatisfactory, continuing education activities are
run by library associations, library sections of the
ministries of education, some national information
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Table 9. Library schools
State
No. of schools
Total
BA P Dipl
Student enrolment
MA
Algeria
4
3
2
1
Bahrain
1
...
1
...
Egypt
5
5
1
Iraq
3
3
Lebanon
1
1
PhD
. . .1
BA P Dipl
Graduates
MA
PhD
BA P Dipl
–2
Staff
MA
PhD
Fulltime
Parttime
1 800
33
40
...
390
–
...
60
–
...
...
31
...
...
...
51
...
...
1
–
3
2
1 650
45
25
24
3 750
374
65
34
36
–
...
1
1
–
...
21
–
–
...
73
–
–
–
...
...
...
–
...
...
...
–
...
...
...
–
–
Libyan Arab
Jamahiriya
3
3
...
...
...
–
...
...
...
–
...
...
...
–
–
Morocco
1
1
...
1
...
–
...
15
...
–
...
89
...
–
–
Oman
1
1
...
1
...
128
...
–
...
53
...
...
...
–
–
Qatar
1
...
1
...
...
...
20
...
...
...
–
...
...
3
–
Saudi Arabia
5
5
...
3
3
–
–
–
2
–
–
–
–
51
–
Sudan
4
3
1
1
...
–
–
–
...
–
–
–
...
–
–
Syrian Arab
Republic
1
1
...
...
...
2 048
...
...
...
106
...
...
...
–
–
Tunisia
1
1
...
...
...
70
...
...
...
–
...
...
...
1
39
1
1
...
...
...
–
...
...
...
–
...
...
...
–
–
32
28
6
11
6
Yemen
Total
1. Not applicable.
2. Figures not available.
Source: Wise and Olden (1994); Qdoura (1993); Mahmoud (1992, 1993).
centres, some national libraries and some regional
and international organizations. But this training is
not carried out systematically, and no follow-up
programmes are ever done anywhere. The topics are
mostly traditional, and the region is in bad need of
training programmes for the trainers, using modern
techniques.
Conferences and seminars are held in the
region both nationally and regionally, although the
latter are diminishing owing to the severe financial
crises Arab organizations are facing.
On paper, there are twelve library associations
at the national level in ten states (Bahrain, Egypt
(three societies), Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco,
Palestine, the Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic and
Tunisia). But it is difficult to assess their activities in
concrete terms. For instance, only the Jordanian
Library Association has continued issuing its quarterly journal, Risalat al-maktaba (The Message of
the Library) since 1965. All the other journals, in any
case few in number, either face interruptions or have
ceased publication (Qanded, 1995).
There are four other regional associations: the
Arab Federation of Libraries and Institutions
(AFLI), established in Tunis in 1985, the Arab
Association for University Libraries, established in
Kuwait in 1976 (no longer existing), the Arab Branch
of the International Council on Archives (ICA) and
the recently formed Society of Arab Library
Schools. The American Society for Information
Science (ASIS) has a Gulf branch.
Arabic professional library literature is rather
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weak; current journals (other than those intended for
bibliographical control) number only nine titles for
all the Arab states put together.
The other important part of library literature
is the provision of working tools in Arabic. For
cataloguing purposes, the Anglo-American cataloguing rules (AACR2) were arabized and published
by the Jordanian Library Association, while all
International Standard Bibliographic Descriptions
(ISBDs) were arabized and published by ALECSO.
The eleventh and twelfth abridged editions of the
Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) were translated and modified by ALECSO. Filing rules were prepared and published by the Arab League Documentation Centre (ALDOC). The Jordanian Unified
Format, based on the Common Communication
Format (CCF) of UNESCO, was prepared by the
Jordanian National Information Centre. Sixty-two
Arab Standards on documentation and information
based on International Standards Organization (ISO)
standards were issued by the Arab Organization for
Standardization and Metrology (ASMO) before it
ceased to exist as an independent Arab Organization.
Since 1990 it has become a department of the Arab
Industrial Development and Mining Organization
(AIDMO), and no further standards have been
issued in the field of information.
Subject headings and thesauri have also been
published, although the former cater for small and
medium-size libraries. There are now four general
lists and three specialized, while there are sixteen specialized thesauri, two monolingual, and
the remainder bilingual or trilingual. The list of
Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) also is being
translated.
International organizations
The Secretariat-General of the League of Arab States,
through ALDOC, took the initiative to create an
Arab network (ARIS-NET). ALDOC accomplished
this through many practical measures: organizing
meetings, publishing manuals and bibliographies,
holding regional and national training courses, arabizing MINISIS and CDS/ISIS, and preparing
Guidelines for Preparing a National Policy for
Information Systems and Services in the Arab World
(ALDOC, 1989). The latter was distributed among
Arab states, but no state has applied it since 1989 and
the project has faded out, with no more action being
taken since 1992.
ALECSO is currently drafting a strategy for
documentation and information in the Arab world
(ALECSO, 1996). The document will be distributed
soon among members. ALECSO also has established the First Arab Bank of Information for
Education, Culture and Science (FARABI). Other
Arab organizations were much more active during
the 1980s. They now rarely hold training courses,
seminars or conferences and their own information
services lack adequate resources and have reduced
their activities. The Arab non-League organizations are not much better, except for the Gulf
Organization for Industrial Consultancy (GOIC),
which has an industrial network for its members.
The only regional organization that can be
mentioned is the Islamic Development Bank (IDB),
which is sponsoring the creation of a Pan-Islamic
information network for the benefit of the
Organization of the Islamic Congress (OIC).
As far as international organizations are concerned, most of the Arab states are members of the
various international systems (AGRIS, the Current
Agricultural Research Information System (CARIS),
etc.). Now the World Health Organization (WHO)
is providing a number of Arab countries with the
MEDLINE database on CD-ROM, publishes the
Arab Index Medicus, sponsors the translation of
Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and runs
CEHANET (for Environmental Health) for its East
Mediterranean Office (EMRO), whose members
include eighteen Arab states.
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Communications and information
marketing
Telecommunications in most of the Arab states are
developing much faster than libraries and information services. Those still suffering are mainly
Mauritania, Somalia and the Sudan. Some, such as
the Gulf states and Tunisia, have already developed
their national data transmission networks. Many
recently automated libraries and information centres
are now using local area networks (LANs).
The problem that has not been solved is the
creation of national and Arab information networks.
Apart from the few existing examples – ENSTINET,
GulfNet, KACST, GOIC Industrial Network, EUN
(Egyptian Universities Network), and CND (Rabat)
– no really serious work has been done. Some networks, such as in Jordan and Syria, are at the planning stage. On a regional level, ARIS-NET has not
materialized. With the regional satellite, Arabsat, in
existence the technical aspects are negligible, but the
more serious problem of transborder flow of information has not yet even been considered.
At the international level, many national information centres, and some university, public and
national libraries, utilize (though not yet effectively),
well-known online services. CD-ROMs, particularly in the case of MEDLINE, are taking their place
and WHO has helped in this respect.
The private sector is starting to get involved in
information marketing. In many Arab states commercial enterprises are now using the Internet.
Others have created databases and provided access
to them. The best example is the Arab Information
System in Dubai, with about 150,000 press clippings
accessible worldwide. Commercial centres in
Amman, Dubai and Cairo are also providing information services.
Conclusions
Generally speaking in the Arab region, all types of
library and information services at all levels are suf-
fering from many constraints that can be summarized as follows:
1.
Insufficient financial resources for information
services even in oil-producing countries.
2.
Shortage of adequately skilled staff, particularly
in the areas of information technology.
3.
Underutilization of existing information resources.
4.
Lack of co-operation, co-ordination and networked systems.
5.
Lack of support for information services
from policy-makers, planners and political
leaders.
6.
Low reading habits among the literate public
and consequently low use of information in the
decision-making process.
7.
Absence of information policies and related
legislation.
8.
Many library and information activities are
individualized and not institutionalized.
9.
The Arab, regional and international organizations are not providing adequate technical support systematically (Itayem, 1993).
The gap between the haves and the have-nots is not
narrowing, but rather the have-nots are becoming
more and more dependent on the haves. Enormous
efforts have to be made in most countries of the
region, taking account of ALECSO’s effort in drawing up an adequate strategy. ■■
References
ALDOC. 1989. Guidelines for Preparing a National Policy
for Information Systems and Services in the Arab
World. Tunis, ALDOC. (In Arabic.)
ALECSO. 1996. Strategy of Documentation and Information in the Arab World. Unpublished draft. (In
Arabic.)
ALI, M. S. 1992. History of the Printed Arabic Book.
Algiers, Dar al-Huda. (In Arabic.)
ARAB COUNCIL FOR CHILDHOOD AND MATERNITY. 1994.
Annual Statistical Report on the Status of the Arab
Child 1994. Cairo, The Council. (In Arabic.)
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AL-ISHSH, Y. 1991. Arab Public and Semi-public Libraries
in Iraq, Syria and Egypt in the Middle Ages. Beirut,
Dar al-Fikr al-Muaser. (In Arabic.)
ITAYEM, M. A. 1993. Strategy for Developing Libraries in
the Arab World. Paper presented at the Seminar on
Strategy for Documentation and Information in the
Arab World, Tunis, 7–10 December 1993.
MAHMOUD, U. S. 1992. Teaching Librarianship and
Information at Arab Universities 1951–1991: Study
of Teaching at the First University Degree Level.
King Abdul Aziz University Journal, Arts and
Humanities, Vol. 5. (In Arabic.)
——. 1993. Teaching Librarianship and Information at
Arab Universities 1951–1991: Study of the Teaching
Situation at the Postgraduate Level. Arab Journal of
Libraries and Information, Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 5–59.
(In Arabic.)
QANDED, Y. 1995. Library Associations in Greater Syria:
Their Situation and Means of Activation. What is
New in the Book and Library World, No. 6, pp.
84–8. (In Arabic.)
QDOURA, W. 1993. Manpower Development at Libraries,
Documentation and Information Centres and
Archives in the Arab World. Paper presented at the
Seminar on Strategy for Documentation and Information in the Arab World, Tunis, 7–10 December
1993. (In Arabic.)
UNESCO. 1995. UNESCO Statistical Yearbook 1995.
Paris, UNESCO.
WISE, M.; OLDEN, A. (eds.). 1994. Information and
Libraries in the Arab World. London, Library
Association Publishing.
Mahmoud Ah. Itayem holds a
Master’s degree in Arabic from the
University of London (1971). He has
been a teacher for ten years, Assistant
Head then Head of the Libraries
Division in the Ministry of Education in Amman for
ten years, Director of the Library and Information
Centre at the Royal Scientific Society in Amman for
three years, Director of Documentation at OAPEC in
Kuwait for five years, and Private Expert and
Consultant (1981). He has conducted and/or lectured
at more than fifty courses, attended forty-two
conferences, seminars, etc., and visited libraries and
information centres in all the Arab countries (except
Mauritania), most countries of Western Europe, the
United States, Canada, Mexico and Ghana. Mr Itayem
is the author of various books, more than 150 articles,
papers or lectures and thirty-four consultant studies.
Mahmoud A. Itayem
Expert and Consultant, Library, Documentation and
Information
Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation
P.O. Box 950545
Amman, Jordan
Tel: 679182/679166
Fax: 9626-672541
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Chapter 4
Africa
Wilson O. Aiyepeku and
Helen O. Komolafe
University of Ibadan,
Nigeria
T
he summary data, facts, and statements presented in this chapter cover the West African
countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape
Verde, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, the
Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia,
Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and
Togo; the Central African countries of Cameroon,
the Central African Republic, the Congo, Gabon,
and Sâo Tomé and Príncipe; the northern East
African countries of Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia;
the Central East African countries of Burundi,
Kenya, Rwanda, the United Republic of Tanzania
and Uganda; the Southern African countries of
Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique,
Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and
Zimbabwe; as well as countries in the Indian Ocean,
comprising the Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius,
Reunion and Seychelles.
Systematic research, using the most up-to-date
resources in libraries and bibliographies, print and
electronic databases, within and outside Africa, has
produced a clear pattern of library and information
services, which are described in six sections. Two
sources in particular – Librarianship and Information Work Worldwide (1995) and the Encyclopaedia of Library and Information Services (1993) –
constitute the starting-point of any comprehensive
search for relevant documents, publications and references. Our concluding remarks highlight three
aspects of African library and information services
which may have tremendous implications for efforts
to accelerate the socio-economic development of the
region.
Public sector services
The evolution of public sector library and information services in sub-Saharan Africa (that is, Africa
excepting the Arab States) has followed essentially
three cultural-linguistic traditions: English-speaking,
French-speaking, and Portuguese-speaking. Multilateral, international and bilateral development assis-
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A f r i63c a
tance have tended to strengthen national and municipal services. Among those, one may cite: Canada’s
International Development Research Centre
(IDRC), UNESCO, the Carnegie Corporation of
New York, the British Council, the French
Government and the French Summit, through the
ACCT (Agence de Coopération Culturelle et
Technique), and the AUPELF-UREF (Agence
Francophone pour l’Enseignement et la Recherche).
Occasionally, however, external assistance has been
geared towards promoting or sustaining subregional
and regional services as well (see Chapter 27).
Academic institutions at the tertiary level, comprising universities, polytechnics, technical colleges
and colleges of education, play a key role in the provision of public library and information services.
Almost invariably, the services are an integral part of
their pedagogic and research responsibilities. In
some countries, university libraries serve as national
libraries as well, either on a temporary basis (as in
Nigeria before the National Library Act of 1964) or
because a national library has been neither planned
nor implemented. Consequently, large library collections of between 100,000 and 500,000 books, periodicals, unpublished manuscripts and non-book materials are not uncommon in many African university
libraries. Significantly more modest resources are
typical of academic libraries at lower levels.
However, the downturn in the economic fortunes of African countries during the last decade or
so has had a devastating effect on the quality of
library services in academic institutions, virtually all
of which are publicly funded. Most of them can no
longer afford to buy new books, and large proportions of periodical subscriptions have been cancelled.
With a corresponding inability to switch to the
new information technologies, African university
libraries in particular, and African academics in general, face a dim future indeed. International assistance agencies, such as the World Bank, are beginning to respond positively to the grave situation by
implementing massive rehabilitation projects, designed to restore services essentially to what they
were in the 1970s and early 1980s. For instance, the
World Bank has recently granted a US$15.8 million
development loan to the Senegal Government for the
improvement of library services in the Cheikh Anta
Diop University of Dakar. This programme includes
the renovation and the extension of the central
library, the renewal of the collections, the purchase
of equipment, computerization of the libraries and
further training for the staff.
Special libraries have fared marginally better
than their academic counterparts only because they
are generally smaller, concentrating on well-targeted
sectors of African economies – industry, agriculture,
health, etc. – and without the responsibility of providing services to students. But the need to adopt
modern information processing and delivery services
is probably greater and more urgent in this sector – a
need that remains unmet mainly as a result of severe
funding constraints.
Public and school library services are in a state
of decline throughout most of Africa because the
largely external initiatives which established them
have not been sustained by adequate indigenous
funding, effective literacy campaigns and indigenous
publishing in the local languages (see Chapter 23).
Consequently, old, foreign books continue to feature
prominently on the shelves of many an African public or school library, on the questionable premise
that it is better to have something to read than nothing at all! It is difficult to escape the conclusion,
therefore, that the development of public and school
library services is still very low down the priority
lists of most African governments.
Modern computer-based library and information services are beginning to make an appreciable
impact in Africa, especially in the relatively wellendowed international research organizations. There
is growing evidence that the International Institute
of Tropical Agriculture’s (IITA’s) success story (pub-
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w 64o r l d w i d e
lished in the African Journal of Library, Archives
and Information Science, which described how the
services of a large library were successfully computerized), is beginning to have the desired multiplier
effects in the region. However, inadequate funding
and insufficient numbers of appropriately trained
and motivated human resources constitute the main
obstacles to more success stories of this kind. An
encouraging development, as reported in Botswana,
Côte d’Ivoire, Lesotho, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique,
Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Swaziland,
the United Republic of Tanzania, Uganda and
Zimbabwe, is the increasing attention to rural information services. The proceedings of a recent Seminar
on Information Provision to Rural Communities in
Africa (1994) strongly suggest that African governments may, at last, be addressing the fundamental
issue of bringing library and information services to
the vast populations of non-literate and rural communities in francophone, lusophone and anglophone
African countries. As African governments, in collaboration with multilateral and bilateral development assistance agencies and international and nongovernmental organizations, invest more resources
in the development of this vital sector of African
library and information services, the long-awaited
measurable impact may not be long in coming.
Private sector services
The African private sector is dominated by the activities of big multinational corporations which specialize in such capital-intensive enterprises as mineral
exploration and marketing (in Angola, Gabon,
Nigeria and South Africa in particular), banking and
finance, manufacturing, and trading in primary commodities. In virtually all cases, the headquarters of
the enterprises are outside Africa, from where
specifically African policies are determined and controlled. Consequently, direct private sector investment in African library and information services, in
support of the corporations’ Africa-based enterpris-
es, is not common. Indigenous initiatives in this
highly competitive area are relatively new and small,
with little or no attention to the development of
indigenous library and information services, so far.
With the exception of the biggest enterprises, such as
the well-known mining conglomerates of South
Africa and the giant manufacturing and marketing
United Africa Company of Nigeria, it is, indeed,
difficult to locate effective library services in the
African private sector. However, the increasing digitization of information services has been a boon to
private enterprises, including those operating in
Africa, which have appropriate resources and international connections to capitalize on the fast-growing business of transborder data flow.
There is little evidence that African governments are even aware of the serious implications of
telematics and transborder data flow in their development efforts. And yet, the evidence is strong that
transborder data flow affects the international economic exchanges of all countries, and that African
countries in particular are not getting much from the
value-added direct benefits resulting from the processing and distribution stages of the raw data which
they produce. Trade in information goods and services, for instance, has increased exponentially over
the past three decades, partly in the context of growing trade in services generally. Increasingly, it is
being recognized that data flows are commodity
flows (either in their own right or because they are
closely related to trade flows in other areas, such as
shipping) and that, therefore, the subject should be
regarded as an economic issue (see Chapters 20 and
21). It has also been established that transnational
corporations are the major exporters of data and that
their information flow activities must be closely
monitored in the overall interests of both generator
and recipient countries. The information advantage
of transnational corporations may place domestic
enterprise at a competitive disadvantage, thus hindering the emergence of indigenous capacities in
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host countries. This factor also bears directly on the
bargaining positions of these corporations vis-à-vis
states and groups within states (for example, trade
unions). Evidently, Africa has much to ponder on
this sensitive and potentially lucrative aspect of
information services (see Chapter 22).
Electronic commerce is beginning to make a
noticeable appearance on the African business scene,
especially in the region’s international capitals of
Addis Ababa, Dakar, Johannesburg and Nairobi. In
other locations, experimental or embryonic initiatives have not blossomed, largely because of severe
limitations in telecommunication infrastructure and
anachronistic or non-existent information and informatics policies.
Large national and regional services
The land areas and populations of most African
countries are small; only Nigeria and South Africa
have sufficiently large populations to justify the
establishment of large national library and information systems. Partly as a consequence, subregional
and regional systems, as well as bilateral co-operative
programmes, have been encouraged, one of which is
described here.
South Africa’s relatively sophisticated national
library system is a model for other African countries
in organization, funding support and comprehensive
coverage of services normally associated with
national libraries worldwide. The system comprises
three national libraries: the South African Library (in
Cape Town), the State Library (in Pretoria) and the
National Library for the Blind (in Grahamstown).
The South African Library and the State Library
have deposit privileges, as do the Library of
Parliament in Cape Town, the Natal Society Library
in Pietermaritzburg and the Bloemfontein Public
Library.
The South African Library, founded in 1818, is
the national centre for collecting and preserving legal
deposit, and rare and unique material, with the addi-
tional responsibility of compiling retrospective bibliographies and indexes of Southern African materials. In 1990 it established a Centre for the Book to
stimulate interest in the book and reading and to
provide a meeting forum for publishers, booksellers
and librarians. The State Library, founded in 1887, is
responsible for co-ordinating the national bookstock, exchange programmes with other countries,
interlibrary loans, redistributing surplus material
and compiling the South African National Bibliography, which continues Publications Received in
Terms of Copyright Act No. 9 of 1916, issued by the
State Library from 1933 to 1958. It also co-ordinates
the exchange of bibliographic records and national
and international bibliographic standards.
The South African Library for the Blind was
founded in 1919 and became a national library for
the print-handicapped in 1969. It produces and provides books in Braille and on tape, and offers a service for blind students throughout the country.
Unfortunately, the National Library of Nigeria
has not, so far, fulfilled many of the expectations
described either in the 1964 Act which established it
or in the revised National Library of Nigeria Act of
1970. It provides rudiments of national library and
information services, using several rented and dysfunctional buildings in Lagos, separated by many
kilometres of often chaotic roads. In 1975 and, again,
roughly a decade later, all seemed set to commence
the construction of a building complex befitting the
National Library of Nigeria. On both occasions,
political rather than economic reasons seemed to
have frustrated the implementation of an important
national project. Despite the severe handicaps under
which it has operated for over three decades, the
library has managed to record some notable achievements.
The National Bibliography of Nigeria has, since
1973, replaced Nigerian Publications: Current
National Bibliography, issued by the University of
Ibadan Library from 1950 to 1972, and is the
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National Library’s major publication. It also publishes Nigerbiblios, an in-house magazine. A notable
activity of the library consists of sponsoring workshops to promote national information policies and
subregional co-operation on the same subject. Two
such workshops were held in 1991: Information
Resource-sharing to Promote National Development in Nigeria, and Promoting Co-ordination and
Development in West Africa through Information
Resource-sharing, under the auspices of UNESCO
and the National Library of Nigeria. Similarly, the
library has provided funding to Nigerian academics
to research topics considered vital to Nigeria’s socioeconomic development. Of particular relevance was
The Perception and Utilization of Information by
Policy Makers in Nigeria, a study sponsored by the
library from 1977 to 1980 and published in 1989 as
National Library publication No. 53.
The Pan African Development Information
System (PADIS), based at the United Nations
Economic Commission for Africa (UN-ECA) in
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, is by far Africa’s biggest and
most ambitious regional information service.
Established in 1980 with substantial financial and
technical support from IDRC, UNESCO and the
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP),
PADIS was designed to promote regional capacitybuilding in documentation and information services
and to foster co-operation in the use of modern technologies to process and use information in the
region’s public service. As several evaluation reports
have shown, the full realization of PADIS objectives
faces many daunting challenges, including guaranteed regular funding, a long-term commitment by
African governments to invest substantially and continuously in modern national information infrastructures, and significantly improved services in
terms of relevance and visibility at the appropriate
levels of public policy and decision-making in the
region.
Professional associations and activities
Every African country endeavours to have a professional body with a mandate to promote library and
information services within its borders and to protect the interests of its practitioners. The members
hope to meet, more or less annually, to discuss issues
of common interest, and several of them attempt to
publish some kind of professional journal. In reality,
however, most African countries do not have effective national professional associations, for a number
of reasons: librarianship is still very low down in the
hierarchy of publicly recognized professions; there is
a lack of national policies and programmes aimed at
ensuring the promotion and the development of scientific and technical information; no statutory provision exists anywhere in the region for the registration of librarians; the academic qualifications and/or
experience required for entry into the profession are
not very demanding; and the professional librarians
themselves generally have considerable difficulty in
demonstrating the relevance of their calling to visible
African development problems.
The origins of subregional and regional professional associations can be traced directly to the collective resolve of African librarians to reverse the
negative tendencies enumerated above. Thus, the
West African and East African Library Associations
were launched in the 1950s when all the member
states were under British colonial rule. Similarly, the
Association Internationale pour le Développement
de la Documentation, des Bibliothéques et d’Archives
en Afrique was established in 1959 for Frenchspeaking African colonies. Political independence in
the 1960s seemed to have persuaded the members of
the professional associations that they would fare
better as national associations. However, the balkanization of the subregional and regional professional
associations has generally left intact the challenges
they were established to address.
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An additional impetus to balkanization came in
the form of a strong desire to become independent
members of international professional bodies, especially the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), the International
Federation for Information and Documentation
(FID), and the Commonwealth Association of
Library Associations (COMLA). African regional
and subregional divisions are active components of
these international bodies, and a close reading of
their activities suggests that their mandates are not
very different from those of their pre-independence
predecessors. Efforts are ongoing to attempt to
revise the Western African Libraries Association
(WALA) created in 1961.
The professional activities and influence of
the Standing Conference of African University
Librarians (SCAUL) deserve a special mention.
Founded in 1964, SCAUL comprises heads of
libraries of universities eligible for membership of
the Association of African Universities, based in
Accra, Ghana; heads of university libraries in other
parts of the world are accorded the status of associate members. The aims of SCAUL are to keep members informed of each other’s activities and, whenever possible, to correlate such activities in the
common interest; and to support and develop university library services in Africa through conferences, sponsorship of research projects and meetings
of specialists on African bibliography, cataloguing,
classification and other aspects of academic librarianship. Since 1983 SCAUL has published, somewhat irregularly, the African Journal of Academic
Librarianship.
At the national level, the gap between publicly
declared professional objectives and actual achievements is wide. With the important exceptions of
South Africa and Nigeria, national associations of
library and information professionals do very little
more than hold annual meetings to present and discuss poorly researched papers, long on recommen-
dations. There is usually no mechanism to follow
up such recommendations, with the result that the
same recommendations tend to feature at subsequent annual meetings. Even in Nigeria, Nigerian
Libraries, the official journal of the Nigerian Library
Association, is not published regularly. However,
some of the association’s state chapters appear more
active than the parent body in organizing workshops
and similar continuing education programmes for
their members.
Education, training and research
Formal education and training for library services
has a distinguished record in most parts of Africa.
The East African School of Librarianship (EASL)
was founded at Makerere in 1962, with the assistance
of Kenya, Uganda and the United Republic of
Tanzania. When the countries agreed, in 1990, to
replace the University of East Africa with independent national universities, they also agreed to continue supporting EASL through the Council for
Library Training in East Africa. Consequently,
EASL remains the only one of its kind in the subregion dedicated to the education of library personnel
for professional, subprofessional, and non-professional careers in librarianship. The Departments of
Library and Information Studies at Addis Ababa and
Moi Universities in Ethiopia and Kenya respectively,
the Universities of Botswana, the United Republic of
Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe, and about a dozen
similar schools in South Africa, also continue to
make vital contributions to the training of all levels
of library workers in the subregion. The German
Foundation for International Development (DSE)
has been particularly active in the subregion in organizing and funding the training of intermediary-level
library personnel.
The pattern is slightly different in West Africa.
The Institute of Librarianship was established at the
University of Ibadan, Nigeria, in 1959, with generous funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New
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York, to produce professional librarians at the graduate level only. Although conceived as a West
African, subregional facility, the Institute (now
Department of Library, Archival and Information
Studies – LARIS) has remained essentially national,
with a strong emphasis on research. At least six other
Nigerian university-based departments of library
studies, and several more in polytechnics and colleges of education, concentrate on professional and
subprofessional training at the undergraduate level.
Training for professional and non-professional
careers in other anglophone countries of the subregion is provided at the Department of Library and
Archives Studies, University of Ghana, and the
University of Sierra Leone’s Institute of Library and
Information Studies.
In Senegal, the University of Dakar’s École des
Bibliothécaires, Archivistes et Documentalistes
(EBAD) has dominated education and training for
library service in francophone Africa since 1963.
EBAD offers two levels of training: an undergraduate programme for intermediate-level library personnel in two years, and a postgraduate programme
for professional personnel, also in two years. Since
the 1990s, professional training programmes have
been offered by other universities in Benin, Burkina
Faso, Cameroon and Côte d’Ivoire.
With the exception of a couple of library
schools in South Africa and LARIS, research has not
been a strong feature of education for librarianship
in Africa. LARIS awarded its first doctorate in 1973
and has produced about thirty more since; the combined figure for South African schools is slightly
higher. These institutions have contributed appreciably to the research literature of the discipline, but,
like most other African library schools, their success
in founding and sustaining academic journals has, at
best, been mixed.
Formal education for information science is a
recent African phenomenon, although the foundations had been laid in Nigeria’s LARIS as well as
in the leading library schools of South Africa.
Morocco’s regional École des Sciences de l’Information (ESI) led the way in 1974, and it was not until
1990 that two similar information science programmes, exclusively at the postgraduate level, were
established in Ethiopia and Nigeria.
IDRC and UNESCO played crucial roles in
the establishment of Addis Ababa University’s
School of Information Studies for Africa (SISA)
and the University of Ibadan’s Africa Regional
Centre for Information Science (ARCIS) in July
and November of 1990 respectively. IDRC and
UNESCO have continued to contribute generously
to ensure the consolidation and expansion of the
programmes of both schools. SISA and ARCIS run
Master’s level programmes in information science,
and ARCIS admitted its first doctoral degree students in 1995. Research, consultancy and advising
services, and short-term retraining are the other programme areas of the schools. Both are pioneer members of the emerging Consortium of African Schools
of Information Science (CASIS), the others being
Morocco’s ESI and the University of Botswana’s
Department of Library and Information Studies.
Headquartered at SISA, and with a generous grant
from IDRC for its first three years, CASIS seems
poised to make a significant impact in the application
of information science to help solve Africa’s multifaceted development challenges.
Information technologies and
communication policy development
It is generally agreed that Africa lags far behind
other regions of the world in the application of
information and communication technologies to
address the region’s numerous socio-economic
development problems. It would be fair to say that
among the countries covered in this chapter, only
South Africa has addressed this critical subject in a
serious and systematic manner. Recognizing the pivotal nature of appropriate national information and
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informatics policies in the African context, and that
time is not on the side of Africa in this rapidly evolving economic life, IDRC and PADIS jointly organized a Regional Seminar on National Information
and Informatics Policies in Africa in Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia, in late 1988. The published proceedings of
the seminar (1990) suggest that ‘activities’ in regard to
national information policies are observable at various levels in most African countries; the situation
regarding informatics is, however, a little more bleak
(see Chapter 21).
The critical success factors in the development
of appropriate information, informatics and telecommunication policies in Africa continue to be tackled.
But relatively little attention appears to have been
paid to the demonstration effect, as a proven instrument of group persuasion, in the drive to convince
African governments to consider such policies as critical for national and regional development and,
indeed, survival. Perhaps more attention should be
paid to developing the kind of tool reproduced in
Table 1 from a report of the Commonwealth
Secretariat in London, in order to make the desired
breakthrough in the region.
Experience in other parts of the world reveals
two parallel trends: that the development of a unified
information, informatics and telecommunication policy is essentially a national (governmental) responsibility; and that the private sector must be carefully integrated into such national efforts. Africa cannot be different. Consequently, we underscore three
of the nine recommendations specifically addressed
to African governments in the published proceedings (1990) of the Regional Seminar on National
Information and Informatics Policies in Africa:
First, in view of the rapid advances in information technologies, their social impact and their
impact on national development, the formulation of
national information policies be speeded up so that
these parameters can be properly assessed and controlled.
Second, in view of the common level of development among countries of the Africa subregion and
the similarities of problems encountered in harnessing information technology, regional co-operation
be actively pursued in all areas of information development, including manpower development; standardization of training programmes in information
technology; formulation of regional policies; and
development of telecommunication facilities (including satellites); standardization in appropriate areas of
information technology, etc.
Table 1. The impact of information technology applications in government
Application
(Measure of) impact
Malawi: Foreign Trade Statistics System (1966)
Monitoring status of external trade enhancement
Zambia: Grade VII Examination System (1969)
Fast processing of secondary-school examination results and
streamlining candidate selection
Kenya: Wagon Control System (1971)
Better fleet control and congestion reduction
Tanzania: Government Household Budget Survey System (1975)
Fast processing of nationwide survey data
Botswana: Fuel Control System (1982)
Tracking government vehicle movements and efficient resource
reduction
Mauritius: Sales Tax System (1983)
Fast processing of sales tax data and efficient revenue collection
Zimbabwe: Voters’ Registration System
Cleaning voters’ roll and elimination of multiple registrations
Adapted from: Mohan Kaul and Han Chung Kwong (eds.), Information Technology in Government: African Experiences. London, Commonwealth
Secretariat. Preliminary edition, June 1988.
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Third, in view of the important role played
by the private sector in the generation, procurement, dissemination and utilization of information,
African governments be invited to consider the participation of this sector in the process of policy formulation, implementation and review.
Concluding remarks
These are, indeed, exciting and challenging times for
library and information services worldwide, and the
opportunities for their effective application in the
African context are virtually limitless. In concluding
this chapter, we should like to highlight three important aspects of African library and information services which may have tremendous implications for
enhancing the health and progress of the region:
increased emphasis on indigenous knowledge systems; greater attention to the productivity of library
and information workers; and promotion of research
dealing with the impact of information on decisionand policy-making processes.
Recent research and publication activities on
African indigenous knowledge systems, especially
from Southern Africa, are most welcome. But they
are far too few, too uncoordinated and too poorly
funded. African library and information workers
need to champion a vigorous campaign for comprehensive, longitudinal studies aimed at making lasting
contributions to the world’s collective memory on
all aspects of the exciting challenge posed by the
topic.
At present, Africa’s productivity levels in
library and information services would seem to rank
among the lowest in the world. What are the parameters of productivity improvement, especially in
the context of strategic management, and how
should the parameters be measured, vis-à-vis the
parameters used to determine the productivity of
other workers in a national economy? These are not
easy questions, and we have no illusions that the
answers to them will come easily or soon. But they
must be addressed now if the profession is to be perceived by policy-makers as belonging to the mainstream of African development efforts.
Finally, African library and information workers should be acutely concerned about the worth of
their calling in a region in which so many other areas
of activity – primary health-care delivery; provision
of food, shelter and quality education; and poverty
alleviation – generally cry out for immediate attention by poorly endowed governments. And yet, a little reflection should remind us that effective library
and information services underpin every decision
and policy process everywhere, but particularly so in
the context of Africa, which must survive to become
an active part of a rapidly evolving Information
Society of the Third Millennium. African governments must be persuaded to recognize the strategic
significance of investing substantially and continuously in the global research effort to determine the
impact of information, especially in the context of
development initiatives. After all, the immediate
beneficiaries of the results of such research would
most probably be the African peoples themselves.
Acknowledgements
So many libraries and information providers, within
and outside Africa, contributed valuable resources
for this chapter that we cannot possibly acknowledge them individually. However, one of them – the
Library of IDRC Headquarters in Ottawa, Canada,
and especially Bev Chataway, the Library’s Head of
Research and Information Service – deserves our
special gratitude. We are, of course, responsible for
all errors of fact and interpretation found in the
paper. ■■
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Wilson O. Aiyepeku holds a
Helen O. Komolafe holds a Bachelor’s
Bachelor’s degree in Geography (1967)
degree in Religious Studies and a
and a Ph.D. in Information Science
Master’s degree in Library Studies –
(1973). He is a qualified librarian and
both from the University of Ibadan, in
Fellow of the Institute of Information
1986 and 1989 respectively. She has
Scientists. He has taught library and information
practised medical librarianship at the E. Latunde
science since 1969 at the University of Ibadan, and was
Odeku Medical Library, College of Medicine,
appointed professor in 1983. He has been Director of
University of Ibadan, since 1990, and is an active
the Africa Regional Centre for Information Science
member of the Nigerian Library Association.
(ARCIS) since October 1990. W. Aiyepeku has been
an Editiorial Board member of the Journal of
Information Science, Education for Information and
Helen O. Komolafe
Information Technology for Development since 1979,
Librarian
1992 and 1995 respectively. Current research and
Medical Library
publication activities focus on development
College of Medicine
information systems, information in public policy, and
University of Ibadan
education for information. He has consulted for
Ibadan, Nigeria
numerous institutions and many international
organizations, including the Council for the
Development of Economic and Social Research in
Africa (CODESRIA), the International Development
Research Centre (IDRC), the United Nations
Economic Commission for Africa, UNESCO and the
World Bank/Global Environment Facility.
Wilson O. Aiyepeku
Director and Professor
Africa Regional Centre for Information Science
(ARCIS)
University of Ibadan
6 Benue Road, P.O. Box 22133
Ibadan, Nigeria
Tel: 2-8103621
Fax: 2-8103610/2-8103154
E-mail: library @ibadan.ac.ng
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Chapter 5
Eastern Europe and
the Commonwealth of
Independent States
Alexander V. Butrimenko
International Centre for
Scientific and Technical
Information (ICSTI),
Russian Federation
T
he changes in the social and political systems
in the countries of Eastern Europe and the
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)
have had an impact on the national R&D systems
and as a consequence have led to changes in the
information systems, their priorities and goals.
The different political situations in the countries of the region and the different rates of transition
to a market economy have influenced the development of information and library systems in the various countries. To assess the changes in these countries, to help preserve accumulated knowledge in the
form of databases and to help integration into the
world information market, two organizations – the
German National Research Centre for Information
Technologies (GMD) and the International Centre
for Scientific and Technical Information (ICSTI) in
Moscow – conducted a study covering twenty-one
countries in Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth
of Independent States. A pilot study in 1992 dealt
with database production and services (Courage and
Butrimenko, 1993), followed in 1993–95 by an investigation of libraries and information centres as well
as electronic information services (Courage and
Butrimenko, 1996). Data collection and analysis
was undertaken by thirty-five leading information
centres and libraries in the countries involved. The
studies provide information on 3,000 databases and
1,500 information organizations and libraries as well
as an analysis of the structure, problems and developments of the information market and information
services.
In spite of many differences, there are also
many similarities in the problems faced. These similarities were particularly obvious during the first
three to four years after the disintegration of the
Soviet Union and Comecon. Some of the countries
of the region that started the transformation process
earlier, such as Hungary, Poland and to some extent
the Czech Republic, have already travelled a significant part of the road towards a new information and
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C o m m o n w e a l t h o f I n d e p e n d e n t S t a t73e s
library system; others, particularly the Caucasian
and Asian states of the former Soviet Union, are at
the very beginning of adaptation and restructuring.
Organizational structure of national
information systems
Since the 1970s, in all East European countries there
had been a well-established systematic information
sector that was subject to central government planning and was organized as a hierarchical complex.
These information systems were funded completely
by the government, either directly or indirectly
through the specialized allocation of funds for
industry and R&D organizations – funds reserved
exclusively for Scientific and Technical Information
(STI). The information system networks consisted of
three levels: the national level – source-oriented
(journals, books, patents, grey literature and so on);
the subject-oriented or ministerial level – information centres belonging to various ministries (metallurgy, construction, chemistry and so on); and the
territorial-regional level. Most enterprises had
specialized information units. This STI network
included also ‘scientific-technical’ libraries. The
national network was supervised by the ministry
responsible for science and development (the names
of these ministries varied from country to country:
Committee for Science and Technology, Ministry of
Science, Ministry of Industrial Development, etc.).
National libraries and general public libraries
were part of the structure of the Ministry of
Culture, and university and high-school libraries
were supervised by the Ministry of Higher Education. In practice there were no private information
enterprises.
Evaluation of the efficiency of the system was
very difficult owing to the lack of criteria. The services and products were practically free and there
was no economic feedback. Gradually national
information systems became more expensive and less
effective.
The political and economical transformation
process affected the information systems of all
Eastern European and CIS countries independently
of the changes or retention of the organizational
structure of the former STI and library systems.
The transformation of the STI system went
particularly far in the Czech Republic, Hungary and
Poland. Among the former republics of the Soviet
Union, Latvia and Estonia can be added to this list.
In these two countries even the national centres for
STI were closed. It can be said that in these countries
the notion of a unified, state-supported STI system
no longer exists. Involvement of the state is limited
to support of single specific projects while the major
part of this sector is left to the free market. For
example, in the Czech Republic the information system, which in the late 1980s included about 1,800
information centres and units (one national centre,
ten ministerial information centres, 417 subjectoriented information centres and 1,370 internal
information units), is no longer a consistent system
(see Table 1). In 1995 only 210 of these centres and
units supported by the government could still be
located. About 67% of the leading specialized information centres had closed. However, it should be
understood that the former information network
provided services almost exclusively to the R&D
sector, and this sector has also been reduced very
significantly. In 1989 there were 133,000 researchers
in the Czech Republic, reduced to 40,000 in 1993. A
very similar situation could be observed in other
countries: between 30% and 70% of the former
Table 1. Information organizations in the Czech Republic
Information centres and units
1990
1995
State-supported
1 782
210
To be privatized
0
40
Private
0
310
Associations, unions and similar
Closed or unknown
15
40
0
1 197
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information organizations and units have been closed
(for example, Ukraine had 1,401 information organizations and units in 1990, reduced to 1,051 in 1994).
Practically all information organizations changed
their profile to some extent, adding to their services
training and advertising, and providing partnermatching services. The staff was also significantly
reduced, even in those organizations that were preserved in their former role. For instance, the staff of
the Armenian Scientific Research Institute for
Scientific and Technical Information (ArmNIINTI)
was reduced from 300 to 100. The same level of
reduction took place at the Georgian Scientific
Research Institute for Scientific and Technical
Information (TECHINFORMI). Employees in
Kazakstan’s information organizations diminished
from 3,540 in 1990 to 1,600 in 1995 and in Ukraine
from 15,142 to 10,600. Thus staff reduction in these
organizations was in the range of 40% to 70%.
The backbone of a typical state STI system
consists of a national information centre with its
regional subsidiaries, as well as ministerial information centres. For example, the Czech Republic has a
National Information Centre (NIC) with fifteen
regional branches, and the Kazakstan State Institute
for Scientific-Technical Information (KasgosINTI)
has sixteen regional branches. The name of the
national information centre varies from country to
country, as does the legal basis of the relationship
with regional centres. The number of regional centres
is also very different, from very few in the Caucasian
and Asian countries, as well as Hungary and
Romania, to sixty-nine in the Russian Federation. In
Hungary two leading branch-oriented information
centres – the Information Centre for the Construction Industry (ETK) and the Information Centre for
Industry (IIK) – were closed.
Particularly in those countries where the
involvement of the state in the STI system has been
reduced, libraries have been requested to play a more
active role.
Another interesting phenomenon can be observed in all the countries of the region. In spite of
their attempts to do so, the former state-supported
information organizations are as a rule unable to
provide the economic and business information
required by private enterprises under pressure from
market forces. New private organizations are trying
to fill this gap, but with relatively limited success.
The private information sector can be identified first
of all in the Czech Republic (eighty private organizations), Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria,
Russia, Estonia (five), Kyrgyzstan (seven) and
to a lesser extent in Belarus (nineteen), Latvia and
Lithuania (six). In other countries there is either no
private information sector or its role is negligible.
Most of the private information organizations
are extremely small: they employ between two and
five persons and are financially unstable. Most of
them, in addition to their information services and
products, are involved in other activities such as
small-scale trade, training or advertising.
Two special cases are the Russian Federation
and all the former republics of the Soviet Union. The
country where the organizational structure has
changed the least is the Russian Federation. All
information centres with national importance in the
former Soviet Union – that is, source-oriented and
branch-oriented – were located in Moscow. The
organizational structure of the national system for
scientific and technical information, as well as the
system of libraries, was practically left intact. This
does not mean, however, that the changes have been
small. Before 1991 the major source of income for
information centres of all levels was direct or indirect state funding. Since that time state support has
been reduced basically to the level needed to cover
expenses connected with the preservation and building up of the information stock.
The organizational structure consists of three
levels, as in the former Soviet Union. All the former
source-oriented All-Union Information Centres have
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been preserved. The number of branch-oriented
centres (ministerial centres) was reduced (together
with the number of ministries) from ninety-six in
1991 to seventy-eight in 1995. All administrative
regions of the Russian Federation as well as the
Republics of the Russian Federation have preserved
their regional information centres, numbering sixtynine in 1995. Nevertheless, the operation of the centres has changed significantly. The staff and volume
of processed literature were reduced by 20% to 50%
at the source-oriented centres and 70% to 80% at
the branch centres. The average number of employees in the branch centres was reduced from
200–300 in 1991 to 50 in 1995. The regional centres
also lost about half their staff. The major part of their
income now comes from services, governmental support accounting for about 10% of their budget.
Owing to the financial dependence of the regional
centres on local administration, the functions of the
centres were also changed to satisfy the needs of the
local authorities.
Practically all information centres have been
required to extend their services far beyond information services in the narrow sense. They provide various kinds of training, printing and copying of all
kinds of materials, let their premises, and so on.
In parallel to the preserved structure of the
information system that formerly existed, the development of a new private information sector can be
observed. Private information organizations specialize in the production of databases and directories on
company information, business information, news,
personalities, laws and so on.
World as well as national literature was processed in the former hierarchically structured STI
system of the Soviet Union almost exclusively in
the source-oriented but also partly in the branchoriented centres. All these centres supplied republican (national) centres with information, databases
and reference journals practically free of charge.
Republican (national) and republican scientific-
technical libraries received a significant part of their
stock in the form of free copies. These centres were
located in Moscow. After the disintegration of the
Soviet Union this basically free flow of information
was stopped. All fifteen former republican (national)
information centres had either to buy this information or to develop their own structure for processing
the literature – an operation that is both time-consuming and expensive. These changes resulted in a
considerable reduction of the information flow from
Moscow. The Newly Independent States (NIS) were
unable to pay for this information and they did not
have an existing structure for database production of
the world’s literature. Additionally, the national currencies of most NIS (perhaps with the exception of
the Baltic countries) have remained weak against the
Russian rouble. So, for example, Armenia has had no
patent information from the Russian Federation
since 1992, and the Scientific Technical Library of
Belarus reduced its acquisition of Russian literature
from 32,700 copies in 1991 to 12,800 in 1994. The
major Lithuanian libraries received about 40% of
their literature from the Russian Federation in 1991,
reduced to about 3% in 1994. All CIS countries were
forced to develop their own services for screening
world literature, and in most cases these services are
very fragmentary and of relatively poor quality.
An agreement has been signed by the CIS
countries for the creation of a common ‘Information
Field’ that was intended to re-establish some kind of
co-operation in the field of scientific-technical information, but financial problems remain; countries
have not provided even the relatively limited funds
needed by the secretariat, which was located at the
Ukrainian Institute for Scientific and Technical
Information (UkrINTEI).
In describing the structure of information systems in the region, one common feature can be
observed. There is a certain specialization among
centres (sources, branches, territories), but there is
practically no specialization on products and ser-
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vices. All information organizations try to do everything – develop databases, operate hosts, publish and
print directories and provide information services to
end-users. There are no information brokers.
Databases
Comparison of data collected in 1993 and 1995
shows that there has been a significant increase in the
number of databases and database producers in the
countries of the region. At the same time there is
some concentration of services, demonstrated by a
decrease in the number of vendors (Table 2).
But most databases are still produced by small
producers. This adversely affects in certain cases the
quality of the databases and does not guarantee the
continued production of initiated databases. The
database producers are also heterogeneous, consisting of publishers, public authorities, companies, and
internal information units of organizations, enterprises and universities for which this type of activity
is a secondary activity. The proportion of database
producers that depend on public funding or are nonprofit organizations has decreased considerably,
whereas the share of producers operating on commercial terms has increased.
In 1993, there were about 1,900 databases in the
region. While production of about 600 databases was
discontinued between 1993 and 1995, a considerable
growth rate in terms of new databases can be found.
The number of electronic information services
increased by 53%, and that of database producers
also shows a considerable increase. In 1993, 779
database producers accounted for 1,918 databases.
Table 2. Quantitative development of electronic
information services
1993
1995
Vendors
145
118
Producers
779
1 146
1 918
2 936
Electronic media/databases
Table 3. Distribution of databases by database producers
Number of databases
per producer
Producers, 1993
Producers, 1995
No.
%
No.
%
1–2
608
78.0
866
75.5
3–6
125
16.0
199
17.4
7 – 10
29
3.7
46
4.0
11 – 20
11
1.4
24
2.1
21 – 30
5
0.6
8
0.7
Over 30
1
0.1
3
0.3
Total
779
1 146
From 1993 to 1995, the number of database producers increased by 45% to 1,146. They produced two
to three electronic media/databases on average (see
Table 3). Only a small proportion of the databases
(16%) can be accessed online via telecommunication
networks. More than 80% of the databases are
marketed only at the local level or are available
only on media such as diskette or magnetic tape. The
number of databases accessed online has nevertheless increased from 241 in 1993 to 429 in 1995 (an
increase of 78%). This has coincided with a decrease
in vendors of 14%; those vendors that marketed
only one online database have in many cases discontinued their services.
When viewed on a global scale, databases in the
region account for only a small percentage of records
(750 million records, or around 13%). About 50% of
the databases in the region, mainly new databases,
contain less than 10,000 records. Around 33% of
databases have about 10,000 records, 14% have several hundred thousand records and only around 50
large databases (representing around 2% of the total)
contain several million records. The average number
of records per database was just under 19,000 in
1994.
The electronic information services of the East
European and CIS countries use the following distribution media: 429 are online databases, 27 videotex
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databases and the rest are on diskette or magnetic
tape.
Only a minor proportion of databases is made
available online, even though the telecommunication
facilities in Eastern Europe and the CIS have
improved considerably. This is to be explained by
the fact that demand for scientific-technical information has significantly decreased now that this information is no longer available free of charge as it used
to be, and now that the new business databases are
marketed on other media (diskette, magnetic tape).
Multimedia databases which require more powerful
telecommunication facilities than text-only databases
are still absent owing to the lack of the technical prerequisites (see Chapter 16).
Analysis of the databases by subject shows that
those with scientific and technical information still
predominate (the multidisciplinary databases also
contain scientific-technical information). About
40% of the databases covered business information
in 1995 compared with only 20% in 1993, and
among them 3% held legal information (see Table 4).
This increase in business databases occurred despite
the fact that many new business databases have been
discontinued because they are not produced on a
secure financial basis and many are not demand-oriented. Many new databases, such as those containing
company directories or brief company information,
contain data which are already available on the market in some other form. On the other hand, business
databases containing solid, detailed business information and company profiles are missing. The
main reason for this state of affairs is that much
financial data on business cannot be recorded and
checked.
If we analyse databases offered throughout the
region by database types, we see that the share of
bibliographic databases has dropped from 39% in
1993 to 29.8% in 1995. At the same time the share of
reference and text-numeric databases, which mainly
contain business and company information, in-
Table 4. Distribution of databases by subject (%)
Subject
1993
1995
Natural science, technology, patents
65
44
Business, economics, social sciences
20
42
Others
6
4
Multidisciplinary
7
9
News
2
1
Table 5. Distribution of databases by database types
Type
Producers, 1993
Producers, 1995
No.
%
No.
%
Bibliographic
750
39.2
887
29.8
Mixed
559
29.1
780
27.4
Reference/directories
419
21.9
716
24.1
Text and numeric
83
4.3
358
12.1
Numeric
54
2.8
107
3.6
Full text
52
2.7
88
3.0
1 917
100.0
2 936
100.0
Total
creased from 26.2% to 36.2%. Only 3% of the total
are full-text databases (see Table 5).
As far as the country of origin is concerned,
about 57% of the databases are produced in the
Russian Federation, although the number of databases discontinued in this country between 1993 and
1995 is very high (322). Since 1993, there has been a
considerable increase in the number of databases,
especially in the Czech Republic, Hungary and in
some former Soviet Republics. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the CIS countries and the
Baltic states cancelled, for financial and political reasons, their subscriptions to magnetic tapes supplied
by large Russian information centres. Since 1992,
these former Soviet republics have been producing
their own databases, but their overall share is still
very small.
The 429 online databases are provided by
118 vendors the biggest of which are Russian,
Hungarian, Czech and Bulgarian. Only one host,
VINITI in Moscow, provides more than thirty data-
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Table 6. Distribution of online databases by vendor
Number of databases
1993
1995
1–2
71%
66%
3–10
24%
26%
5%
8%
145
118
Over 10
Total number of vendors
bases online. They are accessible via the Internet.
About 8% (ten) of the hosts provide more than
ten databases online (see Table 6). As a rule these are
the national information centres or their successor
organizations. All other online databases are available from their producers, who can be accessed by
telecommunication networks. A great problem in
these countries is posed by the fact that the databases
available online are scattered over the region and that
there is no one powerful and efficient host.
The database vendors cannot be judged by
their sales volume since online databases are used
only to a very small extent and only within the
respective countries, so that there is hardly any
turnover. The database licence fees are different for
national and international users, the fees for national
users being lower.
There are interesting developments in the distribution of the databases by language. Two contradictory tendencies can be observed: the first, an
increasing number of databases in native languages
instead of Russian in the former republics of the
Soviet Union, and the second, a growing tendency to
create databases for international use, that is, in
English and other West European languages. The
growth of English-language databases can be seen
particularly in Hungary and the Czech Republic.
Libraries
General libraries and national scientific-technical
libraries are an important part of the national information system. National libraries as a rule are subordinate to the ministry of culture, and scientific-tech-
nical libraries to the ministry of science, education or
industry. In some cases national (republican) scientific-technical libraries administratively are a part of
the national (republican) centres for scientific and
technical information. In other cases they are separate entities. Usually in those libraries there are also
specialized departments on patents and grey literature (in the Russian Federation these are separate
libraries).
These two types of libraries were less affected
than other public general and specialized libraries.
They were able as a rule to preserve their staff,
although in some countries there were significant
reductions (for instance, at the Republican ScientificTechnical Library of Azerbaijan, the number of
employees was reduced from fifty-five to forty-five,
and at the Central Scientific Library of the Academy
of Sciences (Georgia) from 240 to 178). The total
number of employees in public libraries was reduced
from 12,648 in 1985 to 7,400 in 1994 and in specialized libraries from 2,775 to 2,100. The ability of
these libraries to acquire literature, particularly foreign literature, was considerably reduced. Certain
figures showing an increase in budget could be misleading. The fact is that the budget structure changed
very significantly. The costs for rent, heat, water and
electricity rose disproportionately, and in most cases
the budget provided covers only operational expenses.
Thus state support of libraries in Azerbaijan
went down from US$3,194,000 in 1990 to
US$108,000 in 1994. The budget of the Republican
Scientific-Technical Library was reduced in the same
period from US$149,250 to US$1,174. It is obvious
that no literature acquisition could be carried out. A
more or less similar situation can be found in
Armenia, Georgia and Tajikistan. The situation is
less critical in other East European and CIS countries, but almost everywhere there is zero growth in
library stocks.
Reduction of Russian literature is not compensated for by increasing acquisition of literature from
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Table 7. Acquisition of foreign literature by the Belarus
Agricultural Library
1991
Acquisition
from
Russian
Federation
Books (copies)
Journals (copies)
Table 8. Acquisition of literature by the ScientificTechnical Library of Belarus (in thousands of copies)
1995
Acquisition from
Acquisition
from
other
countries
Acquisition
from
Russian
Federation
Acquisition
from
other
countries
5 000
200
3 000
600
300
5
200
40
other countries (see Table 7 for one example from
Belarus). Before 1991 acquisition of literature from
Russia represented a significant part of the total
acquisition not only in the republics of the Soviet
Union but in other countries of the region as well.
This fell sharply after 1991 (see Table 8). For example, in Bulgaria Russian acquisitions fell by 50% in
general and up to 90% in some particular cases. In
addition to obvious political and economic reasons,
the total reduction in production of literature in the
Russian Federation influenced this process (see
Figure 1).
1991
Belarus
1994
2.50
1.40
32.70
12.80
Eastern Europe
0.13
0.26
Western countries
0.13
1.84
35.46
16.30
Russian Federation
Total
Table 9. Stock of the largest Bulgarian libraries (in
thousands of copies)
Library
Total
1990
Books
1994
National Library (NBKM)
6 537 6 700
Central Library for Technology
2 097
Central Patent Library
420
1990
1 470 1 503
116
118
1 700
7
Central Library for Agriculture
437
442
179
183
Central Library for Medicine
736
547
536
414
Library of the Technical
High Schools
581
602
444
458
Thousands of copies
30
Scientific and technical literature
20
10
Fiction and children’s literature
0
1940
1950
1960
1970
1994
1980
Fig. 1. Book publishing in Russia.
1990
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Table 10. Data on the Scientific-Technical Library of
Armenia, 1990–94
Stock (thousands)
1990
1994
Books (titles)
137
145
Books (copies)
434
452
Journals (titles)
3.7
0.7
Journals (copies)
589
634
Patents (titles)
14 974
16 622
Patents (document units)
16 797
17 483
2 723
2 833
Foreign journals (copies)
198
203
Acquisition of literature
734
24
19 840
20 805
6 193
3 241
Foreign books (copies)
Total stock
Number of readers
Number of attendances
Number of loans
75
36
4 903
1 499
In most libraries the stock has not grown over
the last few years (see Table 9). There has also been a
significant reduction in public interest in libraries, as
revealed by the drop in readers and loans. Table 10
demonstrates this in the case of the Armenian
Scientific-Technical Library.
Reduction of the budget is very typical for the
libraries. But even when there has been an increase in
the budget, it has not been sufficient to cover
increased salary and maintenance costs (see Tables 11
and 12). Table 13 shows that in some cases there has
been an improvement in the financial situation, but a
more detailed analysis indicates that operational
expenses are growing faster than the budget itself.
Table 14, for the Latvian Academic Library, gives a
fairly typical breakdown of the budget. It shows that
available finances do not allow any development and
are used mostly to keep libraries afloat. In Bulgarian
libraries salaries consume about 30% of the budget
of the central libraries, 40% in high-school libraries
and 43% in regional libraries.
Acquisition of literature by the State Public
Scientific-Technical Library in the Russian Federation
dropped from almost 450,000 copies from within the
Table 11. Data on the most important Georgian libraries:
staff and budget for acquisition
Library
Staff
Budget
(thousands
of US$)
1990
1994
1990
1994
740
723
1 500
15.0
50
40
9
0.1
State Technical Library
184
183
214
2.3
Central Scientific Library of
the Academy of Sciences
240
178
98
1.0
University Scientific Library
350
290
77
0.8
1 564 1 414
1 898
19.2
National Library
National Medical Library
Total
Table 12. Data on scientific-technical libraries in Kyrgyzstan
Library
Stock (thousands
of copies)
Budget (thousands
of som)1
Budget (thousands
of DM)1
Staff
1993
1994
1993
1994
1995
1993
1994
1995
1993
1994
1995
National Library
5 859
5 769
321.0
362.0
367.0
124.9
50.8
47.9
371
362
367
Scientific-Technical
5 582
5 672
153.5
491.5
715.5
59.7
68.9
93.5
116
116
116
Academy of Science
921
921
103.0
103.0
103.0
40.0
14.5
13.5
66
62
61
Medical Library
300
312
10.0
81.0
123.0
3.9
11.4
16.0
30
30
30
1. 1 DM = 2.57 Kyrgyzstan som (KS) (1993); 7.31 KS (1994); 7.65 KS (1995).
Source: Deutsche Bundesbank.
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Table 13. Budget of the largest libraries in Latvia
Library
Table 14. Budget breakdown of the Latvian Academic
Library
Budget
(thousands of US$)
1994
1995
National Library
955
1 080
Academic Library
634
728
Patent and Technical Library
253
280
Medical Library
174
192
Salary
Soviet Union in 1986 to 100,000 copies from the
Russian Federation in 1994 (although acquisitions
from abroad increased from 12,000 to around 50,000
in the same period). Figure 2 shows the distribution of
acquisitions by various sources in one Russian library
between 1988 and 1994.
Table 15 reflects general tendencies found in
many of the most important Russian libraries.
Since 1991 the number of scientific-technical
1993
1994
1995
50.1%
43.1%
51.5%
Information and literature
acquisition
24.0%
32.3%
21.6%
Infrastructure
18.3%
13.8%
17.3%
Overhead expenses
4.1%
9.3%
4.2%
Maintenance
(building, hardware)
3.5%
1.4%
5.4%
Total
Thousands of lats
222.5
353.8
377.8
Thousands of US$
400.0
634.0
728.0
libraries has been reduced in practically all former
republics of the Soviet Union. In Kyrgyzstan, for
example, the figure fell from 1,618 in 1991 to 1,401 in
1994, and in Kazakstan from 375 in 1990 to 143 in
1994.
Distribution of the acquisition of literature by sources
120 000
Russian Book Chamber
(free copies)
100 000
Central libraries
Book market
80 000
Publishing houses
60 000
Publishing houses
(free copies)
40 000
Periodicals
‘Rospechat’
20 000
Microforms
and copies
0
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
Fig. 2. Acquisition of literature by the Russian State Public Scientific-Technical Library (GPNTB) from various
sources (in number of copies).
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Table 15. Data from three Russian scientific-technical libraries of national importance
1990
1993
1994
State Public Scientific-Technical Library (GPNTB)
Stock (thousands)
3 651
3 133
3 025
Journals (thousands)
1 106
1 160
1 112
New acquisitions (thousands)
Staff
61.8
734
23.1
18.5
822
753
853
5 040
Budget
Millions of roubles
Millions of US$
6.2
10
0.85
2.5
Library for Natural Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Stock (thousands)
4 644
3 634
3 591
Journals (thousands)
8 931
7 610
7 717
New acquisitions (thousands)
Staff
164.5
342.2
39.1
1 167
929
941
100 000
100 000
100 000
24
27
27
New acquisitions (thousands)
427
404
407
Staff
576
497
443
357
1 690
Russian Patent Library (RGPB)
Stock (thousands)
Journals (thousands)
Budget
Millions of roubles
3.2
Millions of US$
5.3
0.35
0.85
Conclusions
References
The further development of the information systems
in Eastern Europe and the CIS requires a suitable
information policy, such as the promotion of dedicated information centres and scientific libraries, and
the production and supply of electronic information products. The growth of information services in
this region will also be considerably dependent on
future national and international promotional programmes. ■■
COURAGE, M.-A.; BUTRIMENKO, A. 1993, Der elektronische Fachinformationsmarkt in Osteuropa 1993 [The
Electronic Information Market in Eastern Europe
1993]. Darmstadt, Verlag Hoppenstedt. 2 vols.
——. 1996. Electronische Informationsdienste in Osteuropa
1994–95 [Electronic Information Services in Eastern
Europe 1994–95]. Moscow, IZWTI Internationales
Zentrum für Wissenschaftliche und Technische
Information, GMD Forschungszentrum Informationstechnik GmbH. 3 vols.
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Alexander V. Butrimenko graduated
from Moscow State University (Physics)
in 1964, obtained his Ph.D. in PhysMath Sciences in 1967, and the title of
Doctor of Technical Science in 1981. He
was a research scholar at the Technical University of
Stuttgart (1970–71), Junior Research Scholar and then
Senior Research Scholar at the Institute for Problems
of Information Transmission, Academy of Sciences,
USSR (1963–74). He was Project Leader for
Informatics at the International Institute for Applied
Systems Analysis, Vienna (Austria) (1974–80), Head
of the Department for Computer Networks and
Information Service at the Institute for Applied
Systems, Academy of Sciences, USSR (1980–83) and
Deputy Director for Research and Projects at the AllUnion Scientific-Technical Information Centre
(1983–87). Since 1987 Dr Butrimenko has been
Director-General of the International Centre for
Scientific and Technical Information (ICSTI). In 1993
he was elected member of the International
Informatics Academy and in 1995 member of the
Baltic Academy.
Alexander V. Butrimenko
Director-General
International Centre for Scientific
and Technical Information (ICSTI)
21 b, Kuusinen St
125252 Moscow
Russian Federation
Tel: 095-198-7441
Fax: 095-198-72-30/943-00-89
E-mail: [email protected]
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Chapter 6
Western Europe
Giuseppe Vitiello
Council of Europe, France
Libraries and the book chain
In the book chain, libraries have usually played a
rather self-contained role. As non-profit agents,
libraries were cut off from the book’s economic life,
which took the book to the reader via the publisher
and the bookseller. With the take-off of the electronic publishing market, they are moving towards full
integration in the book chain, where they are now
likely to play an economic role.
A rough indication of the relevance of libraries
as an economic player in the book chain may be
illustrated by the relationship between the turnover
of the national publishing industry and the size of
library acquisitions in the European Union. Table 1
gives the gross income of the publishing industry in
twelve European Union countries, and the corresponding public library acquisitions expenditures
per inhabitant (only public libraries have been considered because they are the most important purTable 1. Publishing incomes and library acquisitions in
European Union countries, in French francs
Country
Publishing
gross income
per inhabitant1
Library acquisitions
per inhabitant2
Public libraries
All libraries
Germany
630
0.85
Luxembourg
382
1.80
4.98
France
367
0.85
2.86
Spain
366
0.42
1.85
Denmark
350
12.35
15.47
United Kingdom
316
3.10
6.71
Netherlands
306
5.27
8.21
Italy
249
1.54 3
2.12 3
Belgium
221
2.89
5.40
Ireland
158
1.20
2.64
Greece
145
0.83 3
3.37 3
Portugal
117
0.04
0.73
1. Data for 1989.
2. 1986–90 average.
3. Estimated figures.
3.68
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W e s t e r n E u r o 85p e
chasers of national literature) and total library acquisition expenditure per inhabitant. Data are drawn
from an inquiry made by a consulting agency, BIPE
Conseil, in 1989 (Ancillani, 1992), and library statistics (1986–90) issued by the European Commission
(European Commission, 1995). These figures give a
rough comparative vision of readership in the
European Union, from an economic point of view.
Table 2 shows the ratio of public library acquisitions
to book industry gross income per 1,000 inhabitants.
It is easy to see that countries are listed in a different
order from Table 1.
Table 2. Ratio of public library acquisitions to publishing
gross income (per 1,000 inhabitants) in European Union
countries
Country
Denmark
Ratio
35
Netherlands
17
Belgium
13
United Kingdom
9
Ireland
7
Italy (estimated)
6
Greece (estimated)
5
Luxembourg
4
France
2
Germany
1
Spain
1
Portugal
0.3
It would be a mistake to draw firm conclusions
from such library statistics, which do not take into
account book exports (relevant especially in the
British, Spanish and French cases) and acquisitions
made by academic libraries. What is unquestionable,
however, is that reading practices vary greatly in
Europe and that they are independent of economic
indicators (such as Gross Domestic Product). They
are, instead, very much subject to national library
policies as an essential ingredient of national book
policies. The generous budgets allocated for library
acquisitions in Denmark (and more generally in all
Scandinavian countries) are essential to maintain
high-level reading practices and a quality book
industry, and to maintain high rates of literacy.
Libraries and the information chain
It is even more difficult to assess the role of libraries
within the information chain, especially because
there is no clear understanding of what an information chain is. Traditionally, the information services
industry has been seen as information services and,
to a lesser extent, the processors of such services. In
this narrow sense, libraries may be counted among
the most relevant information providers.
The rapid expansion of the information market,
and the expectations linked with the growth in
demand for electronic information and entertainment, are now broadening the scope of the information chain by including providers of information
content, such as publishing and other media industries, and the main actors in information delivery and
processing, such as producers and distributors of
hardware, software and communication equipment.
This fact, known as the ‘convergence phenomenon’,
has blurred distinctions between the main actors and
created an all-embracing concept of the information
industry (see Chapters 21 and 23).
In such a context, what is the incidence of
library and information services and how can their
economic value be assessed? According to the
European Union library macrostatistics, fees and
charges placed by the libraries on their own services
are estimated to be some 209 million ecus per year.
This figure refers to the period 1986–90, at constant
1990 prices (European Commission, 1995). More
than 10% of the income (21 million ecus in 1991–92,
26 million ecus in 1993–94) is represented by the
receipts of the British Library Document Supply
Service, by far the largest library document supplier
in Europe (British Library, 1992, 1994).
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It is important to note that such figures relate
to both electronic (or partially electronic) and nonelectronic information services. For the same period
(1990), the electronic information services industry
in the European Union was estimated at 3.1 billion
ecus (it had developed to 3.6 billion ecus in 1992).
This was at the time when the ‘convergence phenomenon’ had not yet started and the Internet was
still a merely academic adventure. Today, it is practically impossible to give any statistical evidence and it
is fairly risky to predict what the future of libraries
will look like within the information chain.
2.4% per annum (in relation to an annual average
rate of increase equal to 1.7%). Comparatively, public libraries in the twelve members of the European
Union in that period experienced a slight reduction
in staff (from 118,399 to 118,218). Also, the rate of
increase in book stocks was higher in university
libraries and corresponded in 1986–90 to 2.6% per
annum; in total 283.4 million books were held
(20.3% of the overall book stocks). In the other
library sectors, the growth rate is considerably
lower, ranging from 1.3% in national libraries to
1.9% in public libraries.
Libraries in Western Europe: general
statistics
Table 3. Libraries in the European Union, 1981–90
According to the statistics issued by the European
Commission, macrostatistics related to libraries in
the European Union and other EFTA (European
Free Trade Association) countries can be summarized as shown in Tables 3 and 4.
On a historical basis (from 1981 to 1990) some
macrostatistic trends in library activities and finances
can be detected. The first, most straightforward conclusion is that while there have been no dramatic
upheavals during the decade, a marked change has
occurred in the relative focus of libraries’ investments, the main area of investment growth now
being devoted to the higher-education sector. Many
indicators confirm this.
Library expenditure grew annually on average
by 1.9% in the European Union countries and by
2.8% in the EFTA countries. But for higher-education libraries the rate of increase was, respectively,
2.7% and 3.5%. Comparatively, public library
expenditure grew at a lower rate (respectively 2.2%
and 2.6%). Most coherently, the average annual
number of staff employed in higher-education
libraries – 37,798 employees in the European Union
– grew at a higher level than in other sectors (1.8%
per year in comparison to an overall growth of
0.5%). As a consequence, staffing costs increased by
Libraries
Average
1986–90
Average
1981–85
95 880
88 461
Yearly library expenditure
(millions of ecus)1
6 637
6 036
Yearly expenditure per head (ecus)1
19.52
17.85
% of GDP
Staff employed
0.15
0.15
237 227
231 565
Library collections (millions)
1 396
1 272
Consultations per inhabitant
8.161
8.132
1. Constant 1990 prices.
Table 4. Libraries in non-European Union EFTA countries
(including Austria, Finland and Sweden), 1981–90
Libraries
Average
1986–90
Average
1981–85
27 917
30 097
Yearly library expenditure
(millions of ecus)1
1 515
1 419
Yearly expenditure per head (ecus)1
47.09
44.17
% of GDP
Staff employed
0.23
0.24
43 035
42 724
Library collections (millions)
316
295
Consultations per inhabitant
8.682
8.464
1. Constant 1990 prices.
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The second conclusion concerns the unrelenting decline of school libraries, which mirrors the
reduction in pupil numbers and the ageing of the
population. All indicators confirm such a trend.
From 1981–85 to 1986–90, library expenditure for
school libraries grew by only 0.3% per year; as a
percentage of the overall European book stocks,
their holdings decreased from 22.6% in the first
quinquennium to 20% in the second. Personnel
remained steady through the decade and the annual
average number of consultations decreased by 0.1%
from the first to the second quinquennium. Even
more eloquent is the figure concerning school
library expenditure as a part of overall library expenditure, which was 17.9% in 1981–85 but fell to
14.1% in the second quinquennium (in the EFTA
area the decrease is even more dramatic: from 21.1%
to 16.8%).
Finally, different rates of increase between
library staff (on average, 0.5% per annum) and book
stocks (on average, 1.9% per annum) may suggest an
increase in the efficiency of library staff. This is certainly to be ascribed to the automation of library services, which has entailed revolutionary changes and
enhancements in the provision of library services
and their organization.
The changing role of national libraries
In order to keep up with the great expectations laid
today on national libraries, the budgets allocated to
them have been proportionally increased. In 1981–85
the annual average expenditure of European national
libraries was equivalent to 401.2 million ecus (expressed at 1990 constant prices), which represented
5.7% of the total budget allocated to libraries; during
the years 1986–90 expenditure grew by 0.9% per
year and reached 423.6 million ecus (European
Commission, 1995). More than 50% of such expenditure is allocated to staff salaries, which total around
240.8 million ecus per annum. It is worth noting
that, like many other libraries, national libraries are
developing forms of self-financing. The production
of bibliographic services, once considered as a duty,
has become a key aspect of the library industry with
a strong commercial component: in the United
Kingdom, for instance, receipts for national bibliographies reached £2,412,300 in 1991–92 and slightly
declined to £2,123,000 in 1993–94 (British Library,
1992, 1994). This considerable figure does not take
into account incomes related to online records captured by other libraries.
In spite of budget increases, national libraries
play a less dominant role within national library systems. The decline of the centralistic role of the
national library within a national library system is
apparent. In the 1970s and 1980s such a role was
emphasized in professional literature and UNESCO
documents: it seemed that national libraries could
(and should) cumulate many functions, from legal
deposit to the provision of national bibliographic
services, from the extensive collection of foreign
material to interlibrary loan, from national planning
to research and development (Sylvestre, 1987). No
national library today would subscribe to such a
large range of tasks. Even well-established organizations, like the British Library or the Bibliothèque
Nationale de France, are now starting to involve in
their work other research libraries and to share the
provision of library services, thus showing that there
are alternative means of fulfilling information needs
at a national level (Line, 1989).
Looking at national library budgets, the case
for shared functions seems even more justified. The
top four national libraries in Western Europe are the
British Library, the Bibliothèque Nationale de
France, the Deutsche Bibliothek and the ‘system’ of
national libraries of Florence and Rome. The annual
average budget, however, tops 100 million ecus only
in the United Kingdom and is between 10 and 20
million ecus in a large number of West European
countries (Belgium, Denmark, Greece, Italy, the
Netherlands, Spain and Sweden). This is why the
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range of tasks assigned to national libraries is
reduced in many cases merely to collecting, maintaining and circulating legal deposit publications,
and to providing national bibliographic services.
Moreover, the widespread diffusion of the Internet is
democratizing access to information and abolishing
more or less hierarchical levels among libraries.
The possibility of acting as a ‘clearing house’
for requests concerning national information resources may also give national libraries a pivotal role
within national library systems: by concentrating on
a more restricted set of functions and by co-ordinating national plans to access information, national
libraries are expected to play again a dominant role
in the new electronic environment.
Public libraries
According to European Commission statistics
(1995), expenditure on public libraries in Europe
increased from some 2,812 million ecus in 1981 to
3,338 million ecus in 1990, where both figures are
expressed at 1990 constant prices. The annual average increase represents, therefore, 1.9% over the
decade. Some 58% of public library expenditure was
spent on staff and 17.9% on acquisitions. It is important to note that while the public library sector represented 49.5% of total library expenditure from
1981 to 1985, this percentage is lower from 1986 to
1990 (48.2%). The number of service points
increased during the 1980s by 2.6%, which brings
the average population per service point to 3,550.
Only Germany, Austria, the United Kingdom and
the Scandinavian countries are below this average.
From one quinquennium to another, the average expenditure on acquisitions increased by 2.2%
yearly and represented an annual expenditure of 592
million ecus in 1986–90. Big efforts in collection
development are being made by the United
Kingdom and Germany (each spending more than
100 million ecus per year), the Netherlands
(51,442,601 ecus), France (46,640,429 ecus), Sweden
(55,047,146), Finland (48,287,196) and Denmark
(42,565,288).
The average number of library consultations in
the public library sector was estimated to be
1,819,866 million yearly in 1986–90 for the
European Union libraries, and 197,730 million for
EFTA countries. In relation to the public they serve,
library consultations are 5,351 per thousand population yearly in European Union public libraries and
6,145 in EFTA countries. Reading habits, therefore,
seem to reflect the historical divide which has for
centuries characterized literacy and cultural practices
in Northern and Southern Europe. Just as in the
eighteenth century, northern regions seem to have
far higher levels of literacy than southern regions.
The percentage of the population registered with
public libraries is as high as 65% in Denmark and
58% in the United Kingdom, but smaller percentages are found in the Netherlands (30%), Ireland
(19.5%), France (17%) and Germany (between 10
and 15%) (Poulain, 1992).
In Western Europe, legislation for public
libraries is very much linked with the general characteristics of the administrative law system in force in
the country. In general, two different models can be
detected: the ‘continental’ model, which is usually
based on a general framework that makes provisions
for local library systems, and the Anglo-Saxon
model, where duties of the local bodies or ‘authorities’ are determined by specific ‘Acts’. Within the
continental model, we must distinguish between federal and regional legislation on libraries, and the unitary states where the legislation is centralized.
Negative trends and stagnation are commonplace themes for public library budgets in Europe,
but certainly not for library activities. In order to
cope with declining reading habits, stocks of talking
books and audiovisual materials, whose consultation
is almost double that of traditional books, have been
reinforced. The list of public libraries providing
access to the Internet is also growing larger every
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day. Especially in Northern European countries,
special services are now being provided, such as reference services, business information, user-tailored
information and community information. Such
diversification of both library stocks and services has
raised the issue of free access to information. For
years, free services have been considered one of the
basic tenets for librarians. After animated discussions on this topic, the revised UNESCO-IFLA
Public Library Manifesto (see box, pp. 90-91) makes
a distinction between basic services, which should be
free of charge, and added-value services, for which
libraries should be enabled to cover their working
costs (Gattégno, 1994).
Even before this change was accepted, librarians seem to have adopted a pragmatic attitude, keeping principles on one side and using them only for
theoretical debates. According to the statistics provided by the European Commission, fees and
charges as a proportion of total library incomes have
increased slightly from an average of 2.99% for the
quinquennium 1981–85 to 3.16% for the quinquennium 1986–90. But in the public library sector, they
grew from some 90 million ecus in 1981 to 110 million ecus in 1990, where both figures are expressed at
1990 constant prices. This represents an annual average increase of 3.6%.
Champions of a market philosophy would find
even more arguments if their observations were limited to only a few countries. In the Netherlands, fees
and charges represent 9.6% of total expenditure for
libraries; they have increased, however, by 31% from
the quinquennium 1981–85 to 1986–90. And in spite
of a ‘weak’ increase by 19% from 1981–85 to
1986–90, fees and charges in Belgium now total
10% of the global library income. In the United
Kingdom data are more controversial: here, too,
fees and charges increased by 19% from the first to
the second quinquennium, but self-financing incomes reached only 2% of the overall library expenditure.
Academic libraries
The number of universities – and, as a consequence,
academic libraries – has grown tremendously in
recent years. Service points as a whole have increased
all over the European Union. They added up to
4,421 in 1981–85, and to 4,874 five years later (for
EFTA countries, the figures are, respectively, 1,308
and 1,361). At the same time, the budget allocated to
academic libraries increased from an annual average
of 946 million in 1981–85 to 1,079 million in 1986–90
(225 million to 265 million for EFTA countries)
(European Commission, 1995). It is noteworthy that
expenditure on academic libraries as a percentage of
overall library expenditure has globally expanded: it
went from 13.3% for the first quinquennium to
16.9% in the second (the phenomenon is less marked
in EFTA countries where percentages are, respectively, 15.9% and 17.5%). For the European Union,
staff numbers increased by 9% in five years (from
34,544 to 37,798; and from 3,803 to 4,246 in EFTA).
Whereas university library acquisitions represented
in 1986–90 20% of total library acquisitions, expenditure on them has grown from 14.5% of total
expenditure in 1981–85 to 31.6% in 1986–90. In
practice, expenditure for university library acquisitions has almost doubled in five years, whereas
acquisitions in terms of volume remain steady.
Disparities among European countries are
quite striking. While Germany and the United
Kingdom allocate, on average, respectively 385
million and 275 million ecus per year for their
university libraries, among the remaining countries
only in France and the Netherlands does the budget
go over 100 million ecus per year. In the other
European states it is generally well below 60 million
ecus. Library consultations also vary greatly in the
European countries. Their annual average number
is over 30 million only in the United Kingdom and
Germany, whereas it is below 10 million in countries with a relatively large population of higher-
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UNESCO-IFLA Public
Library Manifesto,
1994
example linguistic minorities, people with disabilities
Freedom, prosperity and the development of society
types of appropriate media and modern technologies
and of individuals are fundamental human values.
as well as traditional materials. High quality and
They will only be attained through the ability of
relevance to local needs and conditions are
well-informed citizens to exercise their democratic
fundamental.
or people in hospital or prison.
All age-groups must find material relevant to
their needs. Collections and services have to include all
rights and to play an active role in society.
Material must reflect current trends and the
Constructive participation and the development of
evolution of society, as well as the memory of human
democracy depend on satisfactory education as well as
endeavour and imagination.
on free and unlimited access to knowledge, thought,
culture and information.
The public library, the local gateway to
knowledge, provides a basic condition for lifelong
Collections and services should not be subject to
any form of ideological, political or religious
censorship, nor commercial pressures.
learning, independent decision-making and cultural
Missions of the public library
development of the individual and social groups.
The following key missions which relate to
This Manifesto proclaims UNESCO’s belief in the
information, literacy, education and culture should be
public library as a living force for education, culture
at the core of public library services:
and information, and as an essential agent for the
1.
fostering of peace and spiritual welfare through the
minds of men and women.
2.
UNESCO therefore encourages national and local
The public library
levels.
3.
4.
5.
and innovations.
6.
age, race, sex, religion, nationality, language or social
Providing access to cultural expressions of all
performing arts.
7.
provided for those users who cannot, for whatever
reason, use the regular services and materials, for
Promoting awareness of cultural heritage,
appreciation of the arts, scientific achievements
The services of the public library are provided on
status. Specific services and materials must be
Stimulating the imagination and creativity of
children and young people.
available to its users.
the basis of equality of access for all, regardless of
Providing opportunities for personal creative
development.
The public library is the local centre of information,
making all kinds of knowledge and information readily
Supporting both individual and self-conducted
education as well as formal education at all
governments to support and actively engage in the
development of public libraries.
Creating and strengthening reading habits in
children from an early age.
Fostering intercultural dialogue and favouring
cultural diversity.
8.
Supporting the oral tradition.
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9.
Ensuring access for citizens to all sorts of
local, regional, national as well as international
community information.
10.
11.
12.
Providing adequate information services to local
level – has to be ensured.
•
members of the community. This requires well-
Facilitating the development of information and
situated library buildings, good reading and
computer literacy skills.
study facilities, as well as relevant technologies
Supporting and participating in literacy
and sufficient opening hours convenient to the
activities and programmes for all age-groups,
users. It equally implies outreach services for
and initiating such activities if necessary.
Funding, legislation and networks
•
those unable to visit the library.
•
urban areas.
•
The librarian is an active intermediary between
local and national authorities. It must be
users and resources. Professional and continuing
supported by specific legislation and financed by
education of the librarian is indispensable to
national and local governments. It has to be an
essential component of any long-term strategy
•
The library services must be adapted to the
different needs of communities in rural and
The public library shall in principle be free of
charge. The public library is the responsibility of
•
Services have to be physically accessible to all
enterprises, associations and interest groups.
ensure adequate services.
•
Outreach and user education programmes have
for culture, information provision, literacy and
to be provided to help users benefit from all the
education.
resources.
To ensure nationwide library co-ordination and
co-operation, legislation and strategic plans
Implementing the Manifesto
must also define and promote a national library
Decision-makers at national and local levels and the
network based on agreed standards of service.
library community at large, around the world, are
The public library network must be designed in
hereby urged to implement the principles expressed in
relation to national, regional, research and
this Manifesto.
special libraries as well as libraries in schools,
colleges and universities.
Operation and management
•
A clear policy must be formulated, defining
objectives, priorities and services in relation to
the local community needs. The public library
has to be organized effectively and professional
•
standards of operation must be maintained.
The Manifesto is prepared in co-operation with the
Co-operation with relevant partners – for
International Federation of Library Associations and
example, user groups and other professionals at
Institutions (IFLA).
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education students, like France, Italy and Spain.
There are in Europe almost as many models of
academic library systems as there are countries:
libraries for which responsibility lies with the state
(Denmark, Portugal) or with regional governments
(Germany), libraries that have central co-ordinating
bodies (France) or are completely autonomous
(United Kingdom, Italy, Spain), libraries participating in an exclusively academic network (Sweden,
Norway) or sharing networks with public libraries
(the Netherlands, Italy). In order to overcome the
fragmentation of their administrative assets, academic libraries have oriented their policies towards
co-operation. Such a collaborative attitude may be
on a voluntary basis, as in the United Kingdom or
the Netherlands, or have a legal foundation, as in
France. The creation of common automated tools,
such as union catalogues, serial lists or databases of
special materials, as well as the diffusion of information technologies and networking, is creating the
requirement to improve co-operation on an informal
and often pragmatic basis.
On the eve of information superhighways, the
rapid growth of electronic document services may
raise questions about the copyright of documents
and restricted rights of reproduction (see Chapter
26). In the words of Renoult (1994, p. 273), these
‘may be more than technical problems; defining
agreement among authors and publishers is the
major problem of the nineties’.
Library networks in Europe
The increasing role of libraries within the information market depends very much on how library networks are going to develop in the future. Apart from
being a formidable tool for co-operation between,
and automation of, libraries, networks have undoubtedly boosted library activities. As they are
today part of a virtually worldwide interconnected
library via the Internet, the demand for library services is expected to increase at a remarkable speed.
The situation in Europe is rather ‘balkanized’,
as Jacquesson (1995) put it. Library networks
require, above all, continuing economic effort and
timely updating of technologies. As they are promoted by national administrations, it is no surprise
that every European state, except for Luxembourg,
has its own network – and very often more than just
one. Networks have been implemented in various
ways; in some cases, a top-down approach has led to
abstract patterns of application not always meeting
library needs. In categorizing these approaches, four
options may be identified: the regional, the administrative, the sectoral and the library system-related
option.
The regional approach is particularly notable in
the United Kingdom and Germany. In the United
Kingdom, for instance, three regional networks,
BLCMP, SWALCAP and VISCOUNT, interconnect libraries situated, respectively, in the
Birmingham, south-west and south-east regions. In
Germany there are almost as many Verbundsysteme
as there are Länder. Achievements are indeed varied
and leave gaps in library development. Regional discrepancies may be fatal: SCOLCAP (Scottish
Libraries Co-operative Automation Project), which
had long been in existence, did not survive its
restructuring. Even more sensational has been the
disappearance of the Swiss network REBUS (Réseau
des Bibliothèques Utilisant Sibil), which was recently disbanded by its funding bodies.
The administrative option is typical in countries where a top-down approach for library policy
and development is usual. France offers a good
example. For a long time, library automation has
been implemented in isolation, with the
Bibliothèque Nationale going on a different track
from research libraries. The new project of the
Bibliothèque Nationale de France brings together
some twenty libraries, mainly academic, for the purpose of co-operative cataloguing and acquisitions; it
seems likely to lead eventually to the long-desired
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automated French union catalogue. The result of this
top-down option is that networked information
(BN-OPALE, the database of the Bibliothèque
Nationale de France, Pancatalogue, the database of
French university libraries, and Catalogue collectif
national des publications en série) preceded the
automation of library functions.
The sectoral approach is to be found especially
in the Scandinavian countries, where the division
between public and academic libraries is traditional.
Not surprisingly, when automation was implemented two distinct networks emerged. Only in
Denmark did a political decision provoke the
merging of the two networks a few years ago.
In recent years there has been a tendency to
interconnect libraries using the same automated
library systems. Clubs of users spread all over
Europe. In Spain, for instance, libraries using similar
systems (like ALEPH or TINLIB) share resources
thanks to the compatibility of their automated functions. Although this option may not be appropriate
for all European countries, its easy implementation
will certainly make such an approach more and more
popular.
‘The golden age of networks is now over’, in
the opinion of Jacquesson (1995, p. 207). Library
networks blossomed during the 1980s, when they
represented a real advance in library automation and
working methodologies. Nowadays, the growing
costs of their maintenance and management, the concurrent development of laser technologies (as optical
disks), navigation on the Internet, and the emergence
of integrated library systems working with standardized protocols on UNIX platforms have diminished
their importance as bibliographic databases. They
are no longer considered to be permanent, as the disappearance of REBUS, SCOLCAP and LIBRA (a
French network) clearly illustrates. Their life is in
danger unless they are able to provide new valueadded services. This has been the case for PICA
(Integrated Catalogue Automation Project), which
started as a department within the Hague Royal
Library, with the aim of improving co-operation
between the national library and university libraries,
and has now been privatized.
Library and information schools
The last review of initial education for librarianship
in Europe dates back to 1990, when the International
Federation of Library Associations and Institutions
(IFLA) carried out an investigation of courses
offered by library schools in the twelve countries of
the European Community. The study was focused in
particular on the information technology content of
curricula (IFLA, 1990). Looking back at the results
of such an investigation, it is easy to note that only
six years ago information studies were still considered an innovative discipline. Today, information
and communication technologies are permeating
all programmes and new information technologyoriented courses have been developed in most of the
library and information schools of Europe.
Not only has the nature of the studies changed,
but also their status. In 1990, many library schools
were considered as providers of professional education and therefore included in the national vocational training schemes. Today, schools are fully integrated in the higher-education system. Many trends
can therefore be detected.
The first is a tendency towards diversification.
The number of options and special subjects has
increased, in order to meet a demand for abilities and
skills likely to be applied in a variety of contexts. All
important schools in Europe provide a wide range of
options for different groups of students and information communities.
In 1990 the number of schools offering Master’s
and Ph.D. programmes was very low. Today the situation is rather the opposite. Although there are still
countries, like Italy or Germany, where doctoral
studies do not exist, many other countries provide
this opportunity. Other interesting trends in library
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and information studies are, on the one hand, the
emphasis on information management in library curricula and, on the other, the favour which comparative and international librarianship enjoys today.
The only way to assess library school curricula
is to see whether their content corresponds to the
jobs offered by libraries and the competencies and
skills that are required. An interesting survey carried
out by the Direction de l’Information Scientifique
des Technologies Nouvelles et des Bibliothèques
(DISTB) of the French Ministry of Education identified no less than thirty-one jobs in French libraries
(Université de Paris, 1995). In general, jobs identified
in libraries are very obviously linked with library
collections (cataloguing, acquisitions, collection
development etc.), library management and automation. Some new and/or more specific jobs, however,
are starting to become full-time positions in some
libraries or groups of libraries; these include research
and development, management of access to collections, and conservation.
It is no surprise to discover that cataloguing, in
particular, is a skill which is superseded now by a
more general competence in access to, and management of, bibliographic data. According to the same
investigation, thirteen competencies corresponding
to traditional library work were detected (library
management, cataloguing, normalization, information retrieval, etc.). Together with them, nineteen
more general competencies not specific to libraries
were also identified and seem just as essential.
Among these are included law, management, computing science, statistics, foreign languages and marketing. In the face of such a large number of general
competencies, one may reasonably ask whether there
is still a need to have specific schools for librarianship as such or if specific library curricula should be
included as special subjects in more general courses
of studies; paradoxically, library and information
schools may be the victims of the success of information studies.
Library associations
In 1992, EBLIDA, the European Board of Libraries,
Information and Documentation Associations, came
into existence. With its thirty-eight full members and
some eighty associate members, EBLIDA acts as the
representative voice of the library and information
science profession in European matters, and serves
its interests.
The objectives of EBLIDA are to foster consultation between members on matters of common
concern and to act as a channel of communication
between members, and above all between members
and the European Union organizations. Although it
operates mainly within the European Union, EBLIDA is intending to become a forum for all European
organizations, both in the Western and Eastern parts
of Europe.
If we limit our analysis to the restricted sample
of EBLIDA members, disparities in the status and
size of professional organizations seem to mirror discrepancies in library developments in Europe. The
bulk of its members comes from Northern Europe, in
particular from the United Kingdom and Scandinavia.
Especially in Scandinavian countries, the visibility of
library associations is also ensured by the fact that
some of them work as library staff trade unions.
The objectives of library associations are more
or less the same all over Europe. All of them promote librarianship by encouraging readership and
looking after the interests of their members. Many of
them are active in providing training programmes, in
promoting staff exchanges, in organizing symposia
and conferences, and in publishing journals and bulletins. Some publish extensively in library science
and lobby for librarians’ interests within national
parliaments. Only a few contribute to fix minimal
standards for library education and assess governmental policies for libraries.
Though similar in the objectives they pursue,
the structure and size of library associations differ
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greatly in Europe, and not only because of regional
disparities. For a country with a strong tradition of
regionalism and particularism, it is remarkable that
the Italian library association managed to maintain
its unity, thanks to a flexible structure and the creation of regional boards. Such an achievement was
impossible in Spain, where library and information
associations are fragmented by both regions and sectors of activity, although there has been an attempt
to create an umbrella organization (FESABID).
In Germany, four associations, divided both by
sector (academic and public librarians) and by rank
(librarians and sublibrarians) formed in 1989 the
Bundesvereinigung Deutscher Bibliotheksverbände.
Even in France, where centralism is (or has been) a
national belief, the effort to keep librarians unified
has been unsuccessful and the Association des
Bibliothécaires Français (ABF) does not represent
the whole of the French profession.
Conclusions
Technological change, the ‘convergence’ phenomenon and electronic publishing are going to affect
profoundly the prospects of libraries and documentation centres. However, rather than being sectorally
oriented, their future will depend very much on how
the chains of which they are essential links – the
book and the information chains – evolve.
In relation to the book chain, not many
changes are to be expected. A long-established practice and well-settled distinction of roles between
publishers, librarians and booksellers does not leave
room for surprise. The European print industry
is expected to grow from 18,500 million ecus to
27,200 million ecus for the year 2000 (European
Communities, 1993). Libraries, therefore, have only
to adapt themselves to the increased flow of printed
material. Some issues at stake between publishers
and librarians, like lending rights and copyright, may
create matters of contention in some countries (see
Chapters 23 and 26).
A trend, however, may be noted. By virtue of
information technologies applied to networked
libraries, the traditional frontiers among categories
of libraries are now blurred. Since it is possible to
disseminate information through all points of the
network, users can access it from all service points.
Library models, which are sectoral and based on the
category of users they serve, therefore need fresh
updating. In other words, the topical distinction
between, say, a public and an academic library is
starting to fade.
In relation to the information chain, competencies normally used in libraries are now highly
demanded. The convergence phenomenon has
enlarged the range of actors working in the information sector and, therefore, increased the need for
skills in information management. This will have
opposite effects on libraries: on the one hand, it may
incite former library users to leapfrog intermediate
links and to go directly to the sources of information. On the other hand, it may cause libraries to
acquire different functions in the new electronic
environment and to ‘converge’ with other sectors of
electronic publishing into new forms of information
production and distribution.
In general, there are two strategic roles that
libraries can play in the information environment.
The first role is to act as active agents in the information industry. Although it can be said that this is practically the old library work differently labelled, the
difference lies in the fact that libraries act now as commercial agents. This has not only enriched library
budgets, but has also transformed librarians’ work by
making it more similar to that of information brokers.
In a limited number of cases, the new electronic
environment may encourage libraries to be producers of the information they (or their parent institution) own. This is already the case for libraries holding rare books and unique collections. But – and this
may be an important effect of electronic publishing
on libraries – academic libraries wishing to dissemi-
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nate the results of research undertaken by their parent institution into the vast ocean of the Internet
may choose to be information producers by acting in
practice as an academic press.
It is an illusion, however, to think that 95,800
libraries in Europe can immediately turn into businesses and start to make profit. In fact – and this is
the second major role played by libraries in the
information environment – technological advances
and electronic publishing will reinforce their cultural
and educational mission. It is well known that, in
addition to primary and functional illiteracy, computer illiteracy is going to widen the gap between
favoured and less favoured regions and groups of
populations in Europe. There is much evidence to
suggest that in future the dual society will grow larger, and not become smaller.
Many people were struck, I suppose, by the
results of a recent investigation on adult illiteracy
carried out by the OECD (1995). In contrast to the
traditional means of assessment, adult illiteracy was
not defined in terms of levels of education (completed
number of years in primary and secondary school),
but as a broad set of information-processing competencies; in other words, how adults use written
information to function in society. It was a surprise
to discover that in countries where literacy is considered to be high and there is a large percentage of people who have completed their first cycle of studies,
such as Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland,
from 6% to 14% of interviewees were unable to
make any inference from the information presented
in a weather chart, a newspaper or a diagram.
In interacting with electronic publishing products, the general public will have to overcome one
more barrier. In addition to the classical ‘three Rs’
competencies, reading, writing and arithmetic, they
will have to use new kinds of literacy in society, such
as visual and technological literacy. There is a need,
therefore, to start a new literacy ‘movement’ – and
impetus for it should be given now.
By the year 2000, between 8% and 18% of the
European book market will be electronic, with peaks
of 15% to 25% for children’s literature and 20% to
30% for scientific, technical and medical literature
(European Communities, 1993). Libraries will have
to carry, within the educational system, the great
responsibility of raising the overall levels of literacy
and of reducing cultural gaps between groups of
populations. They will have to be the essential liaison between users, who will inevitably be more illiterate, and knowledge, that will inevitably be more
redundant and therefore more complicated to access.
They will have to be prepared to cope with printed,
online and offline products distributed through a
great variety of channels and carriers. While their
functions and tasks may change, their ultimate mission will have to be more than ever cultural and educational. This is a further confirmation of the accuracy of the statement made in the UNESCO-IFLA
Public Library Manifesto, in which libraries are considered to be ‘a basic condition for lifelong learning,
independent decision-making and cultural development of the individual and social groups’. ■■
References
ANCILLANI, G. 1992. Il mercato del libro. Le prospettive
dell’editoria nel Mercato Unico Europeo. Perugia,
Protagon.
BRITISH LIBRARY. 1992. Nineteenth Annual Report
1991–92. London, British Library Board.
——. 1994. Twenty-first Annual Report 1993–94. London,
British Library Board.
EUROPEAN COMMISSION. 1995. Library Economics in
Europe. An Update – 1981–1990. By Phillip Ramsdale. Luxembourg, Directorate General XIII –
Telecommunications, Information Market and
Exploitation of Research. (EUR 15903EN.)
EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES. COMMISSION. 1993. Opportunities for Publishers in the Information Market.
Luxembourg, Directorate-General of Information
Technologies and Industries and Telecommunications. (EN 114926.)
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GATTÉGNO, J. 1994. UNESCO Public Library Manifesto.
Libri, Vol. 44, No. 2, pp. 164–70.
IFLA. 1990. Information Technology Content of Initial
Professional Education and Training for Librarianship in the European Community. By Jan van der
Starre. Amsterdam, Amsterdam Institute of Polytechnics, Faculty of Information and Communication.
JACQUESSON, A. 1995. L’informatisation des bibliothéques.
Historique, stratégie et perspectives. 2nd ed. Paris,
Éditions du Cercle de la Librairie.
LINE, M. B. 1989. National Library and Information
Needs: Alternative Means of Fulfilment, with Special
Reference to the Role of National Libraries. Paris,
UNESCO.
ORGANISATION FOR ECONOMIC CO-OPERATION AND
DEVELOPMENT (OECD)/MINISTRY OF INDUSTRY,
CANADA. 1995. Literacy, Economy and Society.
Results of the First International Adult Illiteracy
Survey. Paris, OECD.
POULAIN, M. (ed.). 1992. Les bibliothéques publiques en
Europe. Paris, Éditions du Cercle de la Librarie.
RENOULT, D. (ed.). 1994. Les bibliothèques dans l’université. Paris, Éditions du Cercle de la Librarie.
SYLVESTRE, G. 1987. Guidelines for National Libraries.
Paris, UNESCO.
UNIVERSITÉ DE PARIS X – MÉDIADIX. 1995. Premier
recensement des métiers des bibliothèques. Edited by
Anne Kupiek. Paris, Université de Paris X.
Giuseppe Vitiello is in charge of the
‘Books and Archives’ Programme of
the Council of Europe and is Visiting
Professor at the Hochschule für
Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaft in Stuttgart, Germany. After working as
Professor of Italian and Linguistics, respectively, at the
Universities of Toulouse and Orléans, he joined the
National Library of Florence where he was Assistant
to the Director and Head of the R&D Department.
From 1989 to 1991 he worked for DG XIII of the
European Commission as expert for the Libraries
Programme. He has been consultant for various firms
and for the Portuguese Government. In the field of
library and information science, his publications
include, among others, Il centro bibliografico
nazionale (Rome, 1988), Il deposito legale nell’Europa
comunitaria (Milano, 1994) and Le biblioteche europee
nella prospettiva comparata (Ravenna, 1996).
Giuseppe Vitiello
Special Adviser, Books and Archives
Council of Europe
F-67075 Strasbourg Cedex
France
Tel: 88-41-20-00
Fax: 88-41-27-81/82/83
E-mail: [email protected]
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Chapter 7
Canada and the
U n i t e d S t a t e s*
Carole R. Moore
University of Toronto,
Canada
Peter I. Hajnal
University of Toronto,
Canada
Ralph W. Manning
National Library of Canada,
Canada
C
anada and the United States both have a long
and honourable tradition of library and information service to the public as well as to a
wider constituency of institutions and other groups.
This chapter is a brief survey of public libraries,
school libraries, college and university libraries, special libraries and information services, commercial
services, national libraries and national scientific and
technical information units, professional associations, educational and training institutions and programmes, library legislation, and information and
communications policy in the two countries, highlighting current status, recent developments and
trends.
Public libraries
The 1995–96 edition of the American Library
Directory counts 9,101 public libraries in the United
States; when branches are included for those public
libraries that have a branch system, the figure rises to
15,273. These public libraries serve a potential population of 247,527,000, leaving only 6,288,000 unserved. Maine and New Mexico have the highest percentages (24.2% and 37.3% respectively) unserved.
The 1996 Directory of Libraries in Canada reports
2,463 public libraries in Canada, including branches.
These libraries potentially serve 25,454,000 Canadians,
leaving 1,434,000 unserved (1991 Census). Manitoba
is the province with the highest percentage (25.4%)
unserved.
In the United States an increasing number of
librarians have come to realize that the most recent
period of fiscal conservatism is not the downside of a
finite economic cycle but rather the new economic
reality (St Lifer, 1995). Yet public libraries have been
able to achieve a positive record: over a five-year
period since the beginning of fiscal restraint in
1990–91, 85% of public libraries responding to a
* The authors gratefully acknowledge research assistance
ably provided by Gillian Clinton.
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Library Journal survey reported budget increases
averaging 7% annually, with materials budgets
increasing by 8% and salaries by 7% per year. Staff
increases were reported by 27% of responding public libraries, while 10% suffered cuts. The latest
figures of funding sources for American public
libraries, reported in the 1995 edition of The Bowker
Annual: Library and Book Trade Almanac, were:
local resources, 47.46%; county resources, 29.42%;
state resources, 13.3%; fees and fines, 3.1%;
fundraising, 1.07%; federal funding, 1.4%; and the
remainder from other varied sources.
At a time of decreasing government funding,
public libraries have had to find other means of support. In Canada, for example, the Vancouver Public
Library has built partnerships with the corporate
sector, and the Regina (Saskatchewan) Public
Library and the Thunder Bay (Ontario) Public
Library have launched fee-based research services
(Haycock and Brigham, 1996).
School libraries
The Bowker Annual (1995) reports that the latest
United States budget failed to provide earmarked
funds for school library materials in the Elementary
and Secondary Education Act, nor did it fund the
Library Services and Construction Act even at the
previous year’s level.
In Canada, the government is implementing a
strategy to expedite the creation of information
highway infrastructure and content in Canadian
schools (see Chapter 21). By 1995, over 6,000 of
Canada’s 16,500 schools were connected to the
Internet, as are over 100 of the 400 First Nations
schools. School libraries tend to be focal points
in this area. On the other hand, the proliferation
of information technology in schools has often
occurred apart from existing school library resource
centres and school librarians. This has at times led to
a lack of understanding by school boards and other
decision-makers of the role of teacher-librarians, and
a parallel development of insufficient participation
by teacher-librarians in ‘mainstream’ librarianship
(Haycock and Brigham, 1996).
College and university libraries
There are 4,684 academic libraries in the United
States, of which 1,261 are junior college libraries
(including 107 departmental, seven medical and three
religious libraries) and 3,423 university and college
libraries (including 1,482 departmental, 176 law, 210
medical and 105 religious libraries). According to the
American Library Directory (1995–96), Canada has
503 academic libraries, of which 137 are junior college libraries (including forty-three departmental,
one medical and three religious ones) and 366 university and college libraries (including 175 departmental, eighteen law, sixteen medical and eighteen
religious libraries). The Directory of Libraries in
Canada (1996) reports 700 college and university
libraries.
In an environment of ever-shrinking budgets
and consequent cuts in staffing and services,
resource-sharing and networking have become
essential. In Canada, three southern Ontario universities (Wilfrid Laurier University, the University of
Guelph and the University of Waterloo) have agreed
to co-ordinate their collections and services, emphasizing electronic information resources. The University of British Columbia is expanding resourcesharing in the life sciences with academic libraries in
the north-western United States. Another response
to reduced collection budgets has been the cancellation, often on a massive scale and on a regular basis,
of serial subscriptions (Haycock and Brigham,
1996). Because of Canada’s immense size and relatively small population, Canadian libraries have also
responded to the needs of students in areas of low
population density by providing distance education
programmes, increasingly through television broadcasts or through the Internet. Examples of libraries
serving universities which support only distance
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education are Athabasca University in Alberta,
Télé Université in Quebec and the Open Learning
Agency in British Columbia.
Special libraries and information services
The 1996 edition of the Directory of Special Libraries
and Information Centers lists over 18,000 special
libraries in the United States and Canada. Reflecting
differences in data collection and presentation, the
American Library Directory (1995–96) shows 11,280
special libraries (including armed forces and governmental libraries, as well as special libraries that are
academic or public) in the United States, and 1,524
special libraries (including public, academic and
governmental ones) in Canada. The Directory of
Libraries in Canada (1996) identifies 2,403 special
libraries, of which 746 are governmental.
Rising costs and shrinking budgets, particularly
within the public sector, have caused many organizations to re-evaluate their information requirements.
The result has been a reduction in the number of
special and government libraries through closures
and mergers. This has often precipitated increased
information requests from the surviving agencies.
Another response has been greater resource-sharing
than before. In Canada, there is a trend to distribute
government information on a cost-recovery basis,
and the Canadian Association of Special Libraries
and Information Services has begun formulating information policies and standards for special libraries
(Haycock and Brigham, 1996).
Commercial services and products
The FISCAL Directory of Fee-based Research and
Document Supply Services (1993) lists 445 fee-based
services provided by major research universities,
special and public libraries and commercial firms
worldwide, including about 330 in the United States
and fifteen in Canada. Increasing numbers of highly
qualified librarians, architects, library planners and
other information specialists are available as private
contractors for the information sector. The 1994
Directory of Canadian Library and Information
Science Consultants lists 175 consultants working in
specialties ranging from cataloguing and indexing to
database design, editing, records management and
library administration.
National libraries and national scientific
and technical information units
The Library of Congress, the world’s largest library,
serves the research needs of the United States Congress (notably through the Congressional Research
Service), other branches of the United States
Government, and libraries and the scholarly community in the United States and in all parts of the
world. In 1994, the Library of Congress responded
to over 1.4 million reference queries and requests for
research assistance, accommodated 800,865 visitors
and users of the collections, and provided 36,000 free
interlibrary loans within the United States. It has
made progress in developing the National Digital
Library, aiming through a coalition of major institutions to digitize 5 million images by the year 2000.
Other important projects involve preservation of
library materials, the provision of online resources to
the Congressional Research Service, and the Center
for the Book, and a very active publication programme.
The National Agricultural Library, although
slated to merge into the United States Department of
Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service, will
remain the national library in its field. The National
Library of Medicine, serving the health sciences
community, has expanded its online service,
MEDLINE, and continues to create new databases
and maintain its major publications programme.
The Educational Resources Information Center
(ERIC) – the research arm of the United States
Department of Education’s Office of Educational
Research – and the recently established National
Library of Education serve national needs in their
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sector. The National Technical Information Service
(NTIS) is the central resource for scientific, technical, engineering and business-related United States
Government information.
The National Library of Canada was established in 1953 and is governed by Canadian federal
legislation. Its role is to preserve Canada’s published
heritage and promote Canadian studies, to foster the
development of library resources and services
throughout the country, and to support resourcesharing on a national scale. The National Librarian
co-ordinates federal government library services and
administers the legal deposit regulations which
require that two copies of current Canadian publications be deposited with the library. The library
acquires, maintains and preserves a comprehensive
collection of Canadian materials with special emphasis on Canadian history, Canadian music and music
in Canada, children’s literature, and rich collections of newspapers and government documents.
The library publishes the national bibliography,
Canadiana, which lists new publications relating to
Canada; maintains and makes available union catalogues of books, periodicals, newspapers and special-format materials for disabled readers; offers
interlibrary loan, reference and advisory services to
libraries and to researchers; and supports the application of technological advances to library systems.
The research needs of the Parliament of Canada
are provided by the Library of Parliament, which is
distinct from the National Library of Canada.
Established in 1841, the size and quality of its collections make it one of the most important libraries in
Canada.
Canada’s National Research Council (NRC) –
for eighty years the principal science and technology
research agency of the Canadian Federal Government – performs and supports research across the
country, and assists thousands of clients every year
through the Canada Institute for Scientific and
Technical Information (CISTI), the Industrial
Research Assistance Program and the Canadian
Technology Network. NRC provides worldwide
scientific, technical and medical information through
CISTI. CISTI operates a range of services that rely
on the expertise of information specialists, and maintains one of the largest collections of published
information in science, technology, engineering and
medicine in North America. CISTI’s new search
engine accesses all NRC Web servers and more than
14,000 documents. CISTI publishes a listing of the
scientific and technical serials in over 300 Canadian
libraries: the Union List of Scientific Serials in
Canadian Libraries, which is available in print and
on CD-ROM (Romulus). A medical subset of the
Union List, Canadian Locations of Journals Indexed
for MEDLINE, is published annually. CISTI also
offers information service packages, tailored to
clients’ needs.
Professional associations in library and
information science
The 1996 edition of the Encyclopedia of Associations
lists 101 library-related associations in North
America. The foremost United States national association is the American Library Association (ALA),
which has eleven divisions devoted to special functions or types of libraries. Founded in 1876, ALA
had, as of 1 August 1995, 2,780 organizational and
53,664 personal members. The association’s current
budget is US$31,597,153. There are also many specialized associations outside ALA, covering law,
medicine, music and numerous other fields, as well
as a variety of networks, consortia, and state and
regional associations.
There are more than 200 professional associations in library and information science in Canada.
The most important ones are the Canadian Library
Association (CLA) – with 4,000 individual and 900
organizational members, and an annual operating
budget of about C$1.5 million – and its francophone
counterpart, the Association pour l’Avancement des
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Sciences et des Techniques de la Documentation
(ASTED). In addition, there are provincial associations such as the British Columbia Library
Association, the Ontario Library Association and
the Association des Bibliothécaires du Québec.
School librarians have the Canadian School Library
Association (a division of CLA) and the independent
Association for Teacher-librarianship in Canada. For
special libraries there is the Canadian Association of
Special Libraries and Information Services (a division of CLA) as well as associations focused on a
particular sector, such as the Canadian Health
Libraries Association and the Canadian Association
of Law Libraries. Academic library associations
include the Canadian Association of College and
University Libraries (a division of CLA), the
Canadian Association of Research Libraries and the
Canadian Association of Small University Libraries,
among others.
taining to: (1) mission, goals and objectives; (2) curriculum; (3) faculty; (4) students; (5) administration
and financial support; and (6) physical resources and
facilities. The standards stress innovation, and
encourage an active role and concern for future
developments and growth in the field.
The ALISE Library and Information Science
Education Statistical Report for 1995 – which publishes data for United States and Canadian institutions – shows, for the two countries, 3,783 ALAaccredited Master’s degrees awarded to women and
1,022 to men in 1993–94; in the same academic year,
35 doctoral degrees and 99 Bachelor’s degrees were
awarded to women, and 13 doctoral degrees and 120
Bachelor’s degrees to men. The corresponding
figures for 1983–84 were: 2,942 Master’s degrees for
women and 732 for men; 44 doctoral degrees for
women and 36 for men; and 56 Bachelor’s degrees
for women and 8 for men.
Educational and training institutions and
programmes
Library legislation
The Bowker Annual: Library and Book Trade
Almanac (1995) refers to more than 200 academic
institutions in North America offering programmes
in librarianship. The 1995–96 Directory of the
Association for Library and Information Science
Education lists fifty-seven graduate schools of
library and information science – fifty in the United
States and seven in Canada (as compared to fiftynine and seven, respectively, in 1985) with programmes accredited by ALA. Accreditation assures
the educational community, the general public, and
other agencies or organizations that an institution or
programme: (a) has clearly defined and educationally
appropriate objectives; (b) maintains conditions
under which their achievement can reasonably be
expected; (c) is, in fact, accomplishing them substantially; and (d) can be expected to do so. Reviewed
every seven years, programmes are evaluated on the
basis of six standards (revised 1992) specifically per-
In the United States a very important piece of
legislation in 1994 authorized assistance to media
resources in school libraries: P.L. 103–382 was signed
by President Clinton on 20 October of that year.
In its budget for fiscal year 1995, the Clinton administration requested $83,277,000 for public library
services under the Library Services and Construction Act, Title I, and $19.7 million for interlibrary
co-operation under Title III of the same Act. Zero
funding was recommended for all other library programmes under the Act (public library construction,
foreign-language materials and library literacy programmes). Noteworthy among other United States
legislative concerns was a recommendation by ALA
that Congress enact a law on a National Commission on New Technological Uses. In the area of
United States government information, P.L. 103–40,
the GPO (Government Printing Office) Information
Access Enhancement Act was especially important.
A five-year re-authorization of the Paperwork
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Reduction Act was not enacted by the House of
Representatives (Henderson, 1995). In the realm of
copyright – of major importance to libraries – the
Copyright Reform Act of 1993 was not passed by
the United States Congress (Platt, 1995).
Canada is a federal state comprising ten
provinces – each with its own legislature, executive
and judiciary – and two territories. Culture and education are within the purview of the provincial
governments or territorial administrations; legislation concerning libraries is therefore decentralized
among these governments. Most provinces have
provincial library services, and every province and
territory has a centralized agency administering its
own jurisdiction’s public library statute. On a
national scale, the key pieces of legislation affecting
libraries deal with the National Library of Canada
and with copyright. In May 1995 an amendment to
the legal deposit provisions in the National Library
Act came into effect, eliminating the exception that
had allowed publishers to deposit only one copy of a
publication instead of the usual two copies if the
retail price exceeded C$50. Other amendments to
the Act increased the maximum fine for failure to
comply with the legal deposit provisions, and
extended the application of the statutory provisions
to include federal government publications. The
National Library Book Deposit Regulations were
revised as well, introducing new exemption criteria
for deposit. In May 1996 the government tabled a
bill in Parliament to amend the Canadian Copyright
Act. The proposed amendments include exceptions
for libraries that would permit copying for purposes
of preservation and would allow making a single
copy of a periodical article for a library patron
intending to use the article for research or private
study.
Information and communications policy
The United States National Information Infrastructure (NII), promoted by the Clinton-Gore
administration from the very beginning of its term,
embraces a wide spectrum of information and communications: ‘people [who] create, publish, organize,
preserve, manage and use information . . . ; information content . . . ; hardware and other physical components . . . ; software and news groups . . . ; standards, codes, regulations, and other policies . . . ’
(Bearman and Wallace, 1995). NII is built on the following principles and goals: promote private sector
investment; extend the ‘universal service’ concept; be
a catalyst to promote technological innovation and
new applications; promote seamless, interactive,
user-driven operation; ensure information security
and network reliability; improve management of the
radio frequency spectrum; protect intellectual property rights; co-ordinate with other levels of government and with other nations; and provide access to
government information and improve government
procurement. To implement NII, the United States
Government has established an interagency Information Infrastructure Task Force, appointed a
private-sector Advisory Council on the NII, and
decided to strengthen and streamline federal communications and information policy-making agencies (see Chapter 21).
Canadian Federal Government information
policy is articulated in a set of legislation and policies
which cover the following areas: security, access to
information, privacy, management of government
information holdings, communications, federal identity and management of information technology. The
federal Depository Services Program ensures availability of government publications to the public
through a network of full and selective depository
libraries. The Blueprint for Renewing Government
Services Using Information Technology, issued in
March 1994, outlines the government’s strategy for
moving toward electronic delivery of information
and services.
Canadian governments, both at the federal and
the provincial levels, have adopted strategies con-
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cerning the information highway. The federal government’s Information Highway Advisory Council
submitted its final report, entitled Connection,
Community, Content: The Challenge of the Information Highway, in September 1995 (see Chapter
21).
The Stentor Alliance, a group representing
Canada’s major telephone and telecommunication
companies, has supported the Council’s recommendations, but negotiations which will affect Canadian
libraries must still take place. CLA and ASTED have
called for as many groups as possible to have a voice
in policy-making in order for Canadians to benefit
from the information highway (Haycock and
Brigham, 1996).
Concluding remarks
Libraries and information services in North America
are well developed at every level. Despite the
inevitable vicissitudes in levels of financial support
due to changing economic circumstances, libraries
enjoy widespread support in both public and private
sectors. The public library infrastructure represents a
key component in the provision of equitable access
to information and the continuing development of
an informed citizenry. An array of new and old private libraries and information services continues to
develop valued services in an era in which locating
relevant information efficiently is more important
than ever.
North American libraries in all sectors face
enormous changes arising from the revolution in
information technology, occurring in an environment of severe economic constraint. A number of
trends have emerged as libraries adapt to these
challenges. Downsizing has led to increasing coordination and resource-sharing among libraries.
Streamlining of acquisitions and technical processing
activities, and increasing focus on public service
activities, is apparent in nearly all institutions.
Further development of consortia is evident and
many such new organizations are emerging, for
example the Consortium for the Preservation and
Enhanced Use of Canada’s Audio-Visual Heritage
and the National Digital Library Federation (United
States).
Coming to grips with the emerging ‘digital
library’ is a current concern in all areas of librarianship and information service. At present, libraries are
frequently acting in the role of gatekeepers for the
Internet, and librarians are serving as information
specialists in assisting their clientele to locate critical
information and in educating users to find information themselves. Gradually, libraries and archives are
expected to integrate digital information fully into
their traditional preservation and access activities, so
that they can prepare for the twenty-first century
with confidence. ■■
References
BEARMAN, T. C.; WALLACE, D. A. 1995. National
Information Infrastructure. In: The Bowker Annual:
Library and Book Trade Almanac, 1995, 40th ed.,
pp. 65–9. New Providence, N.J., Bowker.
HAYCOCK, K.; BRIGHAM, D. 1996. Trends and Issues in
Library and Information Services in Canada, 1995.
In: The Bowker Annual: Library and Book Trade
Almanac, 1996, 41st ed., pp. 267–71. New Providence, N.J., Bowker.
HENDERSON, C. C. 1995. Legislation and Regulations
Affecting Libraries in 1994. In: The Bowker Annual:
Library and Book Trade Almanac, 1995, 40th ed.,
pp. 251–66. New Providence, N.J., Bowker.
PLATT, J. 1995. Legislation and Regulations Affecting
Publishing in 1994. In: The Bowker Annual: Library
and Book Trade Almanac, 1995, 40th ed. New
Providence, N.J., Bowker.
ST LIFER E. 1995. LJ News Report: Public Libraries Meet
Fiscal Reality Head On. In: The Bowker Annual:
Library and Book Trade Almanac, 1995, 40th ed.,
pp. 3–10. New Providence, N.J., Bowker.
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Canada and
t h e U n i t e d S t a t105e s
Carole Moore has served as Chief
Peter I. Hajnal is International
Librarian at the University of Toronto
Organizations and Government
since 1986, where she recently chaired
Information Specialist in the
the Provost’s Task Force on the
University of Toronto Library and
Electronic Library System. Her
Adjunct Professor at the University’s
professional interests include using digital methods to
Faculty of Information Studies, where he teaches
preserve and disseminate our intellectual heritage. She
graduate courses in government information and
has served as President of the Canadian Association of
international documentation. He is also co-director of
Research Libraries, and is currently on the Board of
the University’s G7 Summit Research Group. He
Directors of the University of Toronto Press, the
holds and MS(LS) honours degree from Columbia
Association of Research Libraries and the Research
University and has pursued graduate studies in
Libraries Group. She has also served on the National
international relations. He has written, edited or
Library of Canada Advisory Board and received the
published a number of books, articles, bibliographies
Columbia University School of Library Service
and reviews, mostly in the field of international
Distinguished Alumni Award in 1987. She received
organization documentation and information,
and AB from Stanford University and an MS from
including the United Nations system. He has been a
Columbia University.
member of the editorial boards of specialized reviews
in this field.
Carole R. Moore
Chief Librarian
Peter I. Hajnal
University of Toronto Library
International Organizations and
130 St George Street
Government Information Specialist
Toronto
University of Toronto Library
Ontario M5S 1A1
130 St George Street
Canada
Toronto
Tel: 416-978-2292
Ontario M5S 1A1
Fax: 416-971-2099
Canada
E-mail: [email protected]
Tel: 416-978-4825
Fax: 416-978-7653
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Ralph W. Manning is Heritage
Officer (National and International
Programs) at the National Library of
Canada. He holds a BA from the
University of Toronto, an MA from
Carleton University and an MLS from the University
of Western Ontario. He chaired the Task Force on
Canadian Library Statistics in 1987/88 and is
responsible for the National Core Library Statistics
Program now being undertaken by the National
Library of Canada. Mr Manning is active in the
international cataloguing community and is Chairman
of the Joint Steering Committee for Revision of
AACR. He is also a member of the IFLA Professional
Board. One of Mr Manning’s key activities at present
is the co-ordination of national and international
activities in the area of preservation of library
materials.
Ralph W. Manning
Heritage Officer
National and International Programs
National Library of Canada
395 Wellington Street
Ottawa
Ontario K1A 0N4
Canada
Tel: 613-943-8570
Fax: 613-947-2916
E-mail: [email protected]
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Chapter 8
Latin America and
the Caribbean
Estela Morales Campos
Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México,
Mexico
T
he term Latin America conventionally designates an ensemble of eighteen countries,
seventeen of them Spanish-speaking (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba,
Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay
and Venezuela) and one Portuguese-speaking country (Brazil). The Caribbean, sometimes also called
the Antilles or West Indies, is made up of independent countries as well as several islands that are part
of European countries or the United States. Some are
English-speaking (Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas,
Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Dominica, Grenada,
Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia,
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and
Tobago, and Turks and Caicos); some Frenchspeaking (French Guyana, Guadeloupe, Haiti and
Martinique); and some Dutch-speaking (Aruba,
Bonaire, Curaçao, Saba, Sint Eustatius, Sint Maarten
and Suriname). The term Spanish Caribbean includes
Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico,
which are geographically part of this ensemble of
islands. The region has undergone a great many
processes of synthesis, aggregation and amalgamation, and its identity is the result of the joint participation of indigenous, European and African cultures. During the colonial period, library practice
naturally enough followed the model of the respective parent country: Spain, Portugal, the United
Kingdom, France or the Netherlands. At a later
stage, Latin America and the Caribbean opened
up to exchanges with countless other countries,
although the original five came well to the fore.
Library development is uneven in the region, and
within each country there may be excellent services
and access to the most sophisticated technology in
some places, and shortcomings and even a total lack
of basic library services in others. However, in general there has been considerable progress as well as
an increasing participation at the international level,
where the region has established its own identity and
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shown it has its own approach and can find its own
solutions.
Public libraries
Just as librarianship in general is in search of its own
distinctive personality, there is a need in Latin
America to clarify some specific aspects, and the
concept of the public library is one example. Some
countries, for instance, include even the national
library within the definition of a public library
on account of its being open to the general public,
children and adults alike. Other countries may
include school libraries. In still others we find a form
of public library known as the popular library,
which often seeks new ways of serving the least
privileged sectors, generally with assistance from
the community, non-governmental organizations or
the state itself. There are also instances of rural
libraries. Brazil exemplifies the first approach,
Mexico the second, Argentina the third and Guyana
the fourth.
These libraries need to cater for the urban and
the rural reader, and for the privileged and the marginalized reader. They must also cater for ethnic
groups disregarded for long years but now given
clear priority by reason both of their numbers and of
the cultural wealth they contribute to the countries
themselves, examples being Peru, Mexico and
Guatemala. These countries and others face the challenge of offering library services to indigenous populations with their own interests and languages distinct from Spanish or Portuguese. Bilingual personnel are therefore being trained and collections being
formed to meet this challenge. Some projects under
way support the production of books in indigenous
languages, both of a general kind and with the
specific purpose of rescuing traditions. Examples are
to be found in Venezuela, with the project ‘Caring
for Indigenous Communities through Public
Library Services’, and in Mexico with ‘La Semilla’
(the seed), a project of the National Indigenous
Affairs Institute. Both involve the publication of
bilingual children’s works in the indigenous language
and in Spanish. The public libraries are likewise
beginning to offer services appropriate for immigrant ethnic minorities and in areas where various
cultures converge, within a process of cultural integration which respects their individuality. Public
libraries are places where the need to respect the
diversity of information and of users is most clearly
seen. Since public libraries belong mostly to the
state, they are institutions where reading can take
place on a democratic basis.
In addition to the basic services on offer in all
public libraries, special interest is shown in children
as representing the future of each country. Children
are encouraged to develop reading habits and are
given assistance with homework. More specifically,
children are given access to benefits that in most
cases neither the home nor the elementary school
can offer, such as computer workshops in Mexico.
There is much concern to develop children’s collections in line with the interests of each locality. The
Book Bank of Venezuela, for example, has spent
many years researching and implementing reading
promotion programmes and assisting in the publication of high-quality children’s books, backed by
serious research into literary, community and publishing aspects. Other examples of special public
library services are the community aid and information centres in Venezuela and Colombia, and the services for the blind in Jamaica and Cuba.
In general, a great deal of interest is taken in
rescuing the cultural identity of communities and
taking library services to areas that are economically
depressed and isolated for geographical or sociocultural reasons, with the support of mobile libraries or
travelling kits. In the Caribbean, the public library
uses mobile libraries to reach more inhabitants,
operating from a central base with various service
units. Noteworthy for its collections and the modern
style of its building, and also the priority it gives to
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children and young people, is the Philipsburg Jubilee
Library of Sint Maarten, computerized and with
seventy-three years of service to the public behind
it and an ambitious development programme up to
the year 2023.
School libraries
The development of both public and school libraries
is closely tied to the economic and educational
development of the countries, and the level of investment made in basic education. There are relatively
few school libraries in the region and many of their
functions are performed by the children’s rooms in
public libraries.
Surveys often present very high figures for
school libraries. It is worth noting, however, that in
most cases the reference is to classrooms that have
been converted into group reading rooms, or little
reading corners in the classroom with a few books.
Estimates of such reading range from around 14,000
to almost 50,000 in Brazil, and from almost 4,000 to
10,000 in Mexico. There are in fact few fully structured school libraries, though Colombia, Costa Rica
and Cuba, for example, make their school libraries
an integral part of their education systems. These
libraries may be staffed by a librarian or a teacher
with a qualification in librarianship, or sometimes by
a teacher with no specialized training. In Colombia
the person in charge is a teacher-librarian; Costa Rica
has librarians and teachers; Cuba has librarians; and
in Brazil, although statutory provision is made for a
librarian, often a teacher is in fact doing the work.
Some networks of school libraries complete their
coverage by means of travelling kits or mobile collections serving very remote or sparsely populated
areas; or one library can serve two or three nearby
schools, as in Cuba, Colombia and Brazil.
School libraries in countries like Barbados,
Belize, Guyana and Jamaica operate on something
very like the British model, the aim being for each
school to have its own library; where this is not pos-
sible, a mobile library operates from a central unit
catering for a larger number of pupils. The ‘library
corner’ formula is also to be found in primary
schools.
National libraries
Since 1988 the national libraries of the region have
been working on a collegial basis with Spain and
Portugal in the Association of National Libraries
of Ibero-America (ABINIA), in which eighteen
countries of Latin America, including three from
the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, are represented:
Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa
Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico,
Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Venezuela,
plus Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto
Rico. The association has held six assemblies to plan
a variety of useful co-operative projects that have
already produced highly valuable items both for
libraries themselves and for researchers. One
example is the CD-ROM Catálogo colectivo de
fondo antiguo siglos XV–XIX (Union Catalogue of
Antiquarian Collections from the Fifteenth to the
Nineteenth Centuries), which contains the bibliographic records of monographs printed up to 1900
based on information provided by national libraries,
including those of Spain and Portugal. Another
significant item is the book, Historia de las
Bibliotecas Nacionales de Iberoamérica: pasado y
presente (History of the National Libraries of IberoAmerica: Past and Present). Both publications came
out in 1995. Noteworthy among the projects under
way are ‘The Latin American Press in the Nineteenth
Century’ and participation in UNESCO’s Memory
of the World project.
The national libraries now have their respective
legal deposit laws, though this is not the only manner of acquisition, since material may be received
through purchase, exchange or donation. The
national bibliography is the main means of informing the public of their collections. The national
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bibliographies of Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, Nicaragua,
Uruguay and Venezuela are kept up to date.
Venezuela and Mexico, for their part, are already
preparing CD-ROM editions; however, there are
countries whose national bibliographies, despite
a great deal of effort, are out of date. As regards
computerization, almost all use the CALCO
(Catalogacaõ Legivel en Computador) format,
designed by Brazilian librarians and based on
MARC II. Internationally available commercial software is used, such as NOTIS in Venezuela, Puerto
Rico and Chile, Dynix in Mexico, and CDS-ISIS in
small libraries and individual projects.
The independent countries of the Caribbean
have used as a reference the recommendations
of the National Information System (NATIS)
and UNISIST in the national planning of their
library services, establishing National Councils on
Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres
(NACOLAND) in Barbados and Jamaica, for example, where the national library plays a preponderant
role.
University libraries
These are often the best endowed in terms of budget,
professional staff and technological infrastructure,
which enables them to offer better information services for students and teachers. In many cases the
libraries of the various faculties and campuses are coordinated by a central unit. Some of their procedures
are centralized and use computer programs, sometimes developed individually. In other instances use
is made in large universities of internationally available software such as Dynix, TINLIB and Aleph.
The small universities have adapted Micro-ISIS for
library operations. This has made it possible to compile union catalogues of monographs, periodical
publications, theses and both online and CD-ROM
databases of various types of collections. Much work
has been done to co-ordinate these libraries through
national systems, networks or authorities, examples
being the National Network of University Libraries
(RENBU) and the Board of Argentine University
Libraries ( JUBIUNA); the National Plan of
University Libraries, which operated from 1986 to
1991, and the Brazilian Commission of University
Libraries; the Colombian Institute for the Promotion of Higher Education (ICFES); the National
University Network of Chile; the Inter-University
Library Co-operation Committee (CCBU) of
Guatemala. The Ministries of Education and the
Directorate for Information of the Ministry of
Higher Education of Cuba and the Office of the
Under-Secretary for Higher Education, and the
National Association of Universities and Institutions of Higher Education (ANUIES) of Mexico
also participated in this work.
Noteworthy for the significance of their education and research programmes, for the number of
students and programmes involved and for their
influence in their countries and in the region are the
Autonomous National University of Mexico (143
libraries) and the University of São Paulo (38
libraries), Brazil, whose library systems are very
important in terms both of librarianship achievements and of co-operative developments for the
benefit of information users in the area and for those
studying Latin America from outside the region.
They offer databases and catalogues on paper, CDROM, online or as Online Public Access Catalogues
(OPACs), with representative literature of the region
as well as all kinds of printed, audiovisual and electronic material from elsewhere. Many Latin
American universities take a leading role in their
geographical area. They have been pioneers in the
integration and individual development of technologies that have brought users into contact with information either on-site or around the world by means
of telecommunications, particularly the Internet,
gophers and the World Wide Web. These universities
include the University of Chile, the Catholic
Universities of Chile and Peru, and the University of
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Antioquia and the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana,
both in Colombia.
The University of the West Indies (UWI), in
the Caribbean, has the most prominent group of
libraries of this kind; the main library was established in 1963, in Mona, Jamaica, and there are
branches in each of the various university regional
headquarters.
Special libraries
The situation of special libraries regarding budgets,
human resources, technological infrastructure and
services is very satisfactory. These libraries adapt
most rapidly to change and to a commercial environment, with marketing strategies and self-financing of
some activities. Some subject sectors – agriculture,
medicine, science and petroleum – stand out on
account of their national and regional organization,
based on co-operative projects for the benefit of
local users, Latin Americans and users in other
regions.
The agricultural sector, its associated areas and
the Inter-American Association of Agricultural
Librarians and Documentalists (AIBDA), with head
offices in Costa Rica, are working in a co-ordinated
and co-operative manner on databases of broad
international coverage in which Latin America and
the Caribbean are participating, such as the InterAmerican Information System for Agricultural
Science (AGRINTER), now on CD-ROM. They
also contribute to the International Information
System for the Agricultural Sciences and Technology
(AGRIS), and offer distance courses in collaboration
with various headquarters institutions, producing
instructional aids co-published by AIBDA and the
University of Brasilia. Another example is the
Caribbean Information System for the Agricultural
Sciences (CAGRIS), which operates from UWI in
Trinidad, and interacts with the libraries of the agricultural organizations of the member countries of
the Caribbean community. Equally important is the
Information Network of the Caribbean Agricultural
Research and Development Institute, also with its
headquarters in Trinidad.
The medical sector has seen the development of
an extensive Regional Health System closely associated with the Regional Library of Medicine
(BIREME), now known as the Latin American and
Caribbean Health Sciences and Information Center,
which has its headquarters in Brazil, and in co-operation with other countries produces a CD-ROM
database of Latin American and Caribbean
Literature in Health Sciences (LILACS). Work has
also proceeded on the Latin American Index
Medicus (Imla), a subset of the MEDLINE database.
In 1994 BIREME published, with support from
the International Development Research Centre
(IDRC), the first edition of the CD-ROM Red de
Redes (network of networks), listing Latin American
databases supporting development in farming and
biotechnology, banking and finance, social sciences,
economics and reform of the state, education, and
child and family matters. Besides co-operating in
BIREME, the Caribbean countries produce Medical
Caribbean: An Index to Caribbean Health Science
Literature.
An area that has come in for special attention
is science and technology, with the advent of
CONACYTS or CONICYTS (national councils or
commissions of research in science and technology).
These authorities have set up libraries at their own
headquarters or in research centres, as in the case of
Chile and Costa Rica, which have a unit in the
CONICYT itself. Information services are also
offered by the Venezuelan Scientific Research
Institute (IVIC) and the Institute of Documentation
and Information in Science and Technology (IDICT)
of the Cuban Academy of Sciences, which plays a
key role in the use of information technologies, in
providing refresher training for library staff and in
the sale of services. Another field well catered for is
petroleum, where INTEVEP of Venezuela, PEMEX
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of Mexico and PETROBAS of Brazil are prominent.
The Industrial Information Centre (CIIN) of Costa
Rica is concerned with industrial activity in general.
A distinguished and long-standing role has been
played by the Brazilian Institute of Science and
Technology Information (IBICT), founded in 1954,
which provides services and back-up products for
the scientific community using a variety of local and
international databases, and the technological and
telecommunication support required for present-day
information services.
Human resources
Library services in the region have not always been
well endowed with qualified professional human
resources, though the last two decades have been
marked by significant progress both in university
education and in training and retraining in all areas
of librarianship and information technology. Library
schools have made several attempts to study in a coordinated way such aspects as: the duration of university courses; delimitation of areas of study in
librarianship, documentation, information science
and information studies; identification of core
courses and their subject-matter; the general approach regarding specialization, and the identification of the major areas of study, with growing
emphasis on management, technologies and research; the relationship between curricula and the
labour market; the predominance of sessional (parttime) teachers over full-time teachers; and the inadequate technological infrastructure and scarcity of
highly specialized laboratories belonging to the
organization concerned.
Since 1993, and with partial UNESCO support, several meetings of Latin American library and
information science educators have been held. They
revisited many of the problems previously identified
at other meetings convened by international agencies
and by the Latin American Association of Librarianship and Information Science Schools (ALEBCI),
such as teaching personnel, inadequate library collections in the schools concerned and the need for
regional co-operation. They also explored the possibility of distance education, the development of
databases on librarianship literature produced in the
region, and the use of such technological media as
the Internet to promote inter-school communication. Outstanding countries in this area are Brazil,
for its tradition of quality, the large number of
schools with postgraduate, special-subject, Master’s
and doctoral programmes, and the emphasis placed
on research and scientific information programmes;
and Cuba, for its education outside of regular university programmes and distance education efforts.
In general, all countries agreed on the need for highquality university education and, in particular, the
establishment of postgraduate courses. A few countries have no library schools but are planning training programmes, together with fellowship schemes
for training abroad. All the countries organize continuing education courses in order to keep staff up to
date with the evolution of library requirements. Such
programmes are not always organized under the auspices of the schools, but jointly by professional associations concerned with general and specific education, the leading libraries of the country, library suppliers, international agencies and, to a much lesser
extent, private agencies.
In the non-Spanish-speaking Caribbean, education programmes are in general dependent on the
respective parent countries or countries of economic
and cultural influence, such as the United Kingdom,
France and the Netherlands. However, there are programmes peculiar to the region that play a strategic
role in the local development of librarianship. In
some cases, only technical courses are available, such
as the short courses organized by the Association of
Librarians of Martinique and Guadeloupe in Fort de
France. In others there is a very full array of graduate
programmes, technical courses and a diploma for
teacher-librarians, as in the case of Jamaica, which,
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through UWI and its Department of Library
Studies, offers these opportunities not only to the
English-speaking Caribbean but to the whole region.
Continuing education, as in Latin America, is promoted by the university itself, the Caribbean
Association of University and Research Libraries
(ACURIL), and metropolitan and international
agencies.
Research
In recent years special importance has been given to
promoting librarianship research in order to support
education and assist in understanding universal and
local phenomena, offering individual solutions
appropriate to the situation and infrastructure of
each particular environment. Many of the countries
have begun tentative research through graduate
theses; others, the minority, have established institutions for this purpose or have provided facilities in schools or major libraries for studying
various aspects of the discipline, all offering worthwhile contributions to Latin American librarianship. Countries that have invested substantially in
research include Argentina, which at the University
of Buenos Aires has a research programme in its
Librarianship Research Centre (CIB); Brazil, which
has high-level research and teaching programmes at
the Brazilian Institute of Science and Technology
Information (IBICT); Colombia, which operates the
Research Centre (CI) at the Inter-American School
of Librarianship; Costa Rica, with the Research Unit
of the University of Costa Rica; Cuba, which has
provided facilities in the José Martí National Library
and in the Institute of Documentation and
Information in Science and Technology (IDICT);
Mexico, where the National University has established a University Librarianship Research Centre
(CUIB); and Venezuela, with the Library and
Archives Research Centre of the National Library
Autonomous Institute and the Information Science
Research and Development Centre (CIDECI) of the
Central University. CIB and CUIB are entirely
devoted to research and their projects have been
notable successes; CUIB also plays an important
part in human resource training for research and in
the production of librarianship literature in Spanish.
In the Caribbean, particularly the Englishspeaking part, research programmes are getting
under way with support from UWI, the Association
of Librarians, the Jamaica Library Service and the
National Council of Libraries, Archives and
Documentation Services.
Technology, globalization, co-operation
The incorporation of Latin America into telecommunication systems and the strengthening of the
computer technology infrastructure have been key
factors in integration and communication in the
region, revitalizing its political, cultural and library
bodies. This is clear from the references to information programmes made in such contexts as the IberoAmerican Summits (Latin America plus Spain and
Portugal); the Cartagena Agreement and the Andean
Pact between countries within Latin America; and,
more recently, the joint effort of Argentina, Brazil,
Paraguay, Uruguay and subsequently Bolivia and
Chile to establish better information services in the
subregion. Within the Caribbean area the Economic
Community of the English-speaking Caribbean
(CARICOM) and the Organization of Eastern
Caribbean States (OECS) should also be mentioned.
Also relevant are the ongoing efforts of the
Organization of American States (OAS) and
UNESCO, with its Programme for Co-operation in
Information for Latin America and the Caribbean
(INFOLAC), which in some cases have been decisive in promoting a number of basic projects. The
International Federation of Library Associations
and Institutions (IFLA) and, in some areas, the
International Federation for Information and
Documentation (FID) have also helped to bring
Latin America and Caribbean librarianship into the
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global economic and information system. Latin
American information technology has been prominent in the design of software for local and regional
use, and in the compilation of CD-ROMs by
BIREME and CENEDIC at the Universidad de
Colima, Mexico, which has been designated by
UNESCO as the production site for several Latin
American CD-ROMs. Several countries are already
making daily use of electronic mail, and are designing their World Wide Web and gopher sites as well as
OPACs. This gives access to information and information suppliers, bringing the region into closer
contact with the rest of the world, and vice versa.
Infor-mation technology is also facilitating the collection of local and national statistics on Latin
American and Caribbean librarianship, even though
there are no official central agencies to consolidate
data on national library and information services.
Professional publications
A great deal of effort is spent compiling local library
bibliographies in the language of the country, which
in many instances, for want of publication resources
and incentives for compilers, are issued in very small
print runs with inadequate distribution arrangements, sometimes only circulating as grey literature.
On other occasions, however, such bibliographies
are issued by professional publishing outlets, and
monographs may result from efforts by individual
ministries, major libraries, associations or librarianship research centres. One such body is the Mexican
University Centre for Librarianship Research, which
has a budgeted annual programme of publications
and a good publishing infrastructure. Congress
papers are another specialist literature outlet, besides
being a very important source of information on the
development of the region’s library and information
services. In almost all countries, associations of professionals and schools try to issue some form of periodical publication, bulletin, newsletter or review to
report on their activities, give information about
projects and disseminate research findings. All these
publications are fundamental to any effort to understand or shape the history of library science in Latin
America and the Caribbean. In addition to each
country’s publications, others provide a regional
coverage of Latin American and Caribbean works,
and they can be found on paper, online or on CDROM. They include the Data Base Directory of
Latin America and the Caribbean (DIBALC), published in Mexico; Latin American Information and
Librarianship (INFOBILA), a regional database also
compiled in Mexico; the Directory of Information
and Communication Networks and Systems in Latin
America and the Caribbean, compiled in Cuba; and
the Library Science Bibliography of the Spanish
Caribbean and CARINDEX: Social Science and
Humanities, both sponsored by ACURIL.
Associations
In Latin America and the Caribbean, associations
play a very important part in the professional development of members and non-members alike, giving
impetus to the modernization of library services and
defending and promoting the use of information.
The association is the only organized group that
operates in some countries, since not all have library
schools and countries do not always establish other
broader organizations, for want of economic
resources and active participation by members. An
exception to the rule is the Brazilian Federation of
Librarians’ Associations (FEBAB), representing
twenty-five local associations, which makes its presence felt in promoting information services and
defending the profession. Almost all the associations
have at least one information bulletin, and the most
firmly established and affluent of them publish a
journal. These associations nearly always hold annual congresses and publish reports on the papers read.
Associations can form groups at the regional as well
as the national level, and they also play an integrating
role by encouraging co-operative work to assist in
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the professional development of members and of
information services. These associations include
AIBDA, ALEBCI, the Public Library Association
of Latin America and the Caribbean (ABIPALC),
the Association of Library Schools of the Southern
Cone, and ACURIL. Latin American and Caribbean
participation in the major international associations
is growing apace and, in addition to participation on
an individual basis, sections have now been formed
for Latin America and the Caribbean in IFLA and
FID.
Specificity and diversity of the Caribbean
Many of the islands are now independent countries
and their economies have become diversified. Their
development is weak, however, and this makes them
rather dependent on their present metropolitan or
former colonial country (though the Spanish-speaking Caribbean now is more closely related to Latin
America, with which its politics and culture are akin,
than to the former colonial power, Spain). The
Caribbean is a fragmented ensemble of many islands
among which inter-communication and co-operation are not easy. This situation is reflected in its
library development; the human resources are inadequate, albeit technically qualified thanks to local
courses or courses organized by the former or present metropolitan power. As in Latin America, many
of these shortcomings are offset by enthusiasm,
imagination and creativity. There is great interest in
ensuring that library services reflect the wide diversity of the many cultures that live together on all the
islands. The information produced is correspondingly diverse, contained in bibliographies and union catalogues produced in English, French, Dutch and
native or Creole languages. Despite all the economic
problems, great interest is shown in local publishing,
with emphasis on children’s works in native languages. The Caribbean Review of Books, founded
by the University of the West Indies Publishers
Association, reviewed 1,111 books published in or
about the Caribbean between 1991 and 1993, of
which 808 were published outside the region. Of the
303 remaining, 129 were published in Jamaica (the
largest country), 58 in Trinidad and Tobago, 33 in
Barbados and the remaining 83 in the other countries. National libraries and some public libraries
play a strategic role in reconstructing the history of
the region, of the country and of the overseas conquests by Europe today and in the past. This concern
for co-operation and integration, history and identity, and respect for plurality, multiculturalism and
diversity of information is expressed in the project
adopted by the General Council of Guadeloupe
in 1994: the establishment of a Caribbean Library,
which sets out to identify and promote all the
material produced by and on the Caribbean and its
zone of influence, including Venezuela, Panama and
Colombia, and basing its extramural services on an
extensive documentary network, all the result of
combined local efforts.
Latin America and the Caribbean:
neighbours who have joined forces
In the last two decades Latin America and the
Caribbean have seen a substantial development of
their various library activities, regarding both the
quality and range of services, and the technological
infrastructure, collections and professional staff.
This development matches the socio-economic and
cultural progress of each country, which has prevailed over the improvisation and amateurism of
many academic and economic activities. It is also
linked with the opening of various types of information services to support governmental, academic,
commercial and industrial decision-making. Progress
made with information and library services is also
related both to advances and setbacks in the publishing industry, whether using paper or electronic
media, reading habits and the development of telecommunication and information technology, not to
mention customs tariffs and legal and political
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measures encouraging the global flow of information.
Although there has been progress in the region
generally, some countries stand out in each of the
subregions. In North America, Mexico has worked
successfully on its public library system and in university and special libraries, besides providing
opportunities for research and the production of
librarianship literature in Spanish; its technological
and telecommunication infrastructure has enabled it
to offer the region electronic services and CDROMs. In Central America, Costa Rica offers an
example of sustained development based on its cultural and educational level, having improved librarianship training, regional services for agricultural and
social science information, and official information
services. In South America a very special place is
occupied by Brazil, which has made the most comprehensive and firmly based progress in library education and associated professional work, in the organization of networks and systems for various types
of libraries, and in the attention given to scientific
and technological information services and the
preparation of information products that can be used
throughout the region. Also prominent in this subregion are Venezuela, which has done much to coordinate and develop library and technological infrastructures linking its National Library with public
and special libraries, and Colombia, which has for
several decades been encouraging co-ordinated and
co-operative work through library networks and
systems of every kind, in addition to intensive work
with mobile reading promotion units which bring
libraries to parks, streets and other public spaces. In
the Southern Cone, Argentina and Chile have a history of successful, though not continuous, development. In the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, Cuba
stands out for its concern to serve the general population and, of late, its marketing of specialist services.
In the English-speaking Caribbean, Jamaica occupies
a special place. As the largest and politically the
strongest country, it has an influence on the other
countries and islands through its university, its
library system, its library association and the
regional projects for which it and Barbados are the
headquarters. In the French-speaking Caribbean,
Martinique and Guadeloupe are notable for their cooperative work, offering an example of the French
approach to librarianship in America. In the Dutchspeaking Caribbean, Sint Maarten and Aruba are
worthy of mention for their public libraries and their
participation in international programmes inside and
outside the Caribbean and Latin America.
Acknowledgements
My thanks are due to colleagues and friends who
permitted me to corroborate and, in the case of the
following, obtain valuable data: Stella Maris
Fernández of Argentina, Ivone Talamo of Brazil,
Rocío Herrera and Olga Cecilia Velázquez of
Colombia, Saray Córdova and Olga Rodríguez of
Costa Rica, Homero Quezada of Mexico, María
Elena Zapata and Alvaro Agudo of Venezuela and,
from the Caribbean, Françoise Bernabé and Blanca
Hodge. ■■
Further reading
ACURIL. 1995. Carta informativa. Newsletter (Puerto
Rico), Vol. 23, No. 59, pp. 12–17, 28–32.
BANDARA, S. B. 1994. Caribbean Books in Print Project.
In: IFLA-94, Booklet 4, pp. 7–10. Havana, IFLA.
BETANCOURT VALVERDE, V. 1994. Diagnóstico bibliotecas
nacionales latinoamericanas afiliadas ABINIA, año
1993 [Diagnosis of Latin American National
Libraries Affiliated to ABINIA, 1993]. In: IFLA-94.
Havana, IFLA. 32 pp.
FERNÁNDEZ, S. M. La situación bibliotecaria en la
Argentina en la década de 1980 [The Library
Situation in Argentina in the 1980s]. Cuadernos de
bibliotecología, No. 14. Buenos Aires. 71 pp.
GOMES DE OLIVEIRA, H. 1995. Bibliotecas brasileiras e sistemas nacionais de informação [Brazilian Libraries
and National Information Systems]. Paper presented
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Latin America and
t h e C a r i b b e117a n
at IFLA seminar, Turquía, 14–18 August. Turquía,
IFLA. 22 pp.
IFLA. 1987. Seminario Latinoamericano de Asociaciones
de Bibliotecarios y Profesionales afines. IFLA-1987,
junio 1–5 [Latin American Seminar of Associations
of Librarians and Allied Professionals. IFLA-1987,
1–5 June]. Caracas, IFLA. 112 pp.
——. 1995. El progreso de la biblioteconomía:
identificación y evaluación desde las necesidades
bibliotecarias de Centro América [The Progress of
Library Science: Identification and Evaluation Based
on the Library Needs of Central America]. Paper
presented at the IFLA-ALP-LAC Symposium,
Managua, Nicaragua, 5–8 March 1995. IFLA. 82 pp.
MORALES CAMPOS, E. (ed.). 1989. Bibliotecología latinoamericana: una panorama general [Latin American
Librarianship: A General Overview]. Mexico City,
CUIB. 164 pp.
Reunión de Investigadores y Educadores de Iberoamérica
y del Caribe en el Área de Bibliotecología y Ciencias
de la Información [Meeting of Researchers and
Educators of Ibero-America and the Caribbean in
the Area of Librarianship and Information Sciences].
1996. Mexico, CUIB-UNAM. 387 pp.
UNESCO. DIVISION OF STATISTICS. Library Statistics in
Latin America and the Caribbean. In: IFLA-94.
Havana. 29 pp.
Number
21
+ service points
and bookmobiles
600 + 61
service points
216 (55)1
14 344
+ 47 820
reading rooms
3 099 000
10 822 00
Costa Rica
Cuba
300
4 000
+ travelling
books
190 + 200
service points
Central schools
+ branches
+ travelling
books
821
7 (13)
84 (11)
4 (14)
74 (66)
178 (26)
110 (14)
Network of School Libraries
Ministry of Education
Department of School Libraries.
Resource Centre for Primary
and Secondary Education
Ministry of Education.
COLCULTURA
Ministry of Education
128 (22)
44
1
332
+ 4 671
service points
81
1 279
293
1
El Salvador
National Network of
Public Libraries
Ministry of Culture.
National Library. Municipalities.
Central Office for Libraries
Network of Public Libraries.
COLCULTURA
Ministry of Education.
Department of Libraries,
Archives and Museums
2+6
service points
Ecuador
Dominican
Republic
5 396 000
33 424 000
Colombia
Curaçao
13 599 000
29 000
Chili
Cayman Islands
31 (10)
2 656
+ 4 329
service points
1
907 (116)
152 000 000
200
Brazil
1
1 + 34
service points
Bolivia
Bermuda
Belize
2
Ministry of Culture
National System of
School Libraries
Organization at the national level
2
1
1
30
+ 1 250 branch
libraries and
bookmobiles
Number
University
libraries
Barbados
National System of
Public Libraries.
National Library Foundation
Office for Municipal
Libraries
Organization at the national level
School libraries
Bahamas
198 000
33 101 000
Argentina
Public libraries
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Aruba
Population
Country
Table 1. Public libraries, school libraries and university libraries in Latin America and the Caribean.
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Network of School Libraries
412 being
regrouped
+ 187
3 838
+ 10 000
classroom
reading sets
(4)
(7)
107 000
1+6
service points
1. The figure in parentheses gives the number of universities and centres of higher education.
Virgin Islands
12
694
1
32
120 (37)
Autonomous Institute.
National Library
1
1 bookmobile
1 +16
service points
(3)
42 (39)
Venezuela
20 249 000
55 000
213
+ 687
service points
(4)
(5)
Uruguay
Trinidad and
Tobago
Suriname
Sint Maarten
Saint Vincent
Puerto Rico
National Library
3
23 000 000
4
Paraguay
Peru
(3)
770 (172)
Panama
30
Secretariat for
Public Education.
CONACULTA
1
1
2
Network of Public Libraries.
National Library
1 + bookmobile
5 520
948
3
1
18
4 130 000
LDCs
Central Office for Libraries
Jamaica Library Service 13 department libraries,
155 branches,
5 deposit stations,
506 bookmobiles
18
Nicaragua
13 000
1
53 libraries under
construction
Netherlands
Antilles
Montserrat
Mexico
82 000 000
2 469 000
Jamaica
Ministry of Culture
(6)
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Martinique
5 462 000
Honduras
Guyana
7
70
1
National Library. Municipality.
NGOs. Bank of Guatemala
Guatemala
9 000 000
Guadeloupe
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Table 2. Periodicals in Latin America and the Caribbean
Country
Number of
publications
Argentina
5
Barbados
2
Titles (selected)
Alumni Association of the National Library School. Bulletin
Library Science Journal
GREBYD/Information Bulletin
SIIT Information Bulletin
ABGRA Reference
Barbados Library Association Bulletin
Update Bulletin (Bridgetown)
Bahia Library Association Report
Information Science
Minas Gerais University. Library School Journal
Brazilian Journal of Library Science and Documentation
Brasilia Library Science Journal.
Terminology Information (regional publication)
EIDISIS Journal
COLCIENCIAS Newsletter
The Book in Latin America and the Caribbean
ASCOLBI Information Bulletin
Interamerican Library Science Journal
Reading Sheets
Bulletin of the Costa Rica Library Association
Libraries. School of Library Science, Documentation and Archives of the Costa Rica National University
AIBDA Bulletin and Journal (regional publications)
Information Bulletin
Library and Information Science Journal
Libraries
Information Science
Journal of the Jose Marti National Library
ABES Technical Committee Bulletin
Bulletin of the Guyana Library Association
Bulletin of the Jamaica Library Association
Jamaica Library Association News
FFL/UNAM. Library Science Yearbook
University Library (DGB/UNAM)
Library Science Research (CUIB/UNAM)
Information letter: ENBA
Information Bulletin AMBAC
APLA/Information
Brazil
11
Chili
2
Colombia
5
Costa Rica
6
Cuba
3
El Salvador
Guyana
Jamaica
1
1
2
Mexico
8
Netherlands
Antilles
Nicaragua
1
2
Panama
2
Paraguay
2
Peru
4
Puerto Rico
2
Trinidad and
Tobago
Uruguay
Venezuela
1
Nicaragua Bibliography and Documentation Bulletin
Bulletin of the Central Office for Libraries and Archives
ALEBCI. Information Bulletin (Regional)
Panama University. Library Science Department Bulletin
Paraguay. Library Science and Documentation
Information
Peru National Library Bulletin
Plenary Meeting. Journal of the School of Library and Information Science
Phenix
Peru Library Newsletter
ACURIL Newsletter (regional)
EGBCI Information Bulletin (University of Puerto Rico. Graduate School of Library and Information Science)
Trinidad and Tobago Library Association. Bulletin
1
1
Uruguay National Library
INFOLAC (regional publication)
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Table 3. Communication networks and systems in Latin America and the Caribean
Argentina
11
Bolivia
3
Brazil
11
Chili
Dominican Republic
2
Peru
Ecuador
2
Puerto Rico
7
2
Guatemala
1
Trinidad and Tobago
2
8
Jamaica
1
Uruguay
7
Colombia
12
Mexico
8
Venezuela
9
Costa Rica
10
Nicaragua
2
Panama
2
Cuba
2
Table 4. Library science education in Latin America and the Caribbean
Country
Levels, procedure
Argentina
First degree, master’s, doctorate. 9 university schools. 17 non-university schools. Continuing education
Brazil
Bachelor’s degree (4 years), 30 university-level courses: specialization, master’s (6), doctorate (3). Continuing
education
Chile
2 universities. Pre-graduate. Special subject. Continuing education
Colombia
4 university schools; only 1 offers postgraduate-studies. Specialization. 1 distance education programme (4, 5
years). Continuing education
Costa Rica
University level: bachelor’s, 1st degree, master’s (2 years). 2 university schools. Continuing education. Refresher
training in technology
Cuba
1 university. 1 vocational centre. Technical (upper secondary level). 1st degree, master’s, doctorate. Distance
education. Continuing education
Guadeloupe
Short courses through Librarians’ Association. Training in Fort de France
Guatemala
1 university. Pre-graduate. Continuing education
Haiti
Technical level (some rudiments of librarianship)
Jamaica
1 university. Graduate. Technical
Martinique
Short courses through Librarians’ Association. Training in Fort de France
Mexico
6 universities. 6 1st-degree courses. 2 master’s. Continuing education
Netherlands Antilles
(Curaçao, Aruba,
Bonaire)
Use Netherlands facilities
Nicaragua
1 school. University Centro América (suspended)
Panama
1 university. 1st-degree course. Continuing education
Paraguay
1 university school (4 years). Continuing education
Peru
2 universities. 1st-degree course. Continuing education. Diploma
Puerto Rico
2 universities. 2 master’s. Continuing education
Venezuela
3 universities. Pre-graduate. 1st-degree course. Specialization (master’s suspended)
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Table 5. Associations in Latin America and the Caribbean
Country
Associations
Argentina
Federation (FABA), grouping 25 associations
Barbados
Library Association of Barbados
Bolivia
Library Association of La Paz
Brazil
Federation (FEBAB), grouping 25 associations
Chile
College of Librarians of Chile
Colombia
ASCOLBI, ASEBIAR, National Board of Librarianship, SNICA, GRUBE, GUI
Costa Rica
College of Librarians of Costa Rica
Cuba
Association of Librarians of Cuba, Cuban Society of Scientific and Technical Information
Dominican Republic
Dominican Association of Librarians
Guatemala
Librarianship Association of Guatemala
Guyana
Guyana Library Association
Honduras
Honduran Association of Librarians
Jamaica
Jamaica Library Association
Martinique and
Guadeloupe
Association of Librarians of Martinique and Guadeloupe
Mexico
AMBAC (plus branches), BIBAC, ANBAGRO, ABIESI and ARAI
Netherlands Antilles
and Aruba
Association of Librarians of Netherlands Antilles and Aruba (APLA)
Nicaragua
Nicaraguan Association of Librarianship and ABUEN
Panama
Panamanian Association of Librarians
Peru
Peruvian Association of Librarians
Puerto Rico
Association of Librarians of Puerto Rico
Trinidad and Tobago
Library Association of Trinidad and Tobago
Uruguay
Association of Librarians and Allied Professions of Uruguay
Venezuela
College of Libraries and Archives of Venezuela, Professional Association of Academic and
Specialized Information Services
Table 6. Regional associations
Association
Headquarters
Inter-American Association of Agricultural Librarians and Documentalists (AIBDA)
Costa Rica
Caribbean Association of University and Research Libraries (ACURIL)
Puerto Rico
Latin American Association of Librarianship and Information Science Schools (ALEBCI)
Costa Rica
Public Library Association of Latin America and the Caribbean (ABIPALC)
Venezuela
Association of Librarians’ Schools of the Southern Cone
Uruguay
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Latin America and
t h e C a r i b b e123a n
Estela Morales Campos graduated
in librarianship and then obtained her
Ph.D. in Latin American studies from
the Universidad Nacional Autónoma
de México (UNAM). She was
Research Officer at the Centro Universitario de
Investigaciones Bibliotecológicas (CUIB) of UNAM,
and was distinguished as researcher of the Sistema
Nacional de Investigadores de México. She served as
Director of the Congress Library (1973–74) and of
CUIB (1985–93). She then became Academic Secretary
of the Research in Humanities Group of UNAM
(1993–95). Since 1988 she has been a professor of
postgraduate studies in librarianship. She is the author
of six books and has published a large number of
articles on librarianship. She is an active member of
several professional associations at the national,
regional and international levels.
Estela Morales Campos
Professor
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Dirección General de Bibliotecas
Edificio Biblioteca Central
Ciudad Universitaria
04510 México, D.F.
Mexico
Tel: (5) 622-16-52
Tel/fax: (5) 616-06-64
Fax: (5) 550-13-98
E-mail: [email protected]
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Libraries and the book chain
In the book chain, libraries have usually played a
rather self-contained role. As non-profit agents,
libraries were cut off from the book’s economic life,
which took the book to the reader via the publisher
and the bookseller. With the take-off of the electronic publishing market, they are moving towards full
integration in the book chain, where they are now
likely to play an economic role.
A rough indication of the relevance of libraries
as an economic player in the book chain may be
illustrated by the relationship between the turnover
of the national publishing industry and the size of
library acquisitions in the European Union. Table 1
gives the gross income of the publishing industry in
twelve European Union countries, and the corresponding public library acquisitions expenditures
per inhabitant (only public libraries have been considered because they are the most important purchasers of national literature) and total library acquisition expenditure per inhabitant. Data are drawn
from an inquiry made by a consulting agency, BIPE
Conseil, in 1989 (Ancillani, 1992), and library statistics (1986–90) issued by the European Commission
(European Commission, 1995). These figures give a
rough comparative vision of readership in the
European Union, from an economic point of view.
Table 2 shows the ratio of public library acquisitions
to book industry gross income per 1,000 inhabitants.
It is easy to see that countries are listed in a different
order from Table 1.
It would be a mistake to draw firm conclusions
from such library statistics, which do not take into
account book exports (relevant especially in the
British, Spanish and French cases) and acquisitions
made by academic libraries. What is unquestionable,
however, is that reading practices vary greatly in
Europe and that they are independent of economic
indicators (such as Gross Domestic Product). They
are, instead, very much subject to national library
policies as an essential ingredient of national book
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B. Archives
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Chapter 9
Asia
Maria Helena Lima Évora
Macao Historical Archives,
Macao
T
his chapter is based on the Survey of
International Archival Development conducted through a questionnaire by the
International Council on Archives (ICA) in 1993–94
(see box, p. 128) and a questionnaire sent out by
the author in early 1996. The response rate to each
questionnaire was rather low, but taken together
responses were received from 75% of the countries
in the region. Nevertheless, this description of the
region is still fairly sketchy.
Structure of archives
Archives in Asian countries have the same purpose
and functions as archives in other parts of the world.
They are institutions whose major objective is the
collection and preservation of public or private
archives and records of permanent and historical
value in order to make them available to the public.
In some Asian countries the national/central
archives derived from the record-keeping activities
of former colonial administrations. In others they
originated as branches of the national library and
only recently began to be administered as separate
departments with specific archival functions. Although the National Archives of India and Indonesia
can trace their origins back to the last decade of the
nineteenth century, most Asian archives were established in the 1950s or later and it was only in the
mid-1980s and 1990s that they experienced significant development, partly owing to the evolution of
information technology. Only recently have they
developed national archival policies, established
standards and enacted general archival legislation
(see Tables 1 and 2).
The archives systems in Asia have a structure
identical to systems in other regions. The central
archives, at the national or federal level, are the most
important and largest institution in the country,
responsible for identifying records of historical value
in the public sector (and sometimes also in the private sector) and guaranteeing their regular transfer to
127
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Survey of
International
Archival
Development
Tunis conference, was that there had been
significant progress in the ten-year period, but
that major deficiencies still existed. A number of
key factors for assisting the future development
of archive services both in the developing world
The International Council on Archives carried out
and in the emerging democracies of Central and
a major survey on archive development in
Eastern Europe were identified, including:
1993–94, which sought to compare conditions in
•
1982 with those in 1992. The survey covered
legislation, staff, training, buildings, equipment,
•
quantities of archives held, quantities received
Providing an adequate building to
international standards in which to preserve
annually, the state of catalogues and finding aids,
and the experience of development actions.
Ensuring a proper legislative framework for
archives and records.
them.
•
The survey questionnaire was sent to all
Developing a comprehensive preservation
policy.
Category A members of ICA (national archive
•
administrations, and state archive administrations
•
in federal systems) in around 160 countries and
Improving training opportunities.
Further developing and adopting standards
for archival description.
territories. A total of 122 replies were received, of
•
which thirty were from Europe, thirty-six from
The ten Regional Branches of ICA were widely
North America and fifty-six from elsewhere.
identified as a vital mechanism for international
Outside Europe and North America, the
archival development. Co-operation within and
breakdown was as follows: Africa, twenty; Arab
between the branches was shown by the survey
countries, five; Asia and Oceania, sixteen; Latin
analysis to be well established, widespread and
America and the Caribbean, fifteen. Comparisons
extremely valuable, especially in the field of
were drawn between relative conditions in Europe
training. In the light of this experience, the
and North America and those elsewhere, and also
conference concluded that emphasis should be
between relative conditions in Western Europe
placed on ‘South-South’ development initiatives,
and Central and Eastern Europe.
and on greater use of experts from the developing
The results of the survey, which was carried
Making effective use of new technology.
world. The need for effective tools to plan and
out by Michael Roper (United Kingdom), former
evaluate development projects was also
Keeper of Public Records, were analysed and
underlined.
presented at an international conference in Tunis
in May 1995.
The overall conclusion of the survey,
reinforced by case-studies and debates at the
The proceedings of the Tunis conference,
including detailed analyses of the survey data,
were published in a special volume of the ICA
journal, Janus, in 1996.
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A 129
sia
Table 1. General archival legislation
Country
Laws
Australia
Archives Act, 1983
Bangladesh
National Archives Ordinance, 1983
China
Archives Law of the People’s Republic of
China, 1988
Implementation method of the Archives Law,
1990
Hong Kong
Public Records (Access) Rules
India
Public Records Act, 1993
Indonesia
Law on the Basic Provision of Archives, 1971
New legislation in 1993
Japan
Public Archives Law, 1987
Malaysia
National Archives Act, 1966
Macao
Macao Archival Law, 1982, 1989
Nepal
National Archives Act, 1989
Pakistan
Archival Material (Preservation and Export
Control) Act, 1975
The National Archives Act, 1993
Republic of
Korea
Yes (title of the Law is not known)
Singapore
National Heritage Board Act, 1993
Thailand
Order of Prime Minister’s Office, 1983
archival custody for preservation and use. Below the
national or federal level the structure of archival services varies with the size of the country and its political and administrative systems. However, as a general rule the central archives also has some responsibility for co-ordinating archival services at regional,
provincial, state and municipal or other local levels.
The degree of authority may vary from country to
country, however, and in some countries the provision of archival services at those lower levels of government may still be rudimentary and uneven. There
are, moreover, countries that possess archives only at
the national level, such as Nepal, Singapore and the
Republic of Korea. In almost all Asian countries,
archives of private organizations or institutions are
not controlled by the national/central entity and
they are not necessarily open to the public.
The governmental authority under which
archives are placed differs from country to country.
Most are placed in culture or education, as in
Australia, Bangladesh, India, Macao, Malaysia,
Nepal, Pakistan and Thailand. But there are other
arrangements: the State Archives Bureau of China
Table 2. Legislation on records management
Country
Legislation
exists
Laws
Australia
3
Yes (title unknown)
China
3
Retention schedule of the agency records, 1987; regulations on record acquisition, 1986; acquisition
standards of records transfer, 1983; regulations on the filing and non-filing of agency records, 1987;
standards on the design and construction of archival repository
Hong Kong
3
Yes (title unknown)
Indonesia
3
Regulation on disposition of records and archives, 1979
Malaysia
3
Yes (title unknown)
Macao
3
Macao Archival Law, 1989
Nepal
3
Disposal or discarding of government papers rule, 1970
Pakistan
3
Archival Act, 1993; secretariat instructions
Republic of
Korea
3
Yes (title unknown)
Singapore
3
National Heritage Board Act, 1993
Thailand
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comes under the jurisdiction of the State Council;
the National Archives of Indonesia is directly
responsible to the President; the Records Service of
the Republic of Korea is an agency of the Ministry of
Government Administration; the National Archives
of Japan is an auxiliary organ of the Prime Minister’s
Office; and the Public Record Office of Hong Kong
is a division of the Government Secretariat.
Holdings and finding aids
Archives in Asia are responsible primarily for collecting public records, that is, those records which
are created by public service departments, but there
are some archives which also collect records of private institutions, family records and personal records
(for example, in Hong Kong, Macao, Malaysia,
Pakistan, Singapore and Thailand – see Table 3). The
records come in a wide variety of forms. In addition
to files of paper documents, most archives in Asia
hold books, newspapers, gazettes, photographs,
films, microfilms, slides, maps, plans, charts, drawings, audio and audiovisual records, architectural
models and posters. A few hold electronic records.
Archives in former colonial territories usually
have rich and varied collections of records inherited
from the former colonial administrations. For example, the National Archives of Sri Lanka contain
official records of Portuguese, Dutch and British
administrations, as well as records of independent Sri
Lanka. The Records Management and Archives
Office of the Philippines holds documents of Spanish
and American administrations.
In order to make records available for public
access, Asian archives produce a wide variety of
finding aids such as guides, inventories, catalogues,
indexes, lists, registers, accession lists, transfer lists
and exhibition catalogues (see Table 3). In addition,
several archives (India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal,
Pakistan, the Republic of Korea, Singapore and
Thailand) have participated in the Guide to the
Sources of Asian History project, which facilitates the
wide dissemination of their finding aids. Some of the
volumes published in this series are available in
English, others only in the national language.
Table 3. Holdings and finding aids
Country
Holdings
Public
archives
Private
archives
Australia
3
China
3
Hong Kong
3
Malaysia
3
3
3
Macao
3
Nepal
3
Pakistan
3
Finding aids
Microfilm
Types
Automation
3
Catalogues; indexes; subject catalogues; inventories
3
3
Inventories; index; cards; record transfer lists
3
General guides; thematical guides; accession lists; transfer lists;
catalogues; inventories; hand-written lists; administrative history
3
3
3
3
3
Republic of
Korea
3
Singapore
3
3
Thailand
3
3
3
3
Inventories and catalogues
3
Register; catalogues; inventories; lists; index
3
Accession lists; catalogues; hand-written lists; catalogue cards
3
3
3
Guides; inventories; indexes; exhibition catalogues;
online catalogues
3
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Preservation and conservation
Communication
At the level of the national archives about two-thirds
of archival buildings in Asia are purpose-built and
the majority have some form of humidity and temperature control. However, many of them are more
than twenty years old and storage space is limited:
some buildings are completely full and unable to
receive new accessions; others will be in the same situation in the near future.
Most Asian archives have conservation workshops and reprographic laboratories, but the supply
of skilled technicians is distributed very unevenly
between them. Where reprographic laboratories
exist, microfilming is the technology most commonly used for the preservation of archival material.
Records are microfilmed to preserve the information
which they contain and to protect the fragile originals from excessive use and consequently from damage. Documents in poor condition are consulted
only on microfilm (see Table 3).
Communication through exhibitions and archival
publications is also an important function of archival
services in Asia. Notable among exhibition programmes are the ‘Memorials’ established and administered by the National Archives of Malaysia. These
permanent exhibitions, which commemorate persons and events of enduring historical, cultural or
aesthetic significance, attract over 1 million visitors
each year. Almost all Asian archives have a regular
programme of archival exhibitions and publications,
the latter including bulletins, annual reports, facsimile
reprints of historic archives and technical publications,
as well as finding aids (see above). Some archives also
participate in radio and television programmes.
Users can normally visit archives to consult
records from Monday to Saturday; archives are usually closed on Sunday and public holidays. But there
are exceptions: the National Archives of Nepal and
Pakistan, for example, are open on Sunday.
Access to records
Legislation
In many Asian archives the records are open to the
public when they reach twenty-five or thirty years
of age, as, for example, in the archives of Australia,
China, Macao, Nepal and Pakistan. Documents containing information that can affect individual privacy
have a longer period of access restriction (varying
between 70 and 130 years). On the other hand, in
many countries there are some areas of government
which do not transfer records to the national
archives. The legislature, foreign ministry, ministry
of defence and supreme court are the bodies most
likely to be exempt from the operation of archival
legislation or even to be governed by separate legislation, and their records may not be accessible to the
public. Archives of totalitarian regimes are more
bureaucratic than archives of democratic regimes
and this has consequences for the availability of
records.
Most countries in Asia now have modern archival
legislation. New legislation has been enacted since
1980 in Australia, Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia,
Japan, Macao, Nepal, Pakistan, Singapore, Thailand
and Viet Nam. Except in Japan and Thailand,
this legislation gives the national archives an active
role in records management, records appraisal and
records transfer within the public sector, as also does
the legislation of Hong Kong, the Republic of Korea
and Malaysia (see Tables 1 and 2). However, most
national archives in Asian countries are not cocerned
with records management in the private sector.
Human resources and professional training
Most Asian archives face a major problem in respect
of human resources – an insufficiency of professional
and technical staff. The need for archival training
courses at all levels is increasing in Asia, but it is not
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matched by the availability of places at archival
schools. Staff can attend courses of archival education and training conducted by universities, colleges
or institutes in only a few countries (for example,
Australia, China, India, Indonesia and Malaysia.
Other countries have to send staff abroad, mainly to
Australia, Europe and North America, to acquire
such training. Table 4 lists just a selection of the
courses available in the region.
Since in most Asian countries there are no
archival professional training courses at the intermediate or higher levels, major archival institutions
conduct local basic training as the principal way of
preparing their new employees for archival responsibilities. Some of these basic training courses accept
trainees from other archival institutions within the
country and staff engaged in managing current
records within government agencies.
Professional associations
Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand and the
Republic of Korea have national professional
archival associations: the Australian Society of
Archivists Inc. (ASA), the Chinese Archives Society,
the Japan Society of Archive Institutions, the
Archives and Records Association of New Zealand
and the Korean Archives Conservation Association
(KACA); but in general Asian countries do not have
such national professional associations.
However, most national archives are members
of international associations. In particular, almost all
are members of ICA and simultaneously belong
to the appropriate ICA regional branch (China,
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Hong
Kong, Japan, Macao, Mongolia and the Republic of
Korea belong to EASTICA – East Asian Branch;
Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka
belong to SWARBICA – South and West Asian
Regional Branch; Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia,
Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore,
Thailand and Viet Nam belong to SARBICA –
South East Asian Regional Branch; Australia,
New Zealand and the islands of Oceania belong to
PARBICA – Pacific Regional Branch).
Table 4. Archival education and training
Country
Education and
training
Australia
3
China
3
Archival courses in twenty-two universities and colleges; courses in Archives College under the
People’s University of China; Archivist Training Centre under State Archives Bureau
3
Diploma in Library and Archives Management, conducted by NARA Institute of Technology
(three-year programme with major emphasis on library practices); short courses for Departmental
Record Offices in the National Archives
Hong Kong
Malaysia
Macao
Type of courses
Job training in the public archives
Short courses conducted by Polytechnic Institute of Macao; job training in the Macao Historical
Archives
Nepal
Pakistan
Three-week short courses organized periodically by the National Archives; Naitional Institute of
Archives and Record Management to start soon
Republic of
Korea
Archival professional training courses of one week conducted by Government Archives and
Records Office
Singapore
Staff are usually sent to Australia, United Kingdom and United States for training; local job training
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In addition, archives in countries which are
members of the Commonwealth are likely themselves to be members of the Association of
Commonwealth Archivists and Records Managers;
Malaysia is a member of the South East Asian
Committee on Microfilm; and Australia is a member
of the International Association of Music, Libraries,
Archives and Documentation Centres – Australia
Branch – IAML (see Table 5).
Archives budgets
Most of the Asian archives do not have a designated
budget allocation within the general budget of the
governmental authority under which they are
placed. However, the National Archives of Macao,
Pakistan, the Republic of Korea and Singapore
assume that they receive, respectively, 15%, 16%,
0.01% and 5.6% of the total budget allocated to their
parent body.
Information technology
Generally speaking, archives have been involved in
great changes with the use of modern information
technology to automate archives management, especially through the application of computers for the
arrangement and description of records. The result is
faster and more accurate arrangement and description, as well as more efficient information retrieval.
The use of computers in Asian archives is not widely
developed, but the employment of word-processing or
database systems to produce finding aids or to undertake other aspects of the management of archival
material is now to be found in Australia, China,
Indonesia, Japan, Macao, Malaysia, the Republic of
Korea, Singapore and Viet Nam (see Table 3).
An Asian computer network for exchanging
archival information does not yet exist. However,
archives can be linked to the Internet, where, for
example, information about Australian Archives is
already available.
Table 5. Professional associations
Country
National
associations
Designations
Australia
3
Australian Society of Archivists (ASA);
Records Management Association of
Australia (RMAA)
China
3
Chinese Archives Society, 1981
International
associations
3
Designations
International Association of Music,
Libraries, Archives and Documentation
Centres – Australian Branch (IAML)
3
ICA; EASTICA
Hong Kong
3
ICA; EASTICA
Malaysia
3
ICA; Association of Commonwealth
Archivists and Records Managers;
SARBICA; South East Asia Committee
of Microfilm
Macao
3
ICA; EASTICA
Nepal
3
ICA; SWARBICA
Pakistan
3
ICA; SWARBICA; Association of
Commonwealth Archivists and Records
Managers
3
ICA; EASTICA
3
ICA; SARBICA
Republic of
Korea
Singapore
3
Korean Archives Conservation Association,
1995 (KACA)
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Conclusions
Further reading
Archives in Asia play an important role as an indispensable instrument for the history of both the
whole continent and the individual nations.
Consequently they must offer well-organized and
structured services in order to give easier access to
citizens and researchers.
Until recently most archives in Asia were very
isolated and unprivileged institutions. They have
been gradually developed and provided with
increased resources, as a result of the growing awareness of the important role they play in society. Yet
the present situation is far from ideal. The scarcity of
economic resources and the lack of proper archival
policies are the main problems.
From the survey of the situation of archives in
Asia we can assume that all countries have archives
at the national level, together with archival legislation which defines and establishes general policies
and standards for the preservation of the national
archival heritage.
Many archives use microfilming technology to
preserve records and a few have now started to
implement and develop computerized systems to
help with the arrangement and description of
archival materials (see Chapter 25). Almost all the
archives issue archival publications and are members
of international associations.
However, there are less positive aspects: lack of
specialized human resources and almost non-existent professional archival education and training. In
the absence of qualified personnel the archives are
experiencing difficulties in tackling the problems of
records and archives management. Another major
problem is the uncertain financial background –
often archives institutions have very limited budgets
which do not guarantee them adequate resources for
the implementation of a proper archives policy. ■■
FANG, J. R.; SONGE, A. H. 1990. World Guide to Library,
Archive and Information Science Associations. Paris,
IFLA. (Publications, 72/73).
INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL ON ARCHIVES. 1995. Archival
Legislation 1981–1994. Archivum, Vol. XL (Albania–
Kenya), 348 pp.; Vol. XLI (Latvia–Zimbabwe), 344
pp. Munich, K. G. Saur.
MACKENZIE, G. P. Further Analysis of the International
Survey of Archival Development. In: Proceedings of
the Inter-Regional Conference on Archival Development of the International Council on Archives,
Tunis, 1995. (Special issue of Janus, 1996.)
NOR, Z. H. The National Archives of Malaysia – Its
Growth and Development. In: Proceedings of the
Inter-Regional Conference on Archival Development of the International Council on Archives,
Tunis, 1995. (Special issue of Janus, 1996.)
ROPER, M. The Present State of Archival Development
World-wide. In: Proceedings of the Inter-Regional
Conference on Archival Development of the
International Council on Archives, Tunis, 1995.
(Special issue of Janus, 1996.)
World Encyclopedia of Library and Information Services
1993. 3rd ed. Chicago, American Library Association.
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Maria Helena Lima Évora has been
Director of the Macao Historical
Archives since 1994. She obtained a
Bachelor of Arts degree from the
University of Lisbon in 1985 and
attended a two-year course in Archives and
Information Sciences in the same institution in
1989–90. Her first work in 1986 was in the Macao
Central Library, a department of the Cultural Institute
of Macao. In 1991 she moved to the Macao Historical
Archives (also a department of the Cultural Institute
of Macao). From 1991 to 1993 she worked as an
archivist and in 1994 became Director of the Archives.
She is an active member of EASTICA (East Asian
Branch of the International Council on Archives).
Maria Helena Lima Évora
Director
Arquivo Histórico de Macau
Instituto Cultural de Macau
Av. Conselheiro Ferreira de Almeida
No. 91–93 Macau
Macao
Tel: 592-919
Fax: 561-495
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Chapter 10
The Arab States
Moncef Fakhfakh
National Archives, Tunisia
Legislation and standardization
Legislation on archives is very important, as it
includes the definition of what constitutes an archive
and what its scope should be, describes its administrative organization and the responsibilities of the
various bodies and individuals involved, and also
lays down the periods during which documents will
remain classified.
The statutes of most countries in the Arab
region have appeared in various publications (International Council on Archives, 1995–96; La législation archivistique, 1996; The Arab Archives, 1990).
This description is based on those sources and the
updated results of a survey conducted in 1990 by the
Arab Regional Branch of the International Council
on Archives (ICA). Nevertheless, the following
description cannot claim to be exhaustive. It emerges
that many Arab states have legislation on archives,
but the situation is uneven and varies greatly from
one country to another.
Three types of situation can be identified:
•
Countries with satisfactory legislation on
archives.
•
Countries with old or outdated legislation.
•
Countries with no legislation on the subject.
Only a few states, unfortunately, have acceptable
legislation on archives. Algeria, Saudi Arabia, the
Sudan, Tunisia and Yemen belong to this group, but
only Algeria, the Sudan and Tunisia have relatively
sophisticated archive practices, while the recent
appearance of legislation in Saudi Arabia has not
yet borne fruit in the form of archive work
proper. Algeria and the Sudan have more experience
than Tunisia, where the practice of keeping archives
was resumed only recently. Algeria and Tunisia have
a great deal of legislation, which testifies to a certain
level of activity, but also makes it necessary to keep
the legislation up to date. Yemen has recently passed
modern legislation as part of a pilot scheme for
setting up a national archive system, undertaken
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with the help of the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) and UNESCO, but archival
practice is still in its infancy there.
The Arab states where legislation on archives
has become old or even outdated are Egypt, Iraq,
Lebanon, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Mauritania
and the Syrian Arab Republic. In most cases, legislation in these countries is not concerned with the
principles of records management but focuses on
definitive (or historical) archives.
The Arab states which have no archival legislation are Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Oman,
Palestine, Qatar, Somalia and the United Arab
Emirates. It should be noted that Bahrain has a text
regulating records management and that the United
Arab Emirates has a few regulations relating to the
conservation of financial documents. The number of
countries without any real legislation on archives
none the less remains high. However, apart from
Morocco, they are small countries where the state
apparatus is relatively new, and whose institutions
until recently amounted to local governments.
Furthermore, many of these countries are still
monarchies. Morocco is a special case: archives are
kept for the King’s private administrative offices but
little is done in the sphere of public administration.
The shortage or absence of legislation on
archives is a function of the lack of importance some
decision-makers attribute to it. The public conception of archives and their purpose is another factor
here. Almost everywhere archives are esteemed only
for their heritage value; the role documents play in
managing the country’s affairs and assisting the decision-making process is forgotten. As record-keeping
practices are not changing, there is no incentive to
draft new legislation.
Standardization is everywhere less developed in
the archive sector than in other information sciences.
In the Arab States, standardization is at best
confined to applying known standards, particularly
as regards conditions of conservation and building
construction. The standard governing the description of documents ( ISAD(G)) produced by the ICA
has just been translated into Arabic and published in
1996 by the National Archives of Tunisia; the
Dictionnaire de vocabulaire archivistique was also
published in Arabic in 1995.
Archival institutions
Organization
Except for the Ottoman tradition examined below,
archival institutions are relatively recent in Arab
countries. In 1829, Egypt was the first Arab country
to organize its archives, followed by Tunisia in 1874.
Many countries took over the archive system established by the colonial power; others set up archive
services much later. Some countries, such as Oman
and Jordan, still have no real administration for
archives. The legislative vacuum mentioned above as
regards some countries is often accompanied by a
lack of archival institutions.
The attachment of an archival institution to a
supervisory body can have an enormous influence
on the development of the archive sector. The
administration of archives obviously depends on the
political system of the country (centralized or decentralized). The supervisory body varies from country
to country:
•
The President’s administrative departments:
Algeria, Lebanon and Yemen.
•
The Emir’s cabinet: Kuwait and Qatar.
•
The Prime Minister’s office: Bahrain, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and the United
Arab Emirates.
•
The ministry of culture and/or heritage: Egypt,
Iraq, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Oman and
the Syrian Arab Republic.
•
The ministry of education: Morocco, Sudan.
Archival institutions under the supervision of a body
well placed in the political hierarchy have more facilities at their disposal for the accomplishment of their
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task, provided that decision-makers are willing.
Many Arab archival institutions are not only
attached to ministries of culture with little political
authority, but are often dependent on other cultural
sectors such as archaeology (in the Syrian Arab
Republic and the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya) or the
national library (Egypt and Morocco). The subordination of archive services to other structures often
results in the marginalization of the field.
As far as the administrative organization of
archives is concerned, a distinction can be drawn
between institutions regarded as departments coming under a ministry (or some other kind of supervision) and those established as autonomous bodies
with a legal status and financial autonomy. This latter type of organizational structure usually gives the
institution greater freedom of management and
makes it better able to plan and carry out its work.
There are nine countries in which the national institutions are autonomous bodies: Algeria, Egypt, Iraq,
Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, Tunisia, the
United Arab Emirates and Yemen.
Organization of Arab archives at regional and
local levels is embryonic. Except for Algeria and the
Sudan, which have set up regional archive services,
such organization is non-existent in Arab countries.
The same is true of municipal archives, which exist in
only a few large Arab towns.
Buildings, equipment and budgets
Purpose-built premises for archives are important
tools for any national policy in this field. This type
of building is still rare in Arab countries. Only
Algeria, Bahrain, Tunisia and the United Arab
Emirates have purpose-built premises for their
national archives. There are few such buildings for
regional and local archives.
The workshops and technical equipment
needed for archives (restoration, microfilming, disinfection, de-acidification, computerization, etc.)
are still inadequate. Furthermore, in Arab countries
there are not even any institutions providing training
in restoration.
Insufficient information is available on the budgets of Arab archival institutions. It is accepted,
however, that many archives have great difficulty in
fulfilling their tasks within their budgets. They often
suffer from a lack of equipment and resources for
adopting new technologies, particularly where they
are under the supervision of ministries of culture or
social affairs which themselves receive only a small
proportion of the state budget. These institutions are
entirely dependent on public funds and rarely have
resources of their own derived from the sale of services, publications or other products. Very few foundations or private bodies provide assistance to
archival institutions which, furthermore, do not
enjoy the free services of voluntary organizations or
individuals.
Holdings, collections and communication
of documents
The holdings and collections of archive material in
the Arab States share the following characteristics:
•
The volume is comparatively small. Egypt, a
country with a population of some 60 million,
has only about ten linear kilometres of documents in its National Archives; next come the
holdings of the Sudan, the Syrian Arab
Republic and Tunisia, which have approximately five kilometres.
•
The oldest documents, with the exception of
manuscripts, normally go back no more than
four centuries, although there are a few examples of older documents. Various factors may
account for this situation (political instability,
social structure based on orality, etc.).
•
Collections of audiovisual documents are still
limited.
The material and intellectual treatment of archive
holdings is generally carried out in the usual way.
The number of research tools (inventories, lists, etc.)
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published in Arab states is still small. Very few have
developed reference databases for definitive (historical) archives. Computer applications for archive
work (accession, stock management, communication
of documents, etc.) are almost non-existent in Arab
archival institutions.
It must be pointed out that the purpose of all
archive work is to make documents available to
users. Arab legislation on the subject places more
emphasis on the confidentiality of documents than
on citizens’ right to access them. Thus periods during which documents remain classified are generally
longer than the average observed elsewhere. The distinction between a minimum period of 30 years and
further periods of 60, 100 and 120 years is not always
accepted and, even where the distinction exists, documents are likely to remain in the original departments when they are no longer of administrative use
and to be deposited only after the end of that period.
The practice of departments regularly depositing
their public records in Arab archives is rarely
observed, so it is difficult to find recent holdings that
make it possible to study and research the second
half of the twentieth century. Moreover, the citizen’s
right to information is less developed and no Arab
country has legislation regulating access to administrative records.
The average daily number of users in the reading rooms of Arab archival institutions is low: about
forty per day in the Sudan and twenty in Egypt –
and these are the highest figures. The small volume
of records kept and the paucity of sophisticated
research tools may, in part, be responsible for the
low number of users, but scientific research is also
little developed. Consulting records is also far from
being a social phenomenon affecting the history of
families, individuals or communities; it is the prerogative of students preparing for university degrees
and established researchers. The phenomenon of
genealogical research, highly developed in the
archival institutions of Europe and North America,
is virtually unknown in the Arab States (for example,
the proportion of genealogists among users of the
French National Archives is more than 60%, while it
is less than 5% in Arab record offices).
Staff and training
The first observation to be made about the staff
appointed to Arab archival institutions is the small
number of specialists (archivists and keepers) in relation to the volume of documents and compared with
other countries. Similarly, there are few staff specialized in restoration, microfilming and computers. It is
important to note that in Arab countries archivists
have a poor image, which is sometimes that of the
civil servant appointed to a degrading department as
a disciplinary measure or because of professional
incompetence. Yet professionals are a vital element
in raising awareness of the importance of records –
they have a vital role to play in any national policy
on the subject, which they must promote and implement. This poor image also explains why there are so
few Arab archivists on the international professional
scene.
In most Arab states, archivists are trained in the
same university courses as librarians – there is no
specialized institution for such training. Librarianship and documentation work have taken the lion’s
share of training programmes. Furthermore, such
training is available in only eight countries: Algeria,
Egypt, Iraq, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Morocco,
Saudi Arabia, the Sudan and Tunisia. Among these
countries, Algeria, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, the
Sudan and Tunisia provide fairly sound training for
archivists. In 1993, Algeria and Tunisia set up a
specialized training course for candidates with a
Master’s degree.
The training of senior staff, particularly archive
keepers, is still inadequate, despite the fact that the
profession requires a high level of training: in addition to professional and technical skills, the archivist
must also have considerable knowledge of law,
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administrative and political organization, the history
of institutions, new technologies, etc. Training for
keepers is available only in Morocco, but is not
specific to archives. Thus the Arab States continue to
rely on keepers trained abroad.
Continuing and further training takes place
mainly at the national level. There are also a few sessions in computerized information retrieval organized by the Documentation Centre of the League
of Arab States (ALDOC). Bilateral co-operation has
taken place between Tunisia and Yemen in running
continuing training sessions for Yemeni professionals with Tunisian instructors. Some Arab archival
institutions also send staff to institutions in Europe
and North America to improve their skills.
There are few books on archives in Arabic.
Arab professionals have produced little in this field
and few international works have been translated
into Arabic. Even the studies published by
UNESCO, notably the RAMP studies on records
and archives management, are rarely translated into
Arabic, although many Arab archivists are monolingual.
In addition, the training of trainers is not rigorously and systematically carried out everywhere, so
that universities in Arab countries do not have academic staff specialized in the science of keeping
archives as is generally understood.
Records management
The conception of records that prevails in Arab
countries is of a standard type: documents are
regarded as records from the time they cease to be
useful for the departments of origin. This means that
there is no link between the management of records
while they are useful to the bodies that have produced them and after this stage. This separation
between the two phases of the life-cycle of documents accounts for the marginalization of archival
institutions. They are seen as depositories responsible for gathering documents which are valued only
as heritage items or as curiosities. Furthermore, in
some Arab Gulf states, archives are even called ‘historical documents centres’. This approach is not
unique to the Arab region, but is also found in other
parts of the world. What is specific to the Arab
world is the interest in the oldest documents, from
relatively distant periods; few studies are devoted to
modern history.
The comprehensive view of archives which sees
documents as records from the moment they come
into being is not widespread in Arab countries. Only
Bahrain has a system of records management at the
central government level, but there is as yet no
organic relationship between the centre for files
and documents that comes under the authority
of the Prime Minister’s office and the Historical
Documents Centre that comes under the Ministry of
Justice. There is some know-how about management
of public records in a few countries where formerly
there was a British colonial presence, notably Egypt
and Yemen, but these practices are far from amounting to a system of records management. Egypt has
made an effort in the management of its public
records through an administrative reform agency
responsible to the Cabinet, and has set up a large
computerized system to make legal and other documents available to decision-makers. But, here again,
no link has been established with the National
Archives, which come under the Ministry of Culture
and remain separate from the process.
An interesting experiment in records management conducted in Tunisia deserves mention. A
comprehensive approach to records was decided
upon in 1988 when one statute and three decrees
were adopted concerning records management. The
system is applied within the framework of a national
plan for administrative reform and improvement. It
involves listing current documents and files, determining how long they are to be conserved and the
ultimate fate of each type of document and file, and
giving them classification numbers to facilitate cur-
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rent use. The aim of the records management programme is obviously to improve the efficiency of
government agencies. For some public establishments and businesses the tools have already been
prepared and applied. As regards government
departments, the plan has just begun and should be
completed by the year 2000.
Records management in the private sector in
Arab states is no better than in the public. The strategic sectors of the economy are still controlled by the
state, so the private sector consists essentially of
small and medium-sized companies, many of which
have become aware of the importance of records
management as an aid to the decision-making
process and a factor in more rational management.
Records management is not a common practice
in the administration of Arab countries; it is not
inherent to Arab civilization. Although the Arab
world had a highly developed administrative and
documentary tradition in the Middle Ages, the
region went through a long period of decadence
marked by political instability that lasted until the
colonial period. The Ottoman occupation did leave
its mark in this field: the Arab countries which have
a tradition of keeping records are those where the
Ottoman presence was significant (notably Egypt
and Tunisia). British influence in the Arab region
also had its effect on the management of government
records, even if relatively weak (Egypt, Iraq and
Yemen). French influence did not lead to the establishment of records management, as there is no such
practice in the French civil service (with the exception of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs).
Professional associations
It should be noted that in Arab countries archivists
share the same professional associations with librarians, and that these associations were established by
librarians. No Arab country has an archivists’ association, probably because archivists are so few in number. The fact that these information specialists are
trained in the same institutions has facilitated their
being grouped together. Almost all Arab countries
have professional associations, with the exception of
some Arab Gulf states, where associations are not
always authorized. Professional associations still
have little impact. They have some influence on raising public awareness about the value of records, and
participate in training, but generally they have no
power over national policy concerning records, or
even on issues such as standardization.
Archives, history, culture and
administrative organization
There is an organic link between records and historical studies. The collection and organization of
records determines the development of historical
studies. It should be noted in this respect that
records concerning the twentieth century are relatively little developed in Arab countries, and the
same is true of historical studies of the modern period. Historical study often remains the prerogative
of specialized researchers. Some research on genealogy or local matters is carried out by individuals,
especially the elderly, but not much in comparison
with that in developed countries. Similarly, historical
societies have few members compared with developed countries. While there is a fair amount of historical study, most is done by individuals working
for university degrees. There are few research
groups, particularly of a multidisciplinary kind.
Production of historical studies is buoyant in countries with sufficiently large and well-kept archives,
notably Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, the Syrian Arab
Republic and Tunisia.
The use of records in the cultural field can take
different forms: exhibitions, publications based on
documents for teaching or popularization purposes,
source material for producing audiovisual materials,
etc. In this respect, it should be noted that in Arab
states such documents are more frequently used for
political and patriotic than for cultural or scientific
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events. In general, only a few social and professional
categories, notably the intelligentsia, visit exhibitions. Few catalogues of inventories or archive documents, or books based on archive documents for a
general audience or for educational purposes, are
published. In contrast, the publication of annotated
manuscripts (old, handwritten works), particularly
religious and even scientific manuscripts, is flourishing.
Archives and multimedia
Multimedia techniques are making slow progress
in the Arab States. Their use calls for financial
resources and a propitious administrative and human
environment. Information retrieval applications are
being developed in some countries and a few CDROMs relating to heritage have been produced
including the CD-ROM on the fragments of the
Sanaa (Yemen) Koran produced within the framework of UNESCO’s Memory of the World Programme, and the CD-ROM on archaeological sites
produced by the Regional Information Technology
and Software Engineering Centre (RITSEC) in
Egypt. The spread of multimedia in the archives sector, however, encounters the question of the medium’s durability; conservation of original documents,
because of their probative value, is indispensable (see
Chapter 25). Multimedia at the moment, therefore, is
more useful for distribution than for conservation.
Issues specific to the Arab region
Many Arab states are in dispute with their former
colonial powers – France, the United Kingdom and
Italy – on the subject of archives. The archives transferred to these latter countries concern mainly the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries and are of a
diplomatic nature, but some deal with the management of the country. As there is no international
convention on the subject, each country has tried to
resolve the issue in its own way. Algeria seems to be
determined to obtain the originals, while other coun-
tries, such as Lebanon and Tunisia, have used microfilm (see Chapter 24). It should be noted that the former colonial powers have given insufficient aid for
the funding of microfilming operations.
As far as records predating the colonial period
are concerned, Turkey inherited the records of the
Ottoman Empire, which included most of the Arab
States for a considerable period (from the sixteenth
to the nineteenth centuries). Some Arab countries
have been able to microfilm the documents that
interest them, but this operation is still subject to
two constraints: the Turkish National Archives
processes Ottoman documents slowly, so many are
as yet unavailable; and the Arab countries need to
train specialists in Osmanli (which differs from modern Turkish) so as to be able to use the documents.
Many Arab governments take no interest in
contemporary records, which are therefore in danger
of accumulating in poor conservation conditions and
deteriorating. Tunisia, followed by Algeria, however,
has undertaken a broad programme to improve this
situation (Fakhfakh, 1995). It should also be mentioned that the concept of the citizen’s right to information is not shared by all Arab states. In practice,
the confidentiality of government documents is
often excessive, so it is rare to find in the Arab States
studies dealing with recent history – issues, in other
words, that are still fresh and may arouse public
interest or even passion. ■■
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References
The Arab Archives. 1990. No. 13–14. 244 pp.
FAKHFAKH, M. 1995. Emergency Plan for Dealing with
Accumulations of Records and Archives in Government Services: A RAMP Study. Paris, UNESCO.
44 pp.
INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL ON ARCHIVES. 1995–96. La
législation archivistique: 1981–1994. Archivum, Vol.
XL (Albanie–Kenya), 348 pp.; Vol. XLI (Lettonie–
Zimbabwe), 344 pp. Munich, K. G. Saur.
La législation archivistique pour le développement du
système national d’information. Archives nationales
de Tunisie, Tunis, 10–13 mai, 1994. Ottawa, Banque
Internationale d’Information sur les Pays Francophones. 2 vols.
Moncef Fakhfakh, Director-General
of the National Archives of Tunisia,
obtained his baccalaureate, specializing
in philosophy and French literature, in
1966. He continued his studies at the
University of Tunis (Faculty of Humanities), where he
was awarded his Master’s degree in history in 1970. He
taught history in secondary schools before being
appointed Director of Studies at the Institut Supérieur
de Documentation in Tunis in 1982. In 1985, he
successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis on the Tunisian
Government Archives, and was appointed to a
teaching post in archival methodologies at the Institut.
In 1986, he was invited to take over the direction of the
General Archive of the Tunisian Government. He is
President of the Arab Regional Branch of the
International Council on Archives (1988–96) and
President of the International Association of
Francophone Archives (1990–96). He has acted as a
consultant to the United Nations and UNESCO,
including the latter’s Memory of the World
programme. He has published a book based on his
thesis, and many studies and articles in the field of
archives, including a study for RAMP (UNESCO
programme on document management and archives).
Moncef Fakhfakh
Directeur général
Archives nationales de Tunisie
Premier Ministère
La Kasbah
1020 Tunis
Tunisia
Tel: (1) 260-556
Fax: (1) 569-175
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Chapter 11
Africa
Peter Mazikana
ARA-TECHTOP
Consulting Services,
Zimbabwe
T
he archival situation in Africa is as varied as
the multiplicity of nations that make up the
huge continent. Inasmuch as the more than
fifty countries that comprise Africa vary in size from
a geographical coverage of less than 1,000 square
kilometres to 2.5 million square kilometres, populations of less than 100,000 to over 96 million, Gross
Domestic Products (GDP) ranging from US$279
million to over US$110 billion and per capita
incomes of US$60 to US$6,000, so too does the
archival situation vary enormously. At one end of
the spectrum are nations that have only the most
rudimentary of archival infrastructures and where
even the most basic of archival services are absent; at
the other end are countries which have established
advanced archival services and whose facilities and
infrastructures compare favourably with other
nations in the developed world.
Legislation
While some countries in North Africa have archival
institutions that date back several centuries, most
sub-Saharan countries established national archives
only after the Second World War. Benin, Burkina
Faso, Namibia, Senegal, South Africa and Zimbabwe
are among the few exceptions in sub-Saharan Africa
that established national archives before 1950. Most
countries have promulgated national archives or
public archives acts which provide the legal framework under which national archives institutions
operate and which control and preserve the archival
heritage. The very few that as yet have no archives
legislation, such as Uganda and Ethiopia, have draft
legislation which is in the process of being formalized. The legislative instruments in general give
the national archives the authority to deal with
the records and archives of public entities such as
central government, local government and parastatals. The degree of authority and control differs
from country to country, ranging from giving advice
to the right to inspect records and issue instruc-
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tions for their proper management and handling.
In most of the legislation, the destruction of
public records is forbidden without the consent of
the national archives. Some of the legislation also
defines the role of the national archives in relation to
private records and historical manuscripts, and in
certain cases controls have been introduced through
the national archives to guard against the export of
private archival collections deemed to be of national
importance. Some of the legislation makes the distinction between public records and public archives,
the latter comprising those public records that have
been appraised and found to have a historical and
enduring value and which must be preserved in
perpetuity. In a number of countries the national
archives also administer the legal deposit or printed
publications acts which require the deposit of copies
of all publications produced in the country. This in
effect creates within the national archives the national reference library.
The ministerial placement of national archives
is varied, but the vast majority of the national
archives are in the ministries of home affairs, education/sports/art and culture, and the president’s
office. In a few countries advisory boards or committees have been created to assist the national
archives.
Standards
The standards applied in the acquisition, processing,
preservation, conservation and usage of records and
archives in general are those that have been developed by the International Council on Archives
(ICA), particularly through the RAMP Study series
of publications and the ICA specialist committees’
technical publications. In West Africa, standards
from the Association Française de Normalisation
(AFNOR) and the International Standard Organization (ISO) have been adopted. There are also standards which have been developed by other organizations such as the International Records Management
Council (IRMC), the Association of Records
Managers and Administrators (ARMA) based in the
United States, the Records Management Society of
Great Britain, and other specialist organizations.
Standards also tend to be influenced by the practices
of the former colonial powers, because most of the
national archival institutions are based on the
records of the former metropolitan entities and are
reflective of the latter’s administrative structures and
systems. The type of training received by the records
managers and archivists, and the institutions giving
the training, also have a bearing on the standards
used.
Institutions
Almost all countries in Africa have national archives
or public records offices. The national archival institutions play the key role in the organization, management and preservation of records and archives at
the national level. Their mandate tends to be allembracing because of the absence of similar facilities
at the local government and parastatal levels and in
the private sector, as is the case in other regions of
the world such as Europe and North America. In a
few countries there are municipal and local government archives, but these are the exception. In quite a
number of countries the national archives have
established regional offices but the functionality of
these in the majority of cases is rather weak. Privatesector archives exist in some countries but these tend
to be limited to large multinational corporations. In
a number of countries private commercial records
centres have been established.
Architecture plays an essential role in the
preservation and conservation of the archival heritage. The national archives in most countries occupy
either purpose-built or converted buildings (most of
the purpose-built repositories were constructed after
1960). But many archival institutions are housed in
buildings which are inadequate (for example Mali
and Côte d’Ivoire). In some cases, such as Cape
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Verde, Ethiopia, Guinea, Lesotho and Uganda, the
archives are temporarily housed in such places as the
university library, the basement of a former colonial
secretariat building or the national library. Few
countries, however, have adequate space for the storage of the archives and most, even those in purposebuilt repositories, are facing severe space shortages in
buildings that were filled long ago. Many of the
institutions are unable to receive new accessions
because there is no storage space.
There are also problems concerning air-conditioning. Although most of the purpose-built repositories originally included air-conditioning systems,
these systems in several cases have broken down or
become non-functional for one reason or another.
This has created serious difficulties, as often such
buildings do not allow for adequate natural ventilation and the archival holdings are therefore at risk.
Holdings
The size of holdings of conventional archives varies
enormously from country to country. At the lower
end there are countries such as Rwanda, whose
archive holdings are less than 500 metres, while at
the other end of the spectrum countries such as
Mozambique have as much as 25,000 metres. A joint
UNESCO–ICA survey in 1987 showed that twentyone countries had a cumulative total of 81,000 metres
of archives, an average of 3,800 metres per institution.
The archival holdings in most countries in subSaharan Africa are based on the former colonial
administrations and there are many cases where the
archives are only as old as the beginnings of the colonial occupation. National archives also often have
historical manuscript collections or private archives
comprising the records of non-governmental organizations and institutions as well as individuals. These
archives can be varied and diverse: diaries and collections of eminent and scholarly individuals, archives
of churches, educational institutions and sporting
organizations, and business archives recording offi-
cial transactions such as policies, procedures and
meetings.
Archival collections are also held by various
other institutions and individuals: religious organizations, universities, libraries and some large corporations can contain sizeable archival holdings. In
Ethiopia, for instance, the National Library and
the Institute of Ethiopian Studies at the University
of Addis Ababa have rich collections of historical
manuscripts dating back some five centuries.
Human resources
The staffing levels vary considerably from country to
country. In some of the large countries the levels are
sizeable, with Kenya and South Africa at the beginning of 1996 having staff complements of 226 and
229 respectively, while Nigeria in 1989 was reported
to have a staff of nearly 600. On the other hand, there
are countries such as Lesotho, Swaziland and Sierra
Leone with less than ten staff. The majority of institutions have between 10 and 100 staff. The ratio
between paraprofessional and professional staff for
nineteen countries surveyed between 1991 and 1996
was 91 paraprofessionals for every nine professional
staff.
The national archives face various problems in
retaining trained and qualified staff, and the attrition
rate is high. In 1987, for example, the National
Archives of Mali and Guinea were reported to be
handicapped by insufficient human resources. The
high staff turnover is attributed to a number of factors including low salaries, low grading, lack of
attractive career structures and the lure of the private
sector. Government registry staff constitute the bulk
of the records management staff in all countries. The
registry staff, however, are not well trained and of
low calibre. There are only a few countries with registry training schools. In West Africa, the Section of
Archives of the École de Bibliothécaires, Archivistes
et Documentalistes (EBAD) in Senegal plays an
important regional role. In some cases, such as
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Zimbabwe, a vibrant training school has been closed
temporarily. The morale of registry staff is reported
to be quite low in most countries and they operate
without recognition and some of the basic necessities. The low status of registries and registry staff
also leaves them exposed to senior officers who
openly flout and violate established procedures for
handling records. There is an urgent need to upgrade
the status of registries and to train and motivate the
staff.
Technical facilities
Most national archives in Africa have reprographic
and conservation units or laboratories. These reprographic facilities consist mainly of microfilming
equipment but there is also other document-reproduction equipment such as photocopiers and duplicators. Microfilming is used primarily for acquiring
copies of documents whose originals cannot be
obtained, for preservation purposes when documents are in a fragile condition or are constituted of
materials which deteriorate rapidly, such as newspapers, and for the production of multiple copies of
documents, as in the case of the records of the former Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, which
were microfilmed to provide copies to each of the
three successor countries: Malawi, Zambia and
Zimbabwe.
Document conservation unit have been created
to repair and rehabilitate archival materials from
depositors that are received in a deteriorated condition. The main method of repair and restoration utilized is lamination, although a limited amount of
encapsulation is done in some countries. Most of the
countries with conservation units have lamination
machines and only in a few countries is the hand
method used. Countries such as Ethiopia and the
United Republic of Tanzania do not have conservation units.
The need for conservation in a continent with
such a harsh climatic environment is self-evident.
Unfortunately, in the government ministries and
departments of a number of countries in Africa, the
condition in which records are being maintained is a
cause for great concern. There are numerous reports
detailing situations in which records were exposed to
excessive heat, humidity, mould, light, air pollution,
insects and rodents. Records have often been
dumped in storerooms and sheds where the roofs
leaked, the windows were broken and doors were
only partially effective. This grave situation has given
rise in the last ten years to international rescue missions which have been used to salvage the situation
and avoid total disaster. Such missions have been
launched in the Gambia, Uganda and the United
Republic of Tanzania.
For those countries that do have reprographic
and conservation facilities, there are often insurmountable difficulties in maintaining equipment and
acquiring adequate and appropriate supplies of
chemicals and other materials. There are many
reports of equipment that has broken down and
remained unrepaired because of shortage of spare
parts, as well as problems related to the antiquated
nature of some of the equipment which was purchased in the 1960s and 1970s.
Budgets
The budget allocations for national archives do not
compare favourably with other government ministries and departments. Of the national archives in
twelve countries that reported on their 1995/96 budgets, five felt that their budget allocations were fair
while the other seven felt that they were unsatisfactory. The budgets ranged from a mere US$4,000 per
annum in the case of Malawi to over US$3 million
for South Africa. For half of these countries, their
budgets in the last five years had increased marginally by up to 10%; the other half felt that while staff
salaries had been increased to cope with rises in the
cost of living, in real terms budget allocations had
declined by up to 5%.
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In general, national archives and archival activities do not receive priority in the allocation of scarce
national resources. In many countries the larger part
of the budget is consumed by staff salaries, leaving
very little for recurrent expenditure. There are
reports of national archives which fail to purchase
records storage boxes and are therefore not able to
collect records from ministries. There are also cases
where the funds are insufficient even to allow for
transportation to collect the records. In some countries virtually all equipment in the national archives
has been received as donations.
Records management in the public sector
There is a severe crisis facing some African countries
in terms of the management of public-sector records.
The crisis is almost continent-wide, although a few
countries are the exception and have records management systems that are operating very well (for
example, Cape Verde). Reports made by consultant
missions as well as returns submitted by national
archives in response to international surveys paint a
bleak picture of near breakdown in registry management in government ministries and departments.
The reason why the registries are not operating
well is that the national archives in most countries
are hardly involved in the management of current
public records. With a few exceptions such as
Botswana, Kenya, Namibia, South Africa and
Zimbabwe, the national archival institutions only
concern themselves with semi-current and non-current records due for transfer to the national archives.
And yet by that time, irreparable damage will have
been caused to the records.
Many countries have established records centres for semi-current records, but in a good number
of the cases the records centres have been completely
full for many years, making it difficult for new accessions to be received. As a result the records remain in
the ministries and departments. Only a few countries
have records centres at the regional and provincial
levels: Côte d’Ivoire, Malawi, the United Republic of
Tanzania and Zambia are examples of countries with
regional centres.
Reports have been made of records occupying
all available space in registries and storerooms of
government ministries. The crisis that faces many
countries in terms of records management was aptly
captured in one consultant’s report which described
file index systems that were rudimentary or nonexistent. In several registries records were strewn all
over the floors and under shelves; file covers were
often torn and crumpled, frequently with large numbers of pages missing; heaps of dirty, tattered and
misfiled records could be found in corners and on
tops of cupboards; there was a lack of discipline
among staff who seemed to be driven more by tradition than by need; and office equipment was in short
supply, the few filing cabinets available being rusty
and damaged. This is by no means the scenario in all
African countries, and indeed many have well-organized registries, but all the same such situations are a
cause for concern.
Only in a few countries do national archives
carry out regular visits to ministries and departments
to undertake surveys. While standing instructions
for the disposal of time-expired records exist in
many countries, these are often outdated and cover
only a small proportion of the records produced by
the ministries and departments. There are cases
where time-expired records are not disposed of
because of lack of capacity in the national archives.
In most countries public records become
archives and accessible to the public after thirty
years. There are notable exceptions, however, such as
Botswana, which allows access at twenty years,
Nigeria and Zimbabwe at twenty-five years, Lesotho
at thirty-five years, Malawi at forty years and Sudan
and Sierra Leone at fifty years. Archives are accessioned, listed, arranged and described so as to facilitate access by users. Nevertheless, there are reports
in some countries of huge backlogs in the appraisal
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of records and the processing of archives, thereby
delaying the availability of the archives to the public.
There are often finding aids to the collections, and in
some cases guides have been published. Unfortunately, in many countries these have not been
updated for many years and some predate the attainment of national independence. Many of the archival
institutions have search room facilities for researchers and the public. Some of these rooms have
facilities for viewing stored cine films and microfilms, but in certain cases these collections are inaccessible because microfilm readers and projection
equipment have broken down or become unserviceable. Both static and mobile exhibitions are occasionally mounted by some institutions while a few
have educational programmes.
Increasingly African governments realize that
there is a close linkage between records, archives and
efficient governance. This realization comes in the
wake of the economic and political reform programmes that have taken place and the experiences
that have been undergone. In a number of countries,
such as the Gambia and Uganda, registry reform has
been tied to the economic reform programme and
supported actively. Attention is also being paid to
voter registries in the realization that unless these are
reformed there can be no true democracy.
Records management in the private sector
Africa is undergoing fundamental changes in the private sector. These changes are a result of the economic transformation taking place and the liberalization of the economies. The demise of rigid import
and foreign exchange controls and the privatization
of many public institutions have immensely
strengthened private sector activity.
The most profound effect of the liberalization
of the economies has been the influx of information
technology into Africa. Whereas in the pre-1990
period there was only a handful of computers and
other telecommunication equipment, today African
markets are awash with such equipment and the private sector has been at the forefront of acquiring this
technology, much more so than the public sector. An
increasing number are acquiring fax and e-mail facilities and a few have become linked to the Internet.
Traditional records management, however,
has not been a strong point in the private sector.
Businesses remain characterized by decentralized
and unorganized records management systems based
on the operational units and individual offices. Very
few in the private sector have received records management training other than the cursory treatment
that it receives in secretarial and office management
training courses. The standards of records management in the majority of businesses is therefore very
low and no real attempt has been made to mobilize
resources and effect improvement. The notable
exceptions are the large multinational corporations,
which often have elaborate records management
procedures developed at their head offices. They also
often have established in-house records centres and
archives facilities. The availability of unemployed
archivists has contributed to the development of
archives in banks and large firms in countries like
Senegal. In a few countries, such as Zimbabwe and
South Africa, commercial records centres have also
been established. In some countries consulting firms
are providing services in records and information
management. Although increasing numbers of
private firms are manufacturing and distributing
records management materials, supplies and equipment, a large technology gap remains in comparison
with the developed world. South Africa is probably
the main exception in this regard.
The privatization of public enterprises has also
endangered the welfare of large quantities of records.
Even when the national archives could cater for the
archival collections of former public enterprises such
as parastatals, very few of these enterprises made use
of this facility or had any relations with the national
archives. When privatizing, little attention has been
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paid to the fate of the records which in the first
instance were public records and archives but now
belong to a private entity. The national archives have
in any case, by and large, lacked the capacity to
intervene in order to ensure that the records are adequately catered for.
Professional associations
ICA is by far the most prominent professional
archival association in Africa. It has established a
network of regional branches: the West African
Regional Branch of the International Council on
Archives (WARBICA); the Central African
Regional Branch of the International Council on
Archives (CENARBICA); and the East and
Southern African Regional Branch of the International Council on Archives (ESARBICA). The
ICA branches, some of which are very active, allow
archivists from African countries to meet and
exchange ideas as well as to foster archival development. Some of the branches hold biennial conferences which are well attended and are often preceded
by intensive workshops on topical themes. The
chairpersons of the regional branches are ex officio
members of the ICA Executive Board, thereby facilitating an important linkage on the international
front. Through the branches ICA is able to fund certain activities within the context of its medium-term
plans, and the member countries of the branches
obtain access to funding through the Commission
on Archival Development (CAD). ICA provides
subventions for publication of the journals of the
regional branches. Affiliation to ICA also enables
African countries to access funding through various
international agencies (see Chapter 27).
Many national archives are also affiliated to
such international organizations as the International
Association of Sound Archives (IASA) and the
International Federation of Library Associations
and Institutions (IFLA). There are other international professional associations in Africa. Archivists
from countries in the Commonwealth, for instance,
have generally affiliated with the Association of
Commonwealth Archivists and Records Managers
(ACARM). Some countries such as Benin, Ghana,
Mali and Senegal have established national associations of records managers and archivists, but many
others find that the number of archivists and records
managers is too small for the establishment of viable
associations.
Education and training
Africa lacks adequate training facilities for professional and technical staff. Attempts made in the early
1970s to establish regional training schools were
only partially successful. While the school at Dakar,
Senegal, for French-speaking Africa seems to have
fared better with its two degrees (technical and professional), the school for English-speaking Africa in
Ghana has now become no more than a national
centre.
A number of countries have as a result established their own educational facilities at the national
level. Countries such as Botswana and Kenya have
graduate schools in archives and information science.
Training facilities have been established also at the
paraprofessional level, but technical training facilities
in conservation and reprography are virtually unavailable.
In the absence of such facilities, it is not surprising that most archives staff have to be educated
or trained overseas. For English-speaking Africa,
this has mostly been done by University College
London (United Kingdom) which runs a Master’s
programme. France has provided much of the training for French-speaking Africa, and Germany and
Portugal have provided training for their former
colonies. India has also done a lot of training, especially in conservation. A number of countries, such
as South Africa, run their own national programmes
within the national archives or through longdistance training, as in the case of the South African
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Higher Diploma in Archives Studies run by
Technikon SA. Other countries with their own
training programmes include Senegal and Mauritius.
Continuing training in Africa is provided at the
national, regional and international levels through
workshops and seminars that are organized from
time to time. ICA congresses usually include precongress seminars which are attended by young
archivists, including those from the regional branches. Workshops and seminars are also organized
through a variety of initiatives and organizations and
through the ICA Medium-Term Plans. The ICA
regional branches also often precede their own conferences with workshops and seminars. Increasingly,
African countries are turning to each other for training support and arranging for staff attachments in
institutions which have achieved excellence in some
of their operations.
The emphasis is shifting in archival training for
African professional and technical staff. The curriculum being developed within Africa is beginning to
put more and more emphasis on the management of
current and semi-current records and on automation. While traditional archives principles and practices are still being taught, some elements which are
less relevant to the African continent, such as
palaeography and sigillography, are now being
dropped. The historical bias and orientation is also
becoming less pronounced in accordance with a
changing professional perception of the role of
archivists and the demands of information technology that are requiring a different breed of archivist.
Relationships of archives
Archives are recognized as the primary instrument
through which a nation’s historical heritage is preserved. African nations by and large recognize the
importance of archives in the preservation of the
nation’s history, and African scholars make extensive
use of archival sources. A large part of the written
archival sources, however, relate to the period after
colonization of the continent, and this has forced
African nations to mount programmes for the collection and preservation of oral historical sources
which narrate and chronicle the lives of the indigenous people. Many countries have developed active
programmes for oral history and oral tradition.
Some are based at universities and special institutions while others are run by national archives. The
latter has resulted in soul-searching by some African
archivists, who feel that national archives should not
dissipate scarce resources by indulging in activities
for which they are neither well equipped nor trained.
The Kenya National Archives, which had an active
programme for recording oral history and oral traditions before 1982, has discontinued this activity.
Other institutions, however, such as the National
Archives of Zimbabwe, continue to run active
recording programmes.
The placement of many African national
archives under ministries with responsibility for culture has of necessity created close ties between
archives and culture. Archives in Africa have long
been viewed as a cultural heritage. The national
archival institutions have also perpetuated this linkage and many of them continue to carry within their
collections items depicting the cultural heritage.
There are many instances where there has been conflict with museums who do not view favourably the
retention by national archives of museum artefacts.
Archivists hold the view that these constitute an
integral component of archives collections bestowed
on them.
There is an increasing perception, though, that
while archives cannot be divorced from the national
cultural heritage, nevertheless national archives must
pay more attention to information management
operations, especially the management of current
and non-current records. This view is strongly supported and promulgated by the United Kingdombased International Records Management Trust
(IRMT), which has conducted several rescue mis-
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sions in Africa and has concentrated on overhauling
registry systems in those countries. IRMT currently
has projects in several countries including the
Gambia, Ghana, Uganda and the United Republic of
Tanzania.
The increasing emphasis on records management has also refocused archival activities on the
administrative structures of government. Whereas in
the past archivists viewed administrative history in
relation to those records and archives received and
registered, they are now being encouraged to be
proactive and to be involved in the current operations of the record-generating agencies.
Archives in former colonial powers
France, Germany, Portugal and the United Kingdom
were the major colonial powers in Africa. On the
attainment of independence and nationhood by the
African countries, some records were transferred to
the metropolitan countries while other natural accumulations of administrative records remained in situ.
The new nations laid claim to some of the transferred records, and a limited amount of repatriation
was done. By and large, however, the former colonial
powers remained steadfast in their claims on the
records and instead encouraged the copying of these
records to give the new nations access. A number of
copying schemes have been executed, primarily
through the medium of microfilm (see Chapters 10
and 24). Kenya in the 1970s had a team based in the
United Kingdom which visited various institutions,
identifying and copying Kenya-related documentation. Zimbabwe in the early 1980s also went through
a similar exercise. Namibia, which recently attained
independence, has been identifying and acquiring
microfilm copies of records held in South Africa and
Germany. A notable exception to this general situation is that of former Afrique Occidentale Française
(AOF). In the case of the seven territories comprising this colonial administrative unit (Dahomey,
Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and
Upper Volta), the archives remained in Senegal,
which now is in charge of communicating documents to the respective successor states.
Archives of former repressive regimes
The end of the apartheid regime in South Africa in
1994 saw the demise of the last bastion of minority
rule in Africa. This event had been preceded by the
attainment of independence by Zimbabwe and
Namibia. In all cases, the repressive regimes are
reported to have destroyed large numbers of records
prior to the granting of independence, although it is
difficult and perhaps impossible to ascertain and
quantify the destruction that took place. The records
that were already in the national archives remained
largely untouched, although some withdrawals took
place, especially from records centres. By and large
the records in ministries and departments also
remained intact, except for the security and defence
ministries where, for instance, files of informers
were incinerated.
Africa has also had its share of single-party
regimes in countries which had attained independence from colonial rule several decades ago. The
movement for multi-party democracy in the late
1980s and early 1990s swept away some of these
regimes. It is not possible at present to ascertain the
fate of records after these transitions towards
democracy because of the limited involvement of the
national archives in the management of current
records of ministries and governments. Perhaps
when records series are eventually transferred to the
national archives, the extent of the damage will be
ascertained.
Impact of information technologies on
archives
Archival institutions in Africa continue to operate
largely in a manual format in spite of the rapid
changes taking place in the institutions that they service. Only a handful have automated their processes
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and many still lack such basic facilities as word
processors and fax machines.
Government ministries and departments, while
still largely uncomputerized, are gradually acquiring
new technologies. In particular, many are introducing personal-computer-based systems. Very few,
however, have yet embraced the newer technologies
such as optical disks. Estimates early in 1996 of usage
of personal computers by government ministries
varied from as little as 5% in Kenya to 100% in such
countries as South Africa, while fax facility estimates
ranged from zero to 100%. The highest percentage
reported for e-mail was 30% in South Africa and
10% for the Internet in Mauritius. In many countries
government requirements for automated data processing are fulfilled by central computing departments which usually have mainframe computers.
Little has been done by national archives in
Africa to deal with electronic media and the electronic records being generated by various agencies.
In a few cases, such as Namibia, South Africa and
Zimbabwe, special facilities have been put in place,
but still the services provided are limited and do not
embrace control back to the point of electronic
record creation in the agencies. South Africa began
automation in 1974 and today has a database of
almost 6 million records.
The information technology revolution has
provided both an opportunity and a challenge for
archives. On the one hand, the availability of such
mass storage devices as optical disks creates an
opportunity for archives, and computerization can
enhance the national archives’ capacity to process,
manipulate and make information accessible. On the
other hand, this opportunity has not been grasped,
and this failure of archival institutions has been
accompanied by a failure generally to cope with the
challenges that the multimedia society poses as
record-creating agencies adopt new technologies.
Most African archivists feel that it is inevitable
that the disciplines of archives, records management
and library science, hitherto seen as separate and distinct, will merge. In the first instance, the usage and
manipulation of information technology makes it
mandatory to acquire a common core of skills. In the
second instance, the ability of the new media to
store, process and manipulate information in hitherto unimaginable ways means that the distinction that
used to exist among the disciplines will eventually
become irrelevant. In the African context, information technology is only being used to a limited extent
and therefore it will be a while before this convergence becomes widespread. In those countries where
more progress has been made, however, the reality of
convergence will be sooner rather than later. African
archivists nevertheless caution against failure to recognize the unique nature of archives or to discard
the time-immemorial principles of ‘provenance’ and
‘sanctity of the record group’.
Major problems facing archives in Africa
The major problems facing archives in Africa are as
much archives-specific as they are reflections of the
general malaise afflicting the continent. Many parts
of the continent have been ravaged by wars,
droughts and other man-made as well as natural disasters which have inflicted untold misery and suffering. Against a background of ever-increasing populations and diminishing resources the competing priorities have been many, and archives development
has been sidelined as nations have striven to provide
the basic necessities of food and shelter.
There is clear evidence that the archival development achieved by many countries in the 1960s and
1970s has been negated and reversed in many cases.
In some countries the only guides that exist for
archives collections are those that were published in
the pre-independence period. Infrastructures and
technical facilities established in the 1960s and
early 1970s have disintegrated in some countries.
Government ministries and departments operate
without functional registry systems, with untrained
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and sometimes uncaring staff and without manuals
to give guidance.
The overall archival situation is one of severe
crisis requiring urgent remedial measures. This must
not detract, however, from the achievements of those
African nations that have established viable and
vibrant archival systems, and which in some respects
have pioneered significant breakthroughs in archives
development and are at par with similar institutions
worldwide. This sharp contrast gives hope to
African archives; the need is for international support to those nations and institutions which already
have achieved excellence and international help to
foster development in those less fortunate and facing
catastrophe. ■■
Peter Mazikana, after gaining a BA
(Hons) at the University of London
and a Graduate Certificate in
Education at the University of
Rhodesia, obtained his Diploma in
Archives and Information Studies at University
College Dublin, Ireland. He is Managing Director of
ARA-TECHTOP, a private consulting firm on
records management which he founded in 1988. He
has over fifteen years experience in records
management, including six years as Deputy Director
of the National Archives of Zimbabwe. He has been
President of the International Records Management
Council (IRMC) since 1995, President of the
Association of Zimbabwe Consultants (AZIC) since
1993, and Secretary-General of the East and Southern
African Regional Branch of the International Council
on Archives (ESARBICA) (1992–95), and is currently
editor of the ESARBICA Journal and Chairman of the
Records, Archives and Information Management
Association of Zimbabwe. He is the author of various
publications and studies on archives.
Peter Mazikana
ARA-TECHTOP Consulting Services
18th Floor, Livingstone House
Samora Machel Avenue
P.O. Box 4555
Harare
Zimbabwe
Tel: 4-731851
Fax: 4-793054
E-mail: [email protected]
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Chapter 12
Europe and North
America
Trudy Huskamp
Peterson
Open Society Archives,
Hungary
T
he capacity for classification – for seeing patterns in practices – is an essential characteristic of archivists. Characterizing the state of
archives in the countries of Europe, together with
Canada and the United States, requires identifying
the faultlines that divide the region as well as the
considerable bonds that bind it together. Archives
have three universal purposes: to select the records
of institutions, the papers of individuals and families
and the artificial collections of documentary materials that have enduring value; to preserve them; and to
make them available for use. Individual nations and
archival institutions accomplish these purposes
through programmes and projects which vary in
emphasis and administration.
Identifying the varieties of archival practice in
Europe and North America requires assembling and
analysing a sizeable quantity of data. Fortunately,
in 1993–94 the International Council on Archives
(ICA) undertook a worldwide survey on archival
development, providing the basic data with which to
make comparisons. All statistics in this essay are
drawn from the summary of those census returns
compiled by Michael Roper of the United Kingdom
(see box, p. 128).
Models
All European archives owe a debt to the GrecoRoman archival tradition. There are, however, several obvious groupings of archives, either by virtue of
the legislative structure of the nation or by tradition.
An important division pointed out in a recent paper
by Sarah Tyacke, Chair of the ICA European Board,
is the degree of control the national archives asserts
over the documentary heritage of the nation. Tyacke
points to three traditions. In one, the national
archives asserts its role as protector of all (or virtually
all) documents of national significance in whatever
hands; this is the position of the archives service of
France and Italy, for example. A second tradition has
the national archives as the custodian of all archives
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in a system where all archives belonged to the state
in the administrative sense as well as the cultural
sense, as the state was by and large the only possible
originator of archival materials; the (now former)
communist states are the obvious examples. Finally,
there are nations in which the national archives is the
custodian of only the records of the central government and co-operates with but does not control
the records of local government or the independent
archives; Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom
and the United States use this model.
These traditional arrangements are shifting,
however, as the political arrangements of states
change. For states in the European Union, the general agreements on trade in cultural property pledge
the member governments to control imports and
exports of (among other items) documents belonging to a member nation’s cultural heritage. This may
tend to move governments toward the first model,
because the national archives is the governmental
body most likely to have the expertise to determine
export controls (the place already occupied by the
national archives in some countries, such as France).
The effectiveness of the control programme will
depend on the national archives being knowledgeable about the totality of archival documents in the
custody of public and private institutions and in the
hands of private individuals. A second shift is occurring as the highly centralized models of the former
governments of the states of Central and Eastern
Europe break down, with regional and local governments taking independent control of the archives
(for example, in Hungary) and a few independent
archival institutions emerging. In 1993 the archival
census found that in Europe 83% of archival legislation applied to records and archives below the central government level, but only 63% of the national
archives as institutions had any authority over public
institutions below the central level. The future model
for many European countries may well be a national
archival institution that has cultural hegemony, but
not administrative suzerainty, over the state’s documentary heritage.
A second way to group European archives is
by determining whether the national archival system
integrates or segregates film, television, oral records
and electronic records. The evidence here is primarily from archives at the national level. In 1993, 40%
of European national archives were responsible for
film; 31% for television tapes; and 37% for oral
recordings. Interestingly, a higher percentage of
archives report holding these media than report
having responsibility for them. (These results are
particularly unclear on the matter of film, for the
survey did not distinguish between films made by a
commercial film industry and films made in the
course of the business of government, such as the
videotape of a session of parliament.) The survey did
not ask whether the national archives has responsibility for electronic records, but 43% of national
archives report holdings. This is an area where
significant changes should be expected, as governments divest themselves of monopolies in the radio
and television industries (and with them the central
archives of all radio and television for the nation)
and as microprocessors render the old central computer facilities vestigial, resulting in electronic
records created and (for active records) stored in the
creating agencies. Whether governments will move
to establish general archives for commercial and
public radio and television companies is an active
issue in a number of countries. All archives, however, whether in governments, businesses or private
organizations, must soon manage electronic records
(see Chapter 14).
Turning to national archives per se, an obvious
grouping is by parent organization. The 1993 survey
found three main clusters: 26% of national archives
report to the central organ of the state (e.g. president,
prime minister, council of ministers); 20% report to
home, interior or justice ministries (or their equivalents); and 51% fall under education and culture
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ministries. It is difficult to determine whether this
easily identified divide is significant. (For example,
the United States and Albania both report to the
head of government; France and Hungary both
report to the ministry of culture.) Hypothetically, of
course, an archives that reports to a ministry of culture in a European Union country will find most
support for handling materials over fifty years old,
for that is the definition of cultural heritage supported by the European Union. Whether such an
archives could find support for strong initiatives in
the field of electronic records would depend on
intragovernmental support relationships. In fact,
however, archives can and do function effectively in
all three groupings.
Another way to group European national
archives is by whether they are unitary (that is, they
are responsible for the archives of all national governmental bodies, such as in Switzerland) or partial
(that is, there are agency archives outside the remit of
the national archives, such as in Poland). Reporting
on the 1993 survey, Michael Roper found that only
51% of European archives are responsible for the
records of the ministry of defence; 51% for the
records of parliament; 60% for the records of the
foreign ministry; 66% for the records of the head of
state; 71% for the records of the ministry of internal
affairs; and 71% for the records of the supreme
court. The survey did not ask about major scientific
bodies, but it is likely that many of those are also
outside the control of the national archives. In all
these cases (excepting, perhaps, the head of state), it
is assumed that the agency itself maintains an
archives separate from the national archives. Trends
here are difficult to spot, but it may be that the
expense and technical difficulty of maintaining the
electronic records of these agencies will lead governments to reconsider the divisions, and in the name of
efficiency and economy begin to combine some governmental archives, at least for non-paper media.
In many countries the records of political par-
ties are carefully managed, owing to the sensitive
relationships between parties and governments. In
some countries, political parties donate their records
to the national archives (for example, the United
States); in others the government underwrites the
maintenance of party records as independent
archives (for example, in Finland). A special problem
in Central and Eastern Europe is the responsibility
for the archives of the former communist parties. At
a meeting in Poland in 1995, archivists described
three models. In one model, the party archives were
first included as independent units within the
national archives system but have gradually been
transformed into separate archives of social and
political organizations (for example, in Belarus,
Latvia, the Republic of Moldova, the Russian
Federation and Ukraine). A second model absorbed
the archives of former parties into the state archives
at the appropriate governmental level (central,
regional or local); this is the practice in the Czech
Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. The third
system combines the party archives with the archives
of the former KGB in separate archives, with access
rules that are different from the access rules for the
national archives; this occurred in Lithuania and partially in Latvia. The minutes of the meeting in
Poland show the archivists strongly endorsing the
second path because establishing separate post-party
archives or combining them with the archives of
secret police may create the threat of their being
taken over by existing communist parties or access
to those documents being made as difficult as possible.
Shared concerns
At the European Summit on Archives in 1996, delegates agreed that the three principal issues for
European archivists are the management of electronic records, training for personnel (with a major
issue again the handling of new record formats) and
preservation of the European archival heritage.
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The management of current and semi-current
records is an issue that generally unites the countries
of Europe and North America, particularly in the
face of growing challenges posed by electronic
records. The 1993 survey found that 89% of
European national archives have an active role in the
management of current or semi-current records in
ministries, making the pressure to provide electronic
records guidance particularly intense. Conversely,
most European archives do not operate facilities for
storing temporary records, an important issue in
managing large paper records series (the United
States is a very major exception). Consequently, the
critical issue for most European archives is providing
guidance to the records creators, in particular in the
area of electronic records, not in finding ever larger
storage facilities for semi-current records.
The electronic records issue binds Europe
together. Although the development of the computerized office generally occurred earlier in Western
Europe, the computerization of Central and Eastern
Europe has occurred at lightning speed, as external
donors put computers in parliaments and courts
and as businesses snapped them up for commercial
ventures. This means that the intensity of the computer question, particularly for the very latest
systems, is at least as pervasive in Eastern Europe as
in the West.
Essential to the management of modern records
is trained and constantly retrained staff. In 1993, the
average number of professional staff in all European
national archives was 505, but if the huge Russian
national archival system is excluded, the average
drops to 137. Between 1982 and 1992, reported
the national archives, their professional staffing
increased by 24%; again, if Russia is excluded, the
staffs actually doubled. Hidden within these figures,
however, is the ambiguity of who the national
archives reported as professional staff. Further, there
is the question of balance between professional and
paraprofessional staffs. As Roper noted:
In the national archives of Central and Eastern Europe
(both with and without the figures for Russia) the total
number of other members of staff is lower than the total
number of professional staff, whereas in national archives
both in the rest of Europe and in developing countries it is
higher. This suggests that in the countries of Central and
Eastern Europe professional staff are undertaking work
which elsewhere is performed by non-professional staff.
The means by which archival education is provided
is a common concern among European archives but
there is far from a common practice. There is
archival education in state archives schools at the
graduate level (Germany) and at the undergraduate
level (the Netherlands) which leads directly to the
qualification for employment in the state archival
service; there are graduate (for example in Canada)
and undergraduate degree programmes that are in
general universities and are not tied to the government’s employment system. Some programmes offer
full degrees in archives; others are concentrations
within another discipline (history or library science);
an emerging trend is to have a general programme in
information studies that combines some elements of
information science, librarianship, archival studies
and history (the Netherlands and Switzerland). The
1993 study found that 49% of European countries
have one or more archival training schools; the actual
number was sixty-five schools with an average annual graduation of 995 archivists. A look at course
syllabi also reveals enormous differences, with some
schools offering traditional courses in sigillography
and diplomatics and others emphasizing analysis of
business processes and information systems.
In-service training programmes are also common in European national archives. Some of these
offer professional training roughly at a university
level, while others are courses for paraprofessionals.
In some instances these are open to the records
staff in government agencies, to records managers
employed by private organizations, or professional
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archivists outside the government. Some courses end
with an examination and a certificate that can be
used to demonstrate proficiency to future employers. The 1993 census found considerable numerical
disparities between Central and Eastern Europe and
the rest of Europe: Central and Eastern Europe
reported 200 training programmes, with an average
of thirty-three participants per programme, while
the rest of Europe reported 1,134 in-service programmes with an average of sixty per programme.
Six Eastern and Central European countries also
reported training abroad; twenty-two European students attended short courses outside their home
countries (three-quarters of these went to the Stage
Technique International at the National Archives of
France).
Archival education increasingly is challenged to
provide the new skills needed to manage archives in
the current information age. Two shifts are occurring
simultaneously: first, records are created and maintained electronically in the entities that are the
sources of archival holdings, requiring archives to
move aggressively to protect the archival information in the complex environment of modern management systems; second, archives are themselves introducing and adapting automation to facilitate work
in the archives. Recent graduates from academic
archival programmes emphasizing digital, processrelated information are entering European archival
institutions and challenging with their enthusiasm
the staff already employed there. Effective in-service
training programmes are urgently needed throughout the European archival world in order to ensure
that serious divisions of competency do not occur
within the professional community.
The third major concern identified at the
archival summit in spring 1996 was preservation.
There are many aspects to this problem: buildings,
storage equipment and housing, laboratory treatment and reformatting for use. Again, the 1993 survey provides some data on the status of preservation
programmes in European national archives (see
Chapter 25).
Facilities are a central concern of archivists
everywhere. The nature of archives is that the holdings are continuously expanding, and space utilization is a constant preoccupation. In 1993, 22% of
European archives reported occupying central
national archival repositories within the last ten
years, but several major construction projects are
under way or have been completed since then,
including facilities in the Czech Republic, Hungary
and the United States. Only 47% of the national
archives in Europe reported purpose-built repositories; it seems reasonable to assume that regional and
non-governmental archives occupy an even smaller
number of purpose-built spaces. European archives
also reported 66% of central repositories with temperature and humidity controls, and 49% with
microform storage accommodation to international
standards. By contrast, state archives in the United
States reported 92% with purpose-built repositories
and 92% with climate controls. All this suggests that
European archives have major problems of adaptive
re-use of older buildings, and consequently must
struggle to maintain adequate preservation conditions for the materials stored within them.
A related issue is how full the repositories are.
In Europe, 86% of repositories are more than threequarters full, and 18% are completely filled. This is
even more significant because the reported capacity
for national archives in Europe increased by 58% in
the period 1982–92. The average European national
archives had 93,000 square metres of holdings in
1993. The statistics on transfers into archives are
difficult to analyse, but the average national archival
system took in nearly 6,000 linear metres in 1992.
This figure probably includes some transfers into
regional and other archives in centralized archival
systems, not just into the national repository in the
nation’s capital. None the less, the national archives
are disturbingly full. And if national governments
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find it difficult to provide adequate space for everexpanding archival holdings, it seems unlikely that
the non-governmental archives are faring any better.
Tighter appraisal standards, a matter of active debate
in (for example) the United States, will alleviate but
not solve the space needs of archives. Without adequate repositories, a country’s documentary heritage
is jeopardized.
The technical facilities within repositories are a
measure of the importance of preservation programmes to national archives. Here again, the 1993
data are difficult to interpret. Conservation workshops are reported in 50% of European national
archives, and they average over two workshops
apiece. Between 1982 and 1992 the conservation staff
nearly doubled in these repositories, with the average rising to eighteen persons. If we turn to reprography, however, the picture changes. Only 13% of
European national archives report reprographic laboratories, and the number of staff employed in them
decreased by 7% overall (however, the reprographic
staff increased by 10% in Central and Eastern
Europe, offsetting a surprising 19% decrease in the
rest of Europe). It is unclear whether the decline in
reprographic staff in West European archives reflects
a trend towards contracting out for reprographic
services, using a different reformatting technique, or
not currently duplicating holdings, awaiting further
developments in electronic scanning or hoping that
mass de-acidification will be cost-effective, making
reprography unnecessary. In any event, the apparent
lack of reformatting capacities in most European
archives suggests that original records are made
available to users, even those records that are
extremely popular, setting up a future need for
expensive conservation treatments.
Preserving electronic records requires both
physical facilities and the management of the physical and logical structures of the item. The technical
facilities available in archives to handle electronic
records are not as yet widespread. The techniques
for preserving electronic records have evolved with
the changes in the information industry; for example, the preservation of flat files is well understood,
the preservation of relational databases is fast
becoming a standard practice and the preservation of
electronic mail is rapidly emerging as a basic technique. The fast advances in imaging technology are
currently causing very serious problems for
European archives, both because their popularity
means that more and more images are created, and
because the hardware and software dependency of
imaging systems is extremely high and the rate of
innovation extremely fast, leaving orphaned systems
(and images) littering the way. Add to this the developments in the television industry, linking sound,
image and text, and the problems mount. At present
the only means of preservation is duplication to a
current system, assuming that the system on which
the image was generated is still operating (or can be
made to operate). And yet it is essential that archives
grapple with these issues, for in the long term this is
the way records will be created, maintained, and
used (see Chapters 14 and 25).
Use and users
The purpose of an archives is both preservation and
use. One of the most significant developments for
archives around the world has been the adoption of
international standards for archival description,
based on traditional archival practices but adapted
for using computers to describe the holdings. This is
particularly important, because European archivists
estimated in 1993 that only about 50% of their holdings were adequately described but 83% were using
computers to describe holdings. There is considerable variation between Eastern and Central Europe
on the one hand, and the rest of Europe on the other;
in the former 55% of the institutions use computers
for description while in the latter the figure is 91%.
As computers are rapidly introduced, adopting a
standard format that can be shared electronically
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through the Internet will revolutionize archival use.
No longer will users be tied to opening hours or
transcontinental mail deliveries for service; neither
will they have to consider wide variations in national
descriptive practice. The day is approaching when
the information about holdings can be searched in
compatible versions worldwide.
The use of archives is increasing everywhere in
Europe, but with particular ferocity in Central and
Eastern Europe. As holdings long unavailable are
now released for use, scholars and genealogists (to
name only two user groups) are streaming into
research rooms. The 1993 figures, based as they are
on 1992 data, capture only the beginning of this
wave. In 1992, the number of visits to reading rooms
in national archives in Europe was 139% of the
number in 1982. The average was just over 13,000
‘official’ researchers and 22,000 ‘other’ researchers
per year. The average number of seats in reading
rooms in Central and Eastern European national
archives was ninety-one, and the rest of Europe
averaged 173. It is difficult to compare this workload
with the staffing reported, but in conversations with
Central and East European archivists, they unanimously say that the combination of handling a wave
of genealogists (a kind of researcher relatively little
known in Central and Eastern Europe until this
decade, and with research needs for which staff
members had little training) and of absorbing the
documents of the Communist Party and the wave of
academic and other researchers interested in them
has strained staffs nearly to breaking-point. Add to
this the problems of low salaries in Central and
Eastern European archives and sometimes the outright failure to pay staff, the lack of supplies and
equipment, and the rapidly changing legal situation
in these countries with implications for access to
records, and it is nearly incredible that reference service managed to continue.
One of the phenomena uncovered by the 1993
census was the huge increase in the number of visi-
tors to exhibitions at national archives. The average
number of visits to a national archives exhibition
in Europe was nearly 165,000, more than twice that
in 1982. This reflects a growing awareness among
archivists that the general public has both an interest
in archival documents and a claim upon the attention
of archivists outside the traditional research context.
Legal issues
The adequacy of archival legislation is a matter of
concern to archivists everywhere, but it has a special
resonance in Eastern and Central Europe. As
governments sought to transform themselves, they
wrote constitutions or re-established former constitutions, often in great haste. These instruments of
government were barely adopted when they began
to be interpreted by specially established constitutional courts, often in a flood of decisions without
precedent. Archives from Estonia to the Republic of
Moldova faced new archival legislation; in addition,
legislatures proposed other laws that had a vital
impact on archival practices. As reported in 1993,
63% of archives in Europe were operating under legislation passed or revised in the preceding ten years.
While avoidance of obsolescence is all to the good,
this means that the archivists must learn to interpret
these laws, develop a body of practice that accords
with them, and consider what further revisions are
necessary. This is not easy at any time, and in the turbulent politics of the 1990s this creates a substantial
problem for all European archives.
Any survey of European archives in the 1990s
must include a discussion of the unfortunate effects
of war upon the archives of the region. Outright
destruction, damage, removal to another nation,
division as national boundaries change: the archives
of Europe are indelibly marked by the violent wars
of the twentieth century. Archivists unite in mourning the actual destruction of documents, but the
problems of restitution and division have separated
as much as they have united archivists.
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The break-up of the Ottoman and Habsburg
Empires, and the fragmentation of the Soviet Union
and the Yugoslavia of Tito, to name only a few examples in this century, caused documents of signal
importance to one people to be lodged in the
archives of another. Two separate but related problems exist. First, a central power may have taken
documents from a subordinate political entity to the
central archives for safekeeping; the manuscripts of
an important poet, for example, might have been
taken to an archives at the capital, which means the
poet’s legacy is now in a separate country from the
one in which he wrote and in which he is revered as a
national literary figure. Second, documents about
the administration of the subordinate unit are always
found in the central government archives; some of
these are routine, but others – such as surveys of
mineral resources – may be vital for the economic
future of the formerly subordinate, now independent, nation. While duplication and shared standard
description can alleviate the matter of exclusive control over the information, the frequent national
devotion to the physical possession of the documents makes some of these cases particularly
difficult to resolve (see Chapter 24).
The massive removals of documents during and
in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War
continue to vex governments and archivists. While
North America and Western Europe have largely
– but not entirely – restituted archives among
themselves, for Europe as a whole many bodies of
archival material remain in the hands of countries
other than the country of origin. The resolution of
the question depends on the political relations
between governments; here cultural property laws
and interpretations of the breadth of the national
documentary heritage play crucial roles. ICA has
addressed this issue directly, through a statement in
1995 on the return of cultural property. Fifty years
after the Second World War and nearly a decade after
the political revolutions in Central and Eastern
Europe, the time has come to unite the European
archival community through the restitution of inherently inalienable records.
Similar issues are raised by the records of the
former colonial powers regarding the administration
of their colonies. Again, the use of duplication and
standard description (particularly when the description is electronic and available through the
World Wide Web) can alleviate but not resolve the
questions of access to the information and the
rights of both parties to control the documents (see
Chapter 11).
The profession and its partners
What are the positive aspects of the European
archival enterprise, as the twentieth century draws
to a close? What nourishes today’s European
archivist?
The single most positive sign for continued
professional growth in Europe is the establishment
of a European Board for Archives in 1992 and the
adoption of a specifically European programme.
Surmounting the old divisions and the potential new
ones (such as the groupings of archivists of the
European Union or the Council of Europe),
European archivists agreed upon a very aggressive,
six-point programme:
1.
To co-ordinate a programme of material, legal
and technical co-operation with the archival
communities of the Russian Federation and
Central and Eastern Europe.
2.
To act as an information point for bilateral and
multilateral agreements so as to facilitate the
best use of resources.
3.
To act as a forum for discussing difficulties
which might arise.
4.
To encourage access to the cultural heritage of
Europe in the archival field by working for the
provision of common databases and networks
for archives and users through the relevant
European organizations.
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5.
To promote the professional education, training and mobility of European archivists in
association with the relevant ICA bodies.
6.
To promote the dissemination of archival programmes being considered within the framework of the Council of Europe, the European
Union and other European organizations to
ensure a wider debate of the issues across the
whole of geographical Europe.
Within this setting an extensive programme of bilateral aid was developed, and a series of training sessions and colloquia on critical issues such as access
were held. The European Summit on Archives, held
in March 1996 in Munich, reaffirmed the desire for
this continued, co-operative archival enterprise in
Europe.
The Council of Europe, UNESCO and the
European Commission are major partners for the
European Board. The programme of the Council of
Europe, as described by Giuseppe Vitiello at the
European Summit, centres on three issues: democratizing legal systems in new member states, preserving the documentary heritage of the member states,
and enhancing access and improving archives. The
council has supported bilateral round-table conferences, seminars on legislation and management, and
a project for computerizing the finding aids to the
records of the Comintern (Third Communist International). At the same meeting, UNESCO gave support to archives through the Memory of the World
Programme and the Records and Archives Management Programme (RAMP), and an emphasis on
access to archives as a basis for democratic societies.
The European Commission has four active projects:
1.
A multidisciplinary forum on electronic
records, with the objective of developing a set
of ‘best practices’ and enhancing co-operation.
2.
A publication to exchange archival news in
Europe.
3.
The development of guides for member states
on access to archives.
4.
The admission of archivists to exchange and
training programmes.
In addition to these three multinational organizations, the Government of Switzerland has developed a generous programme of archival support for
former communist countries in Europe. The programme includes sponsoring training opportunities
and distributing archival equipment and publications, with special emphasis on preserving the
Historical State Archives in St Petersburg (Russian
Federation), computerizing the Comintern finding
aids, and assisting the development of archives in
Albania.
Archives in transition
Four factors have created massive changes in the
archives of Europe within the last decade: the end of
the Cold War, the rapid technological changes in
records creation, the rapid social changes and the
emergence of the possibility for unmediated communication in multiples.
The end of the Cold War has made serious professional discussion of issues possible throughout
the European archival community. It brought longsuppressed replevin issues to the forefront, and has
made it imperative for archivists to find strategies to
deal with records of joint heritages. For the most
part, political barriers to professional discussion are
gone.
Rapid technological changes brought both
crises and opportunities to archives. The computer
revolution is one example, but the emergence of
independent radio and television entities also raises
serious questions of how to ensure preservation of
that dominant form of communication. Preserving
and making accessible these formats are too expensive for most archives to achieve alone, and international co-operation is required to find satisfactory
practices.
The rapid social changes that accompany the
political and technological shifts also affect archives.
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The nature of the workforce is changing, with more
women assuming managerial roles and the influence
of technologically sophisticated archivists growing.
The development of archival centres outside direct
state control and state funding also brings a new set
of social relationships among archives and archivists.
And the new social conditions prevailing in Central
and Eastern Europe give archivists a felt need to document social change and appear to be bringing a
renewed interest in projects such as oral history and
directed photography, creating and not merely
selecting records of changing circumstances.
Finally, the development of the Internet and the
World Wide Web is bringing unprecedented changes
to the archival enterprise. In describing and making
available holdings, archivists have long developed
finding aids, printed them and distributed them in
person or by mail. Records have most often been
used in research rooms; sometimes records are used
through photocopies ordered after consultation with
an archivist; sometimes records are used on microform ordered by an archivist and accompanied by
some form of description. The general pattern, however, has been of direct communication, one-to-one,
between archivist and user, with the archivist able to
answer questions, clarify the structure of the holdings and in general mediate the research use.
The World Wide Web and the Internet have
changed that. The new pattern is unmediated communication in multiples. Archivists place descriptions on a Web site, and users from all over the world
have simultaneous access without intervention of the
archivist. Copies of documents placed on the Web
site may be used in the order the archivist envisions,
or may be used in random sequences over the course
of the research. Archives descriptions will not only
be seen by researchers, but by browsers and surfers.
All of this places new demands on archivists to be
clear, to be consistent, and to think in new ways
about use and users.
These four great engines of change are reflected
in the work of the European archival profession at
large. Ethical and legal issues are now more visible
than at any time since the start of the Cold War,
resulting in the development of an international
Code of Ethics for Archivists, the above-mentioned
statement of principles on replevin, the development
of a model for archival legislation and a statement on
the management of records of former repressive
regimes. Bilateral efforts, particularly within the
framework of a multilateral body such as ICA or the
Council of Europe, have a renewed vigour. But perhaps the most striking feature is the growing importance of professional associations.
In North America, professional archival associations have a long, strong history. In both Canada
and the United States the majority of archives are
outside the administrative control of the national
archives, and therefore the professional associations
have played a critical role in fostering uniquely
important bonds among individual archivists
employed in widely divergent institutional settings.
Many of these archivists are employed within a
library, particularly a university library, and library
practice has often influenced the archival tradition in
the United States. Standards for archival education,
codes of ethics, statements of best practices, publication of the major journals and newsletters, and a host
of other initiatives have come from these societies of
professionals organized in their own self-interest,
rather than from the central archival institution.
In Western Europe, the tradition of professional associations is also strong. The German archival
association, the Netherlands association (now well
over 100 years old) and the Society of Archivists in
the United Kingdom, among others, are influential
in shaping archival practice in their countries. In
Central and Eastern Europe the pattern is different.
A few strong national associations, such as in
Poland, do exist, but in most countries the association is weak and in some countries does not yet exist.
What are emerging are regional groups, led by
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national archivists. A first conference for Balkan
archivists was held in 1996, with another conference
promised in 1997; two conferences of Central and
Eastern European archivists have been held in 1995
and 1996, with another planned for 1997. These conferences are opportunities for national archivists to
come together and discuss issues; whether they will
broaden into organizations of individual professionals will depend not only on politics but on the
financial issues of support for organizing meetings,
support for attendance and support to maintain an
infrastructure between annual events.
A further development is the interest in creating opportunities for archivists who share the same
practical problems to hold professional discussions.
Through ICA, groups have been formed to permit
professional interchange among municipal archivists,
church archivists, archivists responsible for the
records of parliaments and political parties, and
so on. While these are international groups, they
are heavily influenced by the participants from
UNESCO Europe. As these groups develop professional programmes, they will tend to strengthen the
contacts between professionals outside the framework of the national archival systems.
In summary, European archivists are beginning
to have new means of professional development at
hand. Co-operative networks, not all dependent
upon the intervention of national archives and
national governments, are developing. A healthy,
vital profession, with no fundamental barriers to
professional conversations or to shared competencies, has emerged over the last decade. The archival
profession as we know it is largely an invention of
the twentieth century. It is now ready for the challenges of the twenty-first. ■■
Further reading
EUROPEAN COMMISSION. 1994. Archives in the European
Union: Report of the Group of Experts on the Coordination of Archives. Luxembourg, European
Commission.
TURKO, K. 1996. Preservation Activities in Canada: A
Unifying Theme in a Decentralized Country.
Ottawa, Commission on Preservation and Access.
UNESCO. 1993. Final Report. First Meeting of the
International Advisory Committee of the Memory of
the World Programme, Pultusk, Poland, 12–13
September 1993. Paris, UNESCO. 44 pp. (PGI93/WS/17.)
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Trudy Huskamp Peterson is the
Executive Director of the Open
Society Archives in Budapest,
Hungary. She spent twenty-four years
with the United States National
Archives, including more than two years as Acting
Archivist of the United States. She is a past president
of the International Conference of the Round Table on
Archives (1993–95) and the Society of American
Archivists (1990–91). Dr Peterson served as a
Commissioner on the United States–Russia Joint
Commission on MIA/POWs (1992–95) and as a
Fulbright Lecturer in American Studies in Finland
(1983–84). She holds a Ph.D. in history from the
University of Iowa.
Trudy Huskamp Peterson
Executive Director
Open Society Archives
Eotros uca 14
H-1067 Budapest
Hungary
Tel: (1)-117-4225
Fax: (1)-117-4102
E-mail: [email protected]
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Chapter 13
Latin America and
the Caribbean
Jorge Palacios Preciado
National Archives,
Colombia
Victoria Arias Roca
Ministry of Education and
Culture, Spain
T
he task of assessing the current situation
affecting archives in Latin America and making valid generalizations about it is certainly
not an easy one. Although it is true that many shortcomings in the region’s archives still exist and that in
some countries there has been scant improvement, in
others a sustained process of change has been taking
place since the 1980s that allows us to claim a qualitative leap forward in the history of archives.
All kinds of limitations have traditionally
affected Latin American archives: administrative
neglect, a lack of definition of their legal and administrative status, organizational weaknesses, inadequate and insufficient buildings and facilities, budget
constraints, obsolete technical working methods,
non-professionalized staff, and poor theoretical and
methodological development of record-keeping. All
of these flaws have been shared by the archives in the
region to a greater or lesser extent until quite recently. These negative features reflect, in turn, the nonexistence of any archive policy. This gap stems essentially from the scanty interest shown by public
administrations in the archives they themselves produced and from the lack of vision of the public
authorities in failing to understand the direct link
that exists between proper record-keeping and the
efficiency of the public administration itself, so
essential for the transition to a modern society.
As mentioned above, this backward situation
has evolved somewhat since the start of the 1980s.
Around that time, countries such as Brazil, Costa
Rica, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru, together with
Colombia later on, started to lay the foundations of
their national archive systems. This trend has since
then taken a firm hold and has been backed up by
the legislative provisions recently enacted in some of
these countries. In Cuba too, in spite of limited
resources, a national archive system has been successfully set up and excellent work on preserving the
country’s documentary heritage has been carried
out over recent years. Other countries, such as
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Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Venezuela, are currently making efforts on different fronts to improve
their archive structures and to link up their archival
repositories in a functional nationwide network.
In the remaining countries in the region, however, the flaws listed above are still predominant and
the situation of neglect affecting the national archives
may indeed be indicative of the general position of
all the other archives in the country. It is true that
the governments in some of these countries have
brought out various legal provisions over recent
years in an attempt to right the situation. Nevertheless, the lack of sufficient backing from the state in
putting such provisions into practice has largely distorted their aims.
Turning more specifically to archives in Central
America, a ray of hope may be glimpsed in a recent
event that took place in Costa Rica. The International Seminar on Archive Policies in Central
America was held in April 1995 under the auspices
of the Costa Rica National Archives, the Association
of Latin American Archives (ALA) and the Spanish
Ministry of Culture. The conclusions and recommendations of this meeting bear witness to the firm
wish of the countries in the region to join forces on
legislation, infrastructure, personnel training and the
conservation and treatment of archive holdings, with
the support of friendly governments and international organizations.
A summary of Latin American national
archives can be found in Table 1 on pp. 170 and 171.
Legislation
One of the factors contributing to the modernization of archives is the existence of modern, updated
legislation covering all the different aspects involved
in the archive function. A report on the situation of
archives in Latin America, prepared by José Ricard
Gallardo and José Maria Jardim in 1987 as part of the
work carried out by the Pan-American Institute
of Geography and History (PAIGH) and the
Association of Latin American Archives (ALA)
Joint Group, mentioned the following as some of the
shortcomings that existed in many of the countries:
•
The absence of an Archives Act.
•
The ‘mass of scattered legal provisions’, many
of which were issued over thirty or forty years
ago, which are no longer valid to cope with the
problems facing archives today.
•
The extreme ignorance of this legislation on the
part of those working in archives, particularly
those who work outside the strict framework
of national archives.
•
The tendency to confuse in practice the legal
provisions governing the activities of national
archives (regulations, operating manuals, etc.)
with an actual archives act.
In addition to the deficiencies listed above, the frequent non-compliance with current rules and regulations in practice constitutes a further obstacle. This
in part may be explained by the problem as stated
above. But also the new legal provisions have often
granted authority and new functions, or set up new
services, without providing the necessary financial
and human resources to implement them. Likewise,
non-compliance also has often been prompted by
the fact that legislation has not gone hand in hand
with the consequent regulatory development that
would have made its application possible.
These faults are still a reality. However, in the
years that have elapsed since the report quoted above
came out, some important changes in archive legislation have already been made or are soon to be made
in several countries in the region.
One group of countries that includes Brazil,
Colombia, Costa Rica and Peru must be highlighted
first of all. This group has succeeded in bringing out
top-level, up-to-date legislation that comprehensively regulates all the different facets involved in the
treatment of documentary records in all the phases
of their life-cycle, and structures the organization
and running of their respective national archive sys-
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t h e C a r i b b e169a n
tems. In Brazil, a country with a federal structure,
national-level legislation is supplemented by laws
enacted in different states structuring their respective
archive systems. The new bills presented by Cuba
and Ecuador to overhaul their legislation are also
worthy of note. Their respective laws regulating the
national archive system were issued some years ago
(in 1960 and 1982) and needed to be updated in certain areas.
Mexico is a rather unusual case because it has
managed to implement de facto a National Archive
System nationwide, which it has been developing
since the 1970s, yet it still does not have an archives
act or a system act in place at a national level. This
type of legislation does exist, however, in quite a
number of its states, just as is the case in Brazil.
For a national archive system to be set up
in Venezuela, the current National Archives Act
– dating back to 1945 – must be repealed first. A
draft bill is currently at an advanced stage of its
progress through Parliament and will eventually
become the Organic Law on Archives. Just as in
Brazil and Mexico, some states have recently started
to pass their own archive laws.
In the remaining countries of South America
where no nationwide system of archives has been
successfully set up to date, provisions have been
passed over the last few years which have attempted
to move in this direction. These new provisions in
Argentina, for instance, have led to the restructuring
of the Archivo General de la Nación and the extension of the powers of the Archivo Intermedio
(Intermediate Repository) (1992). Likewise, in
Bolivia, the creation of a system of public archives
was provided through a number of Supreme Decrees
enacted in 1989, which also regulated the transfers,
appraisal and disposal of records with a view to
streamlining the flow of administrative documentation. Nevertheless, the fact that the state has not
come up with the necessary resources has prevented
the system from functioning properly. In Chile, an
attempt has been made to overcome the extreme centralization in archives provided for by the 1929 legislation through the presentation of a bill aimed at
creating seven new regional archives that would unload the National Archives and lay the foundations
for a future nationwide archive system. The creation
in 1992 of the Archivo del Siglo XX (Twentiethcentury Archive) also fits into this same strategy line.
In all the Central American countries, with the
exception stated above of Costa Rica, archive legislation is full of loopholes and has been poorly developed. Even in El Salvador, where a Special Law for
the Protection of Cultural Heritage was passed in
1993, the treatment given to archives is limited. A
new archives bill has been presented in Nicaragua
and is awaiting its passage through Parliament.
Institutions
Most national archives in Latin America were
created back in the nineteenth century once the process of achieving independence from the colonizing
nations had been completed in the region. The archives were set up with the twofold aim of collecting
and preserving the documentary heritage corresponding to the colonial period and, at the same
time, of receiving new records as they were created
by the bodies and institutions in the new states.
For a variety of different reasons, however, this
latter function tended to be overlooked. Thus, by the
second half of the twentieth century, many of the
national archives had long since ceased to receive
transfers from government departments. The overall
image they presented was one of inward-looking
institutions that devoted all their energy to research
and were poorly represented within the wider
administrative organization to which they belonged.
Moreover, their internal organization was oldfashioned, making them inoperative. This shortcoming was never corrected despite the attempts that
were made to that effect by the different countries.
Likewise, the second-rank position they held within
Institutions
Accessions
Restoration/repair
Reference service
Exhibitions
6.2 Number of visitors
6.1 Number of exhibitions
6.
5
5 000
11
1 0001
13 632
13 5201
5.4 Number of recorded inquiries
13 835
8 4301
6 500
7 700
5.3 Number of items consulted
1 2001
4251
20 000
8
1 6191
4 6051
8881
7881
5.2 Number of user visits
5.1 Number of users
5.
4.1 Number of records treated
4.
3.3 Other archives (in items)
3.2 Other archives (in metres)
3.1 Conventional archives (in metres)
3.
2.6 Other archives (in items)
2.5 Other archives (in metres)
259
3 000
1 5251
2.4 Microforms (in items)
121
50
3 5101
Sound recordings (in hours)
5001
25
2 6101
Motion pictures (in hours)
Still pictures (in items)
2 000
10
5 000
8 000
1868
1
Colombia
325 5411
2.3 Audiovisual archives
2.2 Cartographic archives (in items)
11
0001
7801
1
1 6001
7 6701
1838
1
Brazil
2.1 Conventional archives (in metres)
Holdings
1821
1
Argentina
2 000
3
6
34 130
2 000
1 070
50
50
436
1
54
500
7
5 000
25 000
7 000
1881
1
Costa Rica
3 500
55 600
3 500
1 000
300
2 000
30
800
300
8 000
1938
1
Ecuador
6 000
16
2 500
7 800
4 000
5 000
1 507
500
132
68 733
130 000
1 000
8 216
7 000 000
8 729
40 550
1823
1
Mexico
1596
1
Paraguay
3701
205
241
10 2291
1861
1
Peru
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2.
1.2 Founding date
1.1 Number of institutions reporting
1.
Type of data (units of measurement)
Table 1. Latin American national archives, 1996
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1. Figures taken from UNESCO, UNESCO Statistical Yearbook 1991.
10.3 Networks
LAN
Windows NT
Clipper
CDS/ISIS
10.2 Software
Fox Pro
Pentium
PC (1)
486 PCs (27)
5 132
8 142
54
335
10.1 Hardware
Automation
753
Of which personnel costs
(thousands of US$)
10.
2 748
9.1 Total current expenditure
(thousands of US$)
Expenditure
12
16 300
21 500
Windows
CDS/ISIS
2 servers
486 PCs (75)
1 scanner
835
1 812
32
86
16 000
6 000
Novell
Windows
CDS-ISIS
PCs
493
2 237
19
80
7 000
750
Novell 2.11
CDS/ISIS
486 PCs (3)
1 ESC 6000
scanner
74
97
14
2 000
89 167
Token Ring
Micro-ISIS
Oracle, etc.
Pentium
PCs (9)
PCs (58)
603
1 161
71
228
55 000
100
146
6
24
170
Novell
Clipper 5.2
486 PCs
486 server
(1)
800
11
76
3 000
15/7/97 11:40 AM
9.
47
Of which professional staff
Personnel
8.1 Number of permanent staff
8.
4 040
9 3921
7.2 Shelving capacity (in metres)
Buildings and equipment
7.1 Gross area (in square metres)
7.
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the administrative structure made them, as a general
rule, subordinate to other higher bodies, and that
considerably reduced their capacity for action.
However, recent years have seen an intensive
overhaul take place in many national archives. This
aims, on the one hand, at restoring their link with the
government’s archives in order to return the flow of
documents to normal and, on the other, at reinforcing their institutional position within the national
archive structure. In several countries this process
has been further consolidated by the recent enactment of legislative provisions that place national
archives at the head of the respective national archive
systems and significantly extend their previous tasks.
The responsibilities conferred on the national
archives by their new status include: drawing up, coordinating and overseeing national archive policy;
organizing and managing the national archive system; setting technical standards and guidelines with a
view to modernizing public records management;
training the human resources required for the
smooth running of the archives; guaranteeing and
improving access to the information in the archives;
and so on.
In parallel with this process, and with a view to
making it feasible for the national archives to perform these wide-ranging functions, in some countries they have been granted a higher-ranking position in the administrative hierarchy as well as the
autonomy needed to develop and finance their own
working programmes. Colombia and Costa Rica are
both good examples of the progress that can be made
when the necessary economic resources are available.
The growing dynamism and scope acquired by
many of the Latin American national archives over
recent years is clearly visible, for instance, in the
important professional events they have been
organizing or fostering – many on an international
basis. Take, for instance, the 24th International
Conference of the Round Table on Archives
(CITRA), the first of its kind to be held in Latin
America (Mexico City, 1993), the various seminars
on archival description that have been held (Santiago
de Chile, 1991; Mexico City, 1993; Cartagena de
Indias, 1995), the International Seminar on Construction of Archive Buildings (San José de Costa
Rica, 1993), the Preventive Conservation Course
(Quito, 1994), the Seminar on Restoration (Santiago
de Chile, 1994), the Seminar on Appraisal (Mexico
City, 1995) or the International Seminar on Archive
Policy in Central America (San José de Costa Rica,
1996).
Another patent example of the dynamism of
these archives can be found in their activity within
ALA, whose working programme is the most farreaching of all the regional branches of the International Council on Archives (ICA).
Nevertheless, it must also be acknowledged
that in a handful of countries the limited support lent
by the public authorities to their national archives
makes it impossible for these structures to overcome
their backward and poverty-stricken situation and
become modern institutions.
Holdings
The oldest records held in Latin American archives
date back to the time of the Spanish and Portuguese
conquest and colonization in the sixteenth century,
and many are of extraordinary value.
The shared history of Latin American countries
from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, when
they lived through a long colonial period under
either Spanish or Portuguese rule, has resulted in
their archives tending to have many features in common. This similarity is evident right from the outset
in the way the national archives are actually organized into two large sections – colonial and republican. Another point worthy of particular note with
regard to the countries that spent time under Spanish
rule is that, owing to the colonial administrative
organization of the time, the archives of certain
countries hold records directly related to the history
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of others. This enhances their value even further and
makes it necessary to fully guarantee their preservation. An example is the Archivo General de la
Nación in Lima that holds records on the extensive
Viceroyalty of Peru, which included large tracts of
land that today belong to neighbouring countries.
Another example is the Archivo General de
Centroamérica in Guatemala.
Most of the holdings in Latin American
archives are conventional archives. Cartographic
material is also common and some repositories – not
just the national ones – boast rich collections of
maps and plans. Many of the national archives also
hold documents on new media, particularly collections of photographs (see Chapter 14). At present,
however, the existence of records held on computerized media is practically nil.
The conservation of the vast documentary heritage held in their archives throws up enormous challenges to countries and its survival is sometimes
under serious threat.
First, the buildings given over to archives are
not usually sufficient in number and their capacity
tends to be wholly inadequate. Nor do their installations meet the right standards and conditions with
regard to conservation. Taking the different national
archives, only those in Costa Rica and Colombia are
new and actually fulfil all the conditions required
nowadays from an archive building. In Mexico,
although the Archivo General de la Nación is
housed in a former prison, the redesign work carried
out in the 1980s has left the building perfectly fitted
out for the purpose, although the problem of lack of
space will arise before too long. In Venezuela, a
splendid building designed to be the new headquarters of the Archivo General de la Nación is at an
advanced stage of construction.
Other national archives, however, are still suffering from serious space problems. Ecuador and
Peru, for example, are still waiting for a new headquarters to be built. In Argentina, transfers to the
Archivo General de la Nación are also seriously
handicapped for that reason and the same applies to
the Cuban Archivo Nacional. In other countries
such as Guatemala, Honduras or Paraguay, the lack
of space is just another problem on top of the
already precarious nature of the installations.
All the shortcomings described above are usually even more marked in other types of archives,
such as municipal archives, where in many cases the
records are simply piled up in rooms that do not
even meet the minimum standards for guaranteeing
their conservation. The problem is especially serious
in tropical countries (see Chapter 25).
Some countries are well aware of the risks
threatening the preservation of their documentary
heritage. They have duly taken, or are taking, steps
to identify that heritage with a view to being able to
assess its volume, its state of conservation, etc., and
to use the results of this evaluation to plan the strategies to be followed. Mexico and Ecuador each drew
up some years ago their own census or inventory of
archives nationwide. Other countries have done likewise. In some of these, the census work has been
undertaken in the framework of a joint project with
Spain – the Census-Directory of Latin American
Archives Programme, run under the auspices of the
Spanish Ministry of Education and Culture. Bolivia,
Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba and Peru have all taken
part in this project, and Chile and Paraguay have
recently joined it. The resulting database in a standard format has been accessible through the Internet
since early 1996 (http://www.mcu.es).
Human resources
Over these last few years, many countries have made
a huge effort to overcome the limitations of an
extremely small staff and poor personnel training
that have chronically affected their archives. The
causes of this dysfunction are undoubtedly linked to
the scanty importance bestowed on archives by the
public authorities. This has been reflected both in the
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Table 2. Staffing levels
National archives
Professionals
Technicians
Auxiliaries
Other
Total staff
Argentina
12 (25%)
7
28
47
Brazil
54 (15%)
70
211
335
Colombia
32 (37%)
29
25
86
Costa Rica
19 (24%)
30
31
80
Ecuador
5 (50%)
3
2
10
Honduras
1 (10%)
5
4
56 (23%)
87
70
6 (25%)
3
15
11 (15%)
26
4
≈ 40
Chile
Mexico
Paraguay
Peru
neglect of the installations and in the low wage levels
allocated to archival jobs. All of this has had a direct
effect on the stability, training and specialization of
personnel.
Many of the national archives still have reduced
staffing levels, as Table 2 illustrates. Another frequent problem is the unbalanced composition of the
staff. The norm tends to be for the number of professional-level staff to be very low, too few to deal with
the problems posed by records management nowadays, especially when the rest of the staff tend to
have only a very low educational level, making them
unsuited to the performance of certain tasks.
If we move from the national archives to other
public repositories in the country, the situation
worsens substantially. The administrative archives of
bodies attached to the central or federal administration rarely have any professional-level staff, since the
people who are responsible for them are administrative public officials who have not been required to
undergo any specific training. Municipal archives
also have serious staffing weaknesses; many are completely unstaffed and quite often this neglect even
affects town councils that possess a rich documentary heritage.
10
30
243
35
(admin. staff )
76
24
Over recent years, however, particularly in
some countries, this situation is undergoing substantial changes and the first steps are being taken
towards establishing a personnel policy for archives.
One the one hand, the respective national archives
have managed to reinforce the number of specialized
professionals on their staffs at the same time as they
have included training for their employees on the list
of their priority goals (for example, in 1982 Costa
Rica’s National Archives employed five professionals and forty-three technicians, whereas in 1992 its
workforce was made up of eighty-one employees
including twenty-one professionals). On the other
hand, training possibilities at university level have
multiplied over recent years, as described below, and
this will tend to change the professional profile of
professional archivists before too long. They will
cease to be graduates in history and social sciences
and become university graduates who have followed
specific archival studies courses.
Lastly, another problem frequently occurring
in the archives is the lack of personnel stability. This
is especially serious when it affects management and
other posts involving responsibility since, at the very
least, it causes the activity of the institutions and the
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development of the work programmes to grind to a
halt. Nevertheless, that trend seems to have subsided
somewhat in a number of countries and there is now
greater continuity in management posts.
Budgets
Throughout the Latin American region, the economic resources allocated to archives have always
been very limited and comparatively less than those
given to other institutions in the cultural heritage
sector such as museums and libraries. This fitted in
with the back-seat position to which archives were
traditionally relegated by public authorities and by
society itself. Moreover, the general economic situation over recent years has led governments to take an
even harder line on public expenditure cutbacks, and
that has also had an effect on archives. These have
seen their possibilities to purchase equipment,
expand staffing levels or carry out large-scale projects such as the construction of new buildings or the
simple rehabilitation of existing buildings highly
limited. The lack of resources affects all kinds of
archive institutions, including the national or general
archives themselves, but it is much more pressing at
other levels, such as in the regional, departmental or
municipal archive facilities.
The major slice of the funding allocated to
archives is usually devoted to staff costs. The rest is
used to cover expenditure on supplies and certain
office materials. The poor situation makes it impossible even to undertake small-scale restructuring or
expansion work, and also prevents any improvements being made to the range of services provided
by the archive.
Most archives have no other source of income
than the budget allocated to them by the state. The
possibility of obtaining additional outside resources
through the sale of publications, reproductions, etc.,
is practically non-existent as the budget they are
given is not enough to develop this type of activity.
It must be pointed out here that in some coun-
Table 3. Archive budgets
National archives
Total budget
in thousands
of US$
Personnel
(%)
Maintenance and
investment (%)
Argentina
2 748
27
73
Brazil
8 142
63
37
Colombia
1 812
46
54
Costa Rica
2 237
22
78
97
76
24
1 160
52
48
Paraguay
146
68
32
Peru
800
Ecuador
Mexico
tries such as Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador or Peru
the national archives have administrative autonomy
and their own budget which allows them to perform
the basic functions they have been legally assigned.
Additionally, it gives them the capacity to generate
their own income through the sale of services or
their own editorial programme. Other national
archives, whose position within the administrative
organizational hierarchy leaves them under the
responsibility of a higher body (a directorate general
for example), do not have this financial autonomy.
Specific, updated information is only available
on the national archives of some countries (see Table
3). It shows that the Costa Rica National Archives,
on the one hand, have a budget which is the third
largest in absolute terms, reflecting the importance
of this institution, whereas on the other hand, an
archive on the scale of the Mexican Archivo General
de la Nación has a very limited budget. Although
figures are not available, the national archives in
countries such as Uruguay, Bolivia or all the Central
American countries with the exception of Costa Rica
have totally insufficient resources. In some cases,
such as Honduras or Guatemala, this prevents them
from guaranteeing even the physical conservation of
the records they hold. The problem is especially serious in the case of Guatemala whose Archivo General
de Centroamérica – for historic reasons – holds a
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great deal of documentation regarding its neighbouring countries.
Records management
One of the main weaknesses traditionally affecting
records in the Latin American area is the disordered
growth and accumulation of records produced by
the public administration, resulting in offices and
archives that have become saturated with poorly
controlled holdings.
The following are some of the reasons for this:
•
Non-existent technical links between government agencies and national archives.
•
Non-existent programmes and regulations for
records management resulting in the application of heterogeneous criteria for organization,
appraisal and disposition by the public administrative offices themselves.
•
Lack of proper regulations for transfers, so
non-compliance was standard practice.
•
Saturation of the national archives, which
limited the possibility of receiving transfers
regularly.
•
Shortage or non-existence of central archives
within official bodies.
•
Limited training and staff with practically no
archive skills in records services.
•
Non-existent legal framework for the protection of records as an instrument and as the history of public institutions.
Brazil and Mexico were the first two countries in
Latin America in which, during the 1970s, steps were
taken to try to correct the situation of official
records. The work carried out in both countries until
the early 1990s has been described in an illustrative
publication by the Latin American Group for
Records Management which will soon be available
under the title Archivos administrativos iberoamericanos. Modelo y perspectivas de una tradición
archivística. This group, with the support of ALA,
has been working since its creation in 1989 on a
methodology to help resolve the problems of Latin
American archival repositories in the field of records
management.
The above-mentioned problems, to a greater or
lesser extent, still exist in all the countries and affect
the control, access and institutional and social utilization of records. Efficient policies and methodological guidelines need to be drawn up and developed urgently, and economic and human resources
need to be allocated with a view to improving the
quality of records services within public organizations and achieving integrated and standardized
operation. The recent legislation in several countries,
such as Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica or Peru, is
undoubtedly an essential instrument. It specifically
attributes to the respective national archives the
authority for issuing the necessary technical regulations to ensure proper management of records from
the time they are created so that the archives of the
public administration can be modernized.
Professional associations
In Latin America, professional associations of
archivists have traditionally played a much more
limited role than similar organizations in North
America or in many European countries. This is also
proof of the lack of professionalization of people
working in the archives sector.
Although professional associations exist at the
national level in most countries, these have had only
a low profile because their tiny membership and
their limited resources have prevented them from
developing programmes of any great scope.
Costa Rica is one of a number of countries that
still does not have an association of archivists. Nor
is there currently a nationwide archivists’ association
in Argentina, although the professional associations that do exist in several of its provinces have
banded together to form the Republic of Argentina
Archivist Federation whose headquarters are in
Santa Fe.
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Out of all the professional associations of
archivists in the region the only one that has
acquired any real importance is the Brazilian
Associação dos Arquivistas Brasileiros, whose headquarters are in Rio de Janeiro, with subsidiary offices
in other states. Its most outstanding activities include
the convening every two years of the Brazilian
Archive Studies Conference, whose high professional level is widely acknowledged and which is usually
attended by archivists from abroad, together with its
work in the field of education where it runs training
courses.
One important point to be underlined is that
under the legislation passed recently in some countries, these associations are now directly involved in
the management of national archives policy. This is
true for Brazil, for instance, where it is laid down by
law that a representative of the Associação must sit
on the National Archive Council (CONARQ). In
Costa Rica, too, by law one archivist must be chosen
to sit on the Board of the National Archives from
a shortlist on which at least one of the candidates
must be a member of the Costa Rican Archivist
Association.
Education and training
Until very recently, most of the people working in
archives had not undergone any previous training in
the subject and they tended to be self-taught, with
experience gained on the job. There has traditionally
been an extremely limited supply of training and
education opportunities of a general nature and a
total lack of any specialized training. This has been
the result of the lack of professionalization of the
work of archivists, which meant that access to professional posts was not regulated, nor was there any
defined job profile for the selection and recruitment
of archivists.
However, training has now become a priority
in several countries as an essential requirement for
progress in the implementation of the national
archive system. Thus, for instance, in Colombia, one
of the five work programmes in the Operating Plan
for the National Archive System is devoted to education and training. Moreover, legislation in different
countries such as Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica,
Cuba or Peru explicitly bestows on the higher bodies of the national archives administration an active
role in training staff working in public archives.
Likewise, in Brazil and Costa Rica, legislation also
provides for the collaboration of the higher archive
administration with those state institutions that are
responsible for drawing up national education policies or syllabi related to training archivists.
Initial education and training
Recent years have seen the number of university
education possibilities multiply. Previously, as a general rule there were no specific university study programmes available for archivists, and archives work
was either taught within the framework of librarianship and documentation programmes or it was an
extra subject studied as part of a history degree. The
situation has moved on considerably since then. On
the one hand, it is clear that archives studies have
begun to play a bigger role within university syllabi
and, on the other hand, regulated studies on the subject are beginning to appear, including even postgraduate specialization programmes in archives.
Following this pattern, a number of universities
in Brazil teach graduate programmes in archive
work: Rio de Janeiro University, Federal Fluminense
University (Niterói, Rio de Janeiro), Brasilia
University (D.F.), Santa María Federal University
(Rio Grande do Sul), Río Grande do Sul Federal
University (Porto Alegre, Río Grande do Sul) and
Bahía University (Salvador, Bahía). Postgraduate
or specialization courses are also taught at the
University of São Paulo (a specialization course
in archives organization), the Pernambuco Federal
University (Recife, Pernambuco) and the Pará
Federal University (Belén, Pará).
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In Costa Rica, it is possible to complete a university degree programme in archives studies lasting
either two or four years, but there are still no postgraduate programmes available.
In Mexico, archives studies are taught both in
the Escuela Nacional de Biblioteconomía y Archivonomía (ENBA) and as a university programme.
The ENBA currently offers a degree programme
in archives studies and is co-operating with the
Archivo General de la Nación to set up a postgraduate archives programme which could start in
1997. Nevertheless, the educational possibilities in
archives studies are totally insufficient as there are
currently only three institutions where the subject
can be studied. Two offer a full degree programme
and one a graduate programme at a lower technical
level.
In Argentina, the most important educational
institution, owing to its long tradition, is the Escuela
de Archiveros de Córdoba. There are also schools
with three-year archives studies programmes in
Paraná, Santa Fe, San Juan and El Chaco, and a
full degree archives programme is available at the
Instituto de Formación Docente de La Plata.
The Escuela Nacional de Archiveros in Lima,
Peru, offers a four-year higher education programme. Several universities also offer archives study
courses as part of the syllabus for other degrees.
With regard to the type of training given in
these educational establishments, it seems that as a
general rule it does not focus on one specific type of
archives. Instead, training is intended for work both
in archives and records services. In Peru and Costa
Rica, however, the training has lately been aimed
more at the latter.
In other countries, such as Bolivia, Colombia,
Cuba, Ecuador and Paraguay, archives studies are
still taught together with librarianship and there is
no specific training in this field at a higher level. In
Colombia, degree-level courses are offered at the La
Salle, Javeriana and Antioquia Universities. These
and the Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica
de Colombia also offer postgraduate specialization
courses in archives studies.
Apart from university-level education, technical schools exist in nearly all countries where
archives skills are taught at a technical level.
However, in spite of the development of
archives studies witnessed over recent years, the supply of courses available at both a professional and a
technical level is still insufficient in most countries.
In one or two odd cases, it is still necessary to go
abroad to be trained in archives studies.
Lastly, with regard to the efforts being made in
different countries to design global training and professionalization systems for archivists to enable them
to cope successfully with the challenges currently
posed by archives, the proposal that the Federal
Fluminense University in Brazil has been promoting
is certainly an interesting one. The idea is to create a
Latin American working group in collaboration
with the Vocational Training Section of ICA in order
to define a model for the education and training of
future Latin American archivists.
Continuing education and training
There has been a traditional lack of general education and training opportunities for archive staff, and
even less chance of employees receiving specialized
training programmes in technical areas. For a long
time, no staff training plans or refresher courses were
run at all, and this had a negative impact on the effectiveness and quality of the service provided by the
archives.
Several countries, however, are making notable
progress with regard to the professionalization of
their human resources. Their national archives systems are taking the lead and promoting extensive
training and refresher programmes which not only
involve staff working in the national archives but
also cover personnel in other archives. Basic training
courses are offered through these programmes, as
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well as further training or refresher courses (for
example, many courses and workshops have been
run over the last two years on the ICA International
Standard on Archival Description, ISAD (G), for
archivists and other public employees working in
archives.
In several federally structured countries, the
national archives are not the only levels in the system
that participate in the training activities. In Mexico
and Brazil, for instance, the archives in the states or
municipalities organize their own vocational training
or refresher activities (lectures, courses, workshops,
etc.). In Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica,
Cuba, Ecuador and Paraguay, the respective national
archives also organize training courses and other
activities aimed at archives personnel working all
over the country. In Brazil, the Association of
Brazilian Archivists runs short courses to train
and retrain personnel working in archives. In Peru,
the Escuela Nacional de Archiveros is responsible
for training archives personnel, with basic courses
lasting one or two months and week-long seminarworkshops. In Peru, the Escuela Nacional de
Archiveros is responsible for training archive personnel, with basic courses lasting one or two months
and week-long seminar-workshops.
Mention must also be made here of the archives
staff training activities of the Latin American
Regional Courses in Administrative Archives sponsored by OAS, and held annually in Peru. Similarly,
there is a Training Programme for Latin America
offered each year by the Ministry of Education and
Culture in Spain which includes an Archive School
Workshop run over two-and-a-half months in the
Archivo General de la Administración de Alcalá de
Henares (Madrid). Short periods of more specialized
training also take place in other Spanish archives and
related centres.
Despite the obvious successes achieved in some
countries in the region, there is still much work to be
done. On the one hand, there is a need to create or
improve the mechanisms available for providing
professional and technical staff with the necessary
opportunities to keep their knowledge and skills up
to date and to have access to specialized knowledge.
On the other hand, it will also be necessary to keep
up the good work in education and training for staff
in those parts of the system that most require it.
Archives of former repressive regimes
The recent history of a great many countries in the
Latin American region has been marked by the existence of dictatorial regimes that have kept tight control over the population. This control was implemented through the consolidation of repressive
mechanisms and information services which in some
countries reached impressive standards of ‘effectiveness’, putting together an astonishing armoury of
information on people, organizations, and so on.
Over recent years, many of the countries previously in the grip of this type of regime have
suc-ceeded in restoring their democratic status. This
has led to the thorny question of how to deal with
the archives left by the repressive bodies from
the previous period. There is also the need to come
up with suitable formulas to avoid their destruction
and to regulate their use and access in order to minimize the possibility of any unsuitable re-use of such
documents (by a hypothetical new authoritarian
regime or even in the context of a democratic state
itself). No satisfactory solution to their dilemma has
been reached to date in any of the countries that
suffered from this problem, although international
co-operation may help. UNESCO and ICA set
up, in September 1994, an International Expert
Group with the mandate to prepare a manual on the
management of state security archives of former
repressive regimes, whose draft has been completed
and will be published within UNESCO’s RAMP
studies series. Among the membership of the group
there are two experts representing Latin American
countries.
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Acknowledgements
The returns to a questionnaire prepared and distributed in 1996 by the Colombian Archivo General
de la Nación to Latin American national archives
have been an invaluable help in drafting this
report. Special acknowledgments are due to:
Miguel Unamuno, Director, and Graciela Swiderski,
Archivo General de la Nación, Argentina; Jaime
Antunes da Silva, Director-General, Arquivo
Nacional, Brazil; Grecia Vasco de Escudero,
Director, Archivo Nacional, Ecuador; Patricia
Galeana, Director-General, Archivo General de la
Nación, Mexico; Olga Sánchez de Machado,
Director, Archivo Nacional de Asunción, Paraguay;
and Aída Luz Mendoza, Director, Archivo General
de la Nación, Peru. The responses to a survey, carried out in June 1993 by the Grupo Iberoamericano
de Tratamiento de Archivos Administrativos among
Latin American National Archives to assess the state
of the art concerning records management in their
countries, also have been of great help. ■■
Further reading
ARCHIVO GENERAL DE LA NACIÓN. 1995. Plan estratégico
del Archivo General de la Nación, 1995–1998.
Santafé de Bogotá, Archivo General de la Nación.
32 pp.
CHACON ARIAS, V. 1996. The Establishment, Extension
and Modernization of Archival Systems and Services: The Case of Costa Rica. In: Proceedings of the
Inter-Regional Conference on Archival Development of the International Council on Archives,
Tunis, 1995. (Special issue of Janus, 1996.)
GALLARDO, J. R.; JARDIM, J. M. 1988. Proposta para
um programa de modernização dos sistemas arquivísticos dos países latino-americanos. Rio de Janeiro,
Arquivo Nacional. 30 pp. (Publicações técnicas, 45.)
GRUPO IBEROAMERICANO DE TRATAMIENTO DE ARCHIVOS
ADMINISTRATIVOS. 1996. Archivos administrativos
iberoamericanos: Modelo y perspectivas de una tradición archivística. Santafé de Bogotá, Archivo General
de la Nación (Colombia)/Ministerio de Cultura
(Spain). (In press.)
INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL ON ARCHIVES. 1995–96.
Législation archivistique/Archival Legislation 1981–
1994. In: Archivum, Vol. XL (Albania-Kenya), 1995,
348 pp.; Vol. XLI (Latvia-Zimbabwe). Munich,
K. G. Saur, 1996. 344 pp.
LOPEZ GOMEZ, P. 1991. El Archivo General de Centroamérica (Ciudad de Guatemala): Informe. Madrid,
ANABAD. 324 pp.
SEMINARIO DE EVALUACIÓN DEL PROGRAMA DE
DESARROLLO DE ARCHIVOS DE LA OEA. (Córdoba,
Argentina). 1986. Informe de participantes al
Seminario sobre la situación archivística de sus
países. Anuario interamericano de archivos, Vol.
XIII, pp. 135–87. Córdoba (Argentina), Centro
Interamericano de Desarrollo de Archivos.
SEMINARIO DEL SISTEMA NACIONAL DE ARCHIVOS (2nd,
Santafé de Bogotá, 1993). 1994. Normatividad
archivística: Memorias [del] Segundo Seminario
sobre Sistema Nacional de Archivos de Colombia,
Santafé de Bogotá, 1–3 de diciembre de 1993. Santafé
de Bogotá, Archivo General de la Nación. 212 pp.
SEMINARIO DEL SISTEMA NACIONAL DE ARCHIVOS (3rd,
Santafé de Bogotá, 1994). 1994. Los archivos de cara
al siglo XXI: Memorias [del] Tercer Seminario del
Sistema Nacional de Archivos, Santafé de Bogotá,
2–4 de noviembre de 1994. Santafé de Bogotá,
Archivo General de la Nación. 236 pp.
SEMINARIO SOBRE NORMAS INTERNACIONALES PARA LA
DESCRIPCIÓN ARCHIVÍSTICA (Mexico City, 1993).
1994. Actas, pp. 5–17, Washington, D.C.
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Latin America and
t h e C a r i b b e181a n
Jorge Palacios Preciado holds a
Victoria Arias Roca graduated in
Bachelor’s and a Ph.D. in History
Philosophy and Humanities from
from, respectively, Universidad
Salamanca University and belongs to
Nacional, Bogotá, and Universidad
the Professional Archivists Corps
Sevilla. He is currently Director of the
(Cuerpo Facultativo de Archiveros,
Archivo General de la Nación (the General Archive of
Bibliotecarios y Arqueólogos, Sección Archivos).
the Nation), Colombia. He has been previously
Since 1992 she has been working at the Spanish
university professor, Rector of the Pedagogical and
Ministry of Education and Culture, where she is
Technological University of Colombia (UPTC), Dean
Special Assistant to the Deputy Director-General of
of the Faculty of Education and Director of
the State Archives in the field of relations with
Postgraduate Studies in History and Academic
international organizations and archival co-operation
Secretary at the UPTC. He is also Director of the
with other countries. Prior to her current
Review ALA. He has written various articles on the
appointment, she served on the staff of the Spanish
importance of archives in research, as well as articles
Centre for Information and Documentation on
and book reviews in several periodicals and
Archives (Centro de Información Documental de
newspapers. He published a number of articles and
Archivos, CIDA) where she worked on the setting up
books on the slave trade and pro-slavery society in
of archival databases, in particular the Guide to Sources
Latin America. In 1995 he was elected President of the
for the History of the Spanish Civil War and the Exile.
Latin American Association of Archives.
In 1991, within the framework of the commemorations
of the Fifth Centennial of the Discovery of America,
she was entrusted the co-ordination of the exhibition
Jorge Palacios Preciado
Ciencia y técnica entre Viejo y Nuevo Mundo. Siglos
Director
XV–XVIII (Madrid, Palacio de Velázquez,
Archivo General de la Nación
June–August 1992), organized by the Spanish Ministry
Carrea 6a No. 6-91
of Culture under the auspices of the International
Santafé de Bogotá
Council on Archives (ICA). In 1993 she became a
Colombia
member of ICA’s Ad Hoc Commission on Descriptive
Tel: 337-20-46/47/48/49/50
Standards.
Fax: 337-20-19
E-mail: [email protected]
Victoria Arias Roca
Técnico Superior de Archivos
Subdirección General de los Archivos Estatales
Dirección General del Libro, Archivos y Bibliotecas
Ministerio de Educación y Cultura
Plaza del Rey
28 071 Madrid
Spain
Tel: 1-521-05-08
Fax: 1-532-50-89
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Chapter 14
Audiovisual archives
worldwide
Helen P. Harrison
Open University Library,
United Kingdom
T
he audiovisual heritage is an important element within the cultural heritage and has
achieved prominence in the twentieth century, the first to have been recorded on audiovisual
formats. Audiovisuals are not new but have become
of increasing importance as art, entertainment and
information carriers. In some cases the transmission
of sound and visual data has greater value and impact
than the printed document – where, for example,
there is a literacy or language barrier. Audiovisuals
may also be the only suitable records for the oral or
sonic transmission of culture and the arts (musical
performances, oral history accounts or captured
events of the time), news and other current items.
The spread and development of modern technologies mean an increase in the role of audiovisual data
carriers for communication, information and culture. Today’s radio and television rely heavily on
archive material and it is estimated that more than
60% of radio and television programmes use archival
or stock material for programming.
What are audiovisual materials? The definitions
are still being formulated, but audiovisual materials
are to be understood as visual recordings (with or
without soundtrack) and sound recordings irrespective of their physical base or recording process. The
carrier usually requires a playback device. This
definition is meant to cover the maximum number of
forms and formats. Audiovisual materials should not
be confused with multimedia; the former provide
source material for the latter, and multimedia as such
are not archival material (see Chapter 16).
Two features of audiovisual materials add an
extra dimension to the principles of collection and
preservation: a proliferation both of formats and of
systems of production and playback. These cause
incompatibility problems between formats and systems. Archives have to maintain original playback
devices and employ technical staff who know how
to use and maintain the machinery. The Recommendation for the Safeguarding and Preservation of
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Moving Images, adopted by the General Conference
of UNESCO in 1980, provides a basic orientation
for integrating and protecting audiovisual recordings
as part of the cultural heritage of each nation.
Audiovisual archives
Audiovisual archives are storehouses for a large proportion of the social and cultural heritage of the
twentieth century. An audiovisual archive is defined
as an organization or department of an organization
which is focused on collecting, managing, preserving
and providing access to a collection of audiovisual
media and the audiovisual heritage, applying archival
principles. Such archives contain huge treasures of
unique material.
Archives of audiovisual materials are relatively
new, but they have proliferated in the past few
decades. The first sound recordings appeared in 1877
and the first sound archive – the Phonogrammarchiv
in Vienna – was established as a research archive in
1899, although it was not followed by others until
the 1930s. Film appeared in the 1890s and archives
began to be established in the 1930s. Photography
had appeared earlier in the nineteenth century.
Television was originally recorded on film, but video
has been the principal material since the later 1960s.
Although audiovisual materials have appeared so
recently, time is not on their side and the longer we
delay in gathering, conserving and preserving the
materials, the less we shall be able to retain. It is vital
that steps are taken now to collect and manage
audiovisual materials properly before their fragile
nature takes a further toll. Already much has been
lost owing to ignorance, lack of awareness of the
dangers and careless handling.
Typology
Audiovisual archives vary in type, purpose and function, and until recently most of them were singlematerial archives: moving image (film or television),
sound and still-image archives, the latter frequently
housed in more conventional archives of print
materials. As the technologies converge so do the
archives, to unite effort and conserve resources.
Some archives take responsibility for all recorded
materials, others take smaller bites and combine one
or two of the materials.
The larger archives cannot always combine
materials in one department; the physical techniques
required to deal with each material from the point of
view of storage, handling and restoration need different expertise and materials are therefore separated by
this parameter alone. Other functions of collection
management can be applied to all the materials: documentation and information retrieval, and selection.
Storage vaults may have to accommodate more than
one material and the resulting environmental considerations will be different from those more stringently
applied to individual materials. Alternatively, an
archive may decide that it must apply the optimum
storage and environmental values which apply to each
material: single-material archives are more fortunate
in these cases. Examples of combined archives are the
National Film and Sound Archive in Australia, the
National Archives of Canada, which include film,
television programmes, sound and paper, and in the
United States the Library of Congress and the
National Archives in Washington, D.C.
Academic archives also house audiovisual materials, many in universities for research, and latterly
educational materials for distance learning. These
may be small and specialized, or have substantial collections and preservation programmes.
Specialized or thematic archives concentrate on
a particular format, subject-matter or locality, or
relate to specific cultural groups. Many examples
could be cited, including the following: special
events or periods in history (the Imperial War
Museum in London, which includes audiovisual
materials dealing with wars and conflict); regional
interests (Landesmuseum Joanneum in Graz,
Austria); specific cultural groups (the Australian
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Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Studies in Canberra); academic and research disciplines (Dansk Folkmindesamling); folklife collections (Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife
Center, Library of Congress); oral history (School of
Scottish Studies, Edinburgh, United Kingdom);
world music (Oman Centre for Traditional Music);
and specific organizations (United Nations). Many
of these archives have developed within larger organizations.
Production archives. Film companies, broadcasting companies and record companies maintain
archives primarily for use and exploitation by the
parent company. Many of these preserve and restore
their materials for re-use, but the archives’ main
obligation is to the parent organization rather than
to preserving the cultural heritage. This may be left
to a national archive, which obtains a selection of the
production company’s material by deposit.
Other institutions with archival responsibility
include museums, cinematheques, videotheques and
national libraries. Most of these are more concerned
with maintaining stock for exhibition purposes, and
originals may be deposited for long-term preservation in a national archive. There are also collections
of last resort which attempt to conserve copies of
material in usable condition, but seldom retain
archival originals or masters.
Finance and investment
Audiovisual materials result from a huge level of
investment. Consider the costs of a television channel, or a film production or sound recording company. That the material is allowed to deteriorate
through lack of funding for conservation is an unforgivable waste of financial resources and human talent. Considering the huge investment in production,
the financial resources available for preservation of
the material are ludicrously small. Although some
archives were established by private means, the ultimate responsibility for the protection and mainte-
nance of a national heritage must lie with the nation
itself, and this means government and granting
bodies. It is incumbent upon government to ensure
that the national heritage is protected for posterity.
Archives in organizations such as broadcast associations or film production companies have commercial
backing and motivation, and meet costs from their
revenue. Once that commercial motive is fulfilled,
however, it is generally acknowledged that, as with
other records of the national cultural creativity, the
cost of maintaining the collection reverts to government and granting bodies. Many valuable collections
have disappeared for ever as a result of production
company closures or changes in franchise when
materials are not taken over by already overstretched
archives.
Basic tasks of audiovisual archives
The basic tasks of an audiovisual archive are collection, preservation, documentation and access provision.
Methods of collection and acquisition vary, and
include the legal or voluntary deposit of collections
or individual items, the deposit of in-house productions (broadcasting organizations), donations, special agreements for copying nationally produced
materials, and purchase. Other archives collect their
own materials in the form of oral or video history
programmes, with the purpose of recording cultures,
languages and music before they disappear.
Evaluation, selection and appraisal
Closely allied to acquisition are evaluation, selection
and appraisal. The audiovisual archive acquires
materials according to a particular remit, balancing
new acquisitions against existing stock and the purpose and function of the archive. Storage space and
resources being what they are, archives have to select
material for preservation on the basis of relevance,
uniqueness and quality. Wherever possible an
archive should be dealing with original materials, but
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originals are hard to come by. There is strictly only
one original film, video or master sound recording.
Such originals seldom survive and there are various
forms of tampering with the products – cut/uncut
versions, director’s/producer’s cut, censored and
unexpurgated versions. Owners of original material
may be reluctant to deposit their master material in
an archive until they have no further use for it, by
which time the technical quality has deteriorated.
Three elements in audiovisual documents have
to be considered in the selection process: the artefact
or carrier, the information content and the aesthetic
content, particularly with film and sound recordings.
The artefact or carrier will designate the form of the
audiovisual and influence selection for technical reasons. Can this material be replayed in the collection
which acquires it, or is the carrier so esoteric that it
has only antique value? Is the carrier in good physical condition or will it need transfer and/or costly
restoration before or on receipt, or indeed is the
damage irreparable? There are also implications for
damage and disaster to the rest of the collection;
canker present in one item may spread to others if it
is stored untreated and without inspection. Should
we try to preserve the information content by cramming work into dense formats to preserve more of it
at the risk of losing its intrinsic quality?
Archives have very stringent selection policies.
It is widely quoted that archives select less than 2%
of the material presented. Audiovisual archives,
therefore, do not have a huge selection of material,
but most of it has unique value, and such archives
retain more material than many other archives. Some
audiovisual collections will include several interpretations of the same work – for example, music
recordings – or several records of the same event carried in different documents: a film, video or sound
version.
Guidelines for archival selection exist, but they
are usually those of organizations with their own
parameters. Selection of material is dependent upon
the function of the archive, the quality of the material and the uniqueness or rarity of the content.
Audiovisual archives should concentrate on
recordings of national origin. To avoid duplication
of effort, material should be offered back to the
country of original production or to archives with a
more relevant collection remit.
Preservation
The main function of any archive is to preserve the
heritage and the artefacts which make up that heritage. These are the major concerns of audiovisual
archives. Many of the difficulties encountered result
from the fragility or the volatile nature of the materials. The carriers are the weak link and the materials
have to be transferred to other carriers that are more
stable, with a longer life expectancy or more up to
date. Audiovisual materials are made of polymers,
and all polymers decay! Progress is being made to
slow this decay and prolong the life expectancy of
the carriers and thus the source material, but preservation measures will simply retard deterioration, not
prevent it. The life expectancy of audiovisual materials is dependent on chemistry and storage and handling conditions. After 100 years much early film has
been lost, especially volatile nitrate. Sound and video
recordings are subject to attack from many enemies.
No universal panacea has been found and the new
technologies of optical disks are as prone to damage
as the old. For example, there have been problems
with vinegar syndrome producing tape and laser rot
affecting optical disks designed to act as storage
media for tape materials. Archives must copy material
from one format to another to save the content, to
overcome the obsolescence of equipment and systems, and to provide copies for research and other
uses.
There are three steps in preservation work:
conservation (maintaining suitable storage conditions to prolong the life of the material and doing
everything to prevent harm); preservation (active
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treatment of the material to maintain it in reasonable
condition for copying and duplication); and restoration (the final step to restoring material to its former
glory). Wherever possible the original data have to
be preserved on the original format for future use by
more advanced technologies of transfer and presentation. Guidelines and standards exist and can be
adjusted to suit prevailing conditions – hot and
humid climates call for different standards of storage
and preservation than cold, temperate climates. The
American National Standards Institute (ANSI), the
International Standards Organization (ISO) and the
British Standards Institute (BSI) all publish standards for composition of tape, and for storage environments and conditions. The international audiovisual NGOs also issue guidelines.
Digitization is not yet the answer as there may
be loss of quality in copying the original, even
though clones will retain the quality of the copy.
Digitization is often associated with mass storage
techniques, but data density techniques are not necessarily reversible – hence the caution of technicians
in retaining originals whenever possible.
Access
If preservation is the primary concern of the audiovisual archive, access is the second. Audiovisual
archiving is a culturally motivated activity, intent
upon the preservation of the audiovisual heritage
because of its intrinsic worth, regardless of commercial potential. Such values are still important, but
most archives are now growing faster than the financial resources to support them. There is therefore a
certain necessity for archives to generate some
income; there is also the public service aspect – that
is, to provide access to the people whose heritage is
contained within the archive.
Legal issues
Copyright in archive material is usually vested in the
owner and respected, but the archive itself requires
rights to acquire, copy, use and provide access to the
material (see Chapter 26). Acquisition of material is
achieved by some countries through legal deposit
arrangements, but this will only cover a small proportion of the material acquired by an archive – that
which is published. Much of the material is unpublished. Archives have ad hoc agreements with donors
for voluntary deposits but, in the case of some commercial producers, the archive’s rights may be
severely restricted. Archives are not in competition
with producers or owners, and need some rights
over material deposited with them, on which they
may have spent considerable time, effort and money
for preservation and storage. Archives are not simply
convenient storehouses, and have to maintain the
integrity of the material. Most especially they need
rights to copy the material for preservation, access
and exhibition purposes, and some rights to retain
the material once acquired. Once deposited, archive
copies should not leave archive premises but should
remain under archive control.
Intellectual control
Detailed cataloguing of archive material is essential
to provide a permanent, accurate record, especially
of the unedited, unpublished material which
abounds. Many archives developed their own
rules, but an international initiative is now under
way to produce ground rules for all audiovisual
materials. Ground rules are necessary for the
exchange of information in electronic databases – if
everyone uses different criteria, then confusion will
result and information exchange be retarded.
Accurate and rapid information retrieval is the goal
of indexing, and essential data elements have to be
devised to make this possible, even though each kind
of material will have its own set of data elements.
Retrieval by subject has been made easier by the
introduction of computer techniques and free-text
searching – but the terms for description of subject
content have to be carefully chosen, based on
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international thesauri, or data and material will be
lost.
As electronic technology develops so the means
of transmitting information – printed and audiovisual – are advanced. In a world of incompatible
systems (computers are no exception), the search
continues for a system capable of access by as wide a
public as possible. Work has started to find the
lowest common denominator for the transmission of
information with the highest common quality, a sort
of ‘ASCII’ code for all information.
In addition to information retrieval, archives
have to keep detailed technical records – what has
happened to the material, its current format, has it
been restored, if so on what system, how and why –
to assist future technicians. The technical record is
usually kept separate from the information record.
There are many published information tools
ranging from catalogues of holdings to discographies
and filmographies, but national discographies and
filmographies are compiled independently of the
archives, because the latter’s stock is not comprehensive, even when legal deposit exists, and seldom up
to date. Other discographies and filmographies are
selective and cover directors, performers or composers.
Overview of audiovisual archives
worldwide
A recent survey of holdings in audio, film and video
archives was carried out by the Library of Congress
on behalf of Eastman Kodak. The figures are alarming. Even with the most stringent selection criteria
and limited collection resources, the holdings of just
500 archives amounted to 11,175 million feet of film,
8.5 million hours of video, and 44.5 million hours of
audio, and there are many more archives than this. A
recent survey of audiovisual archives in Europe
alone, Map-TV – Film and Television Collections in
Europe, identified some additional 1,900 archives
and collections for film and television. There are
approximately 40,000 radio and television stations
around the world, many of which have archives; film
archives exist in over eighty countries, and sound
archives in fifty countries at a conservative estimate.
A large part of audiovisual production will be lost
for future generations without greater efforts from
the international community to support the establishment and development of audiovisual archives
worldwide.
Professional education
Personnel working in audiovisual archives come
from many different professions and scientific disciplines, and have long professional experience and
on-the-job training. There is a serious gap, however,
between the growing importance of audiovisual
archives and the provision of professional education,
a gap no less wide in developed than in developing
countries.
Audiovisual archivists need to be specialists
with a thorough knowledge of archival principles
and the special characteristics of audiovisual materials. There are two main types of audiovisual
archivist: (a) collection managers, documentalists
and selectors and (b) technical staff, who have to be
of a high standard with thorough knowledge of their
disciplines. There are few courses available; most are
summer schools and seminars, but some longer
courses can be found in existing schools of library
and archival studies.
Memory of the World Programme
The UNESCO Memory of the World Programme is
an attempt to save the cultural heritage, and audiovisual materials cannot be excluded. These materials,
however, are among the most vulnerable to destruction. Lost collections are a sad reminder of the ravages of time, chemistry, natural and man-made disasters, wars and conflicts, but fortunately endangered
collections are currently being identified by this programme.
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International organizations
Further reading
Audiovisual archives have set up their own federations: the International Federation of Film Archives
(FIAF) was established sixty-eight years ago, the
International Association of Sound Archives (IASA)
in 1969 and the International Federation of Television Archives (IFTA) in 1977. All have NGO
status within UNESCO. Although each has its own
constituency and membership structures, the audiovisual NGOs, ICA and the International Federation
of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA)
have collaborated since 1979 in a Round Table
on Audio-visual Records under the auspices of
UNESCO. The Round Table has been responsible
for many activities including publications, surveys,
the development of guidelines and training. It provides an arena for audiovisual organizations to
address common issues and improve the recognition
and status of audiovisual archives as vital components in safeguarding the cultural heritage. The
Round Table has an important subcommittee – the
Technical Co-ordinating Committee – which organizes Joint Technical Symposia across its spectrum
of interests and provides technical advice and expertise.
In addition to the international NGOs there
are several national and regional associations: the
Association of Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC)
in the United States, the Association of Moving
Image Archives (AMIA), with its network of
interests in North America and beyond, and the
recently formed South-East Asia-Pacific Audiovisual Archives Association (SEAPAVAA). Other
closely allied associations include the International
Council on Museums (ICOM) and the International
Council on Traditional Music (ICTM). Thus many
associations are willing to assist if one knows where
to look. The next step is to provide greater awareness
of the expertise and advice available, and the Round
Table under UNESCO auspices is a good place to
start. ■■
BOSTON, G. 1991. Guide to the Basic Technical Equipment
Required by Audio, Film and Television Archives.
Milton Keynes, TCC. 104 pp.
HARRISON, H. P. 1992. Audiovisual Archive Literature: A
Select Bibliography. Paris, UNESCO. 153 pp.
——. 1995. Selection and Audiovisual Collections. IFLA
Journal, Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 185–90.
——. Audiovisual Archives: A Practical Reader. Paris,
UNESCO. (Forthcoming.)
KLAUE, W. 1993. World Directory of Moving Image and
Sound Archives. Munich, K. G. Saur. 192 pp.
KOFLER, B. 1990. Legal Issues Facing Audiovisual Archives
Paris, UNESCO. (PGI-91/WS/5.) 71 pp.
UNESCO. CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT WORKING
PARTY. 1990. Curriculum Development for the
Training of Personnel in Moving Image and
Recorded Sound Archives, pp. 14–18. Paris,
UNESCO. (PGI-90/WS/9.) 104 pp.
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Helen P. Harrison graduated in
Psychology from Sydney University
and trained as a librarian in the United
Kingdom. She entered the archives
world in the National Film Archive in
London on the cataloguing staff and then worked for
several years in Visnews, a newsfilm agency. In 1969
she joined the newly established Open University as
Media Librarian, and worked there for twenty-five
years, establishing library systems for audiovisual
materials and an archive of programme material
produced by the university. Ms Harrison is now
consultant AV archivist at the Open University. She
has been on the Executive Board of the International
Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives
(IASA) since 1981 and held positions as President,
Secretary-General and Editor. She has represented
IASA in many UNESCO meetings, and carried out
several projects for UNESCO dealing with selection
and appraisal, bibliography, legal issues and training
with reference to audiovisual archives.
Helen P. Harrison
6 Barnhill Road
Marlow, SL7 3E2
United Kingdom
Fax: (1908) 64278
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Part Two.
Infrastructures
for information
work
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Chapter 15
Computer
developments
Lucy Tedd
University of Wales,
United Kingdom
T
his chapter covers current computer developments and provides an overview of how they
have affected archive, library and information
work. An international conference on networking
and the future of libraries, organized by the United
Kingdom Office for Library Networking (UKOLN)
in 1995, included papers describing computer-based
services which provide access to library information,
local and remote databases (such as on the Internet
and via networked CD-ROMs), full texts of journal
articles, software for word processing, etc., and communications facilities for e-mail, file transfer and
newsgroups in Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands,
Norway, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the
United States.
Library and information service managers now
have a wide set of computer-based solutions from
which they can select the best mix of services to meet
the needs of their customers. Phrases such as ‘the
electronic library’ and ‘digital libraries’ are beginning to appear in the literature. Collier and Arnold
(1995) define the electronic library as ‘a managed
environment of multimedia materials in digital form,
designed for the benefit of its user population, structured to facilitate access to its contents and equipped
with aids to navigation of the global network’. The
Electronic Libraries (e-Lib) Programme in the
United Kingdom, which resulted from a study
(known as the Follett Report) into various crises
affecting academic libraries, is funding sixty or so
projects covering the areas of document delivery,
electronic journals, on-demand publishing, digitization, training and awareness, and access to networked resources. Full details of the state of the projects are maintained on the web server at UKOLN
(http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/elib/). In the United States
the National Science Foundation (NSF) and other
agencies have funded six institutions to work on the
Digital Libraries Initiative. Berry (1996) describes
some of the work in progress and gives a definition
from the University of Michigan Digital Library
193
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Project: ‘a digital library is the generic name for federated structures that provide humans both intellectual and physical access to the huge and growing
worldwide networks of information encoded in
multimedia digital networks’.
The parallel developments of computer processing speed, storage facilities, multimedia and
telecommunications now enable access from one
workstation to huge information resources worldwide. The traditional view of a library as a store of
information held locally is being eroded as the
library becomes a gateway to information resources
worldwide. This, of course, has huge implications
for library users, information providers, librarians
and information scientists.
The first electronic digital computer, ENIAC,
was completed in Philadelphia in 1946, but all commands had to be input separately. The first stored
program was written by Tom Kilburn at the
University of Manchester in 1948. Some of the journals that publish relevant papers in this area are also
now fifty years old. The Editorial Board of the
Journal of Documentation conceived for 1994 a special volume, Fifty Years of Information Progress,
which contains many useful chapters outlining
developments over the years.
Hardware and software developments
Early computers were huge, expensive, complicated
machines that consumed a lot of electricity, generated a lot of heat, needed specialist operators and
were used for processing data in specialist laboratories. Their size, complexity and cost meant that they
were not used for any library or information work
until the mid-1960s, when transistors replaced the
original valves. By then codes (such as the American
Standard Code for Information Interchange or
ASCII) had been developed so that text could be
input, stored and output on these computers with
the individual characters being translated into strings
of binary digits.
Very large scale integration of the electronic
components that comprise any computer has
resulted in a huge increase in the power available and
a decrease in the cost of processing. The 1980s saw
the development of the microcomputer, which
enabled many libraries and information units to
acquire their own computer systems. By the mid1990s Personal Computers (PCs) have become commonplace in libraries and information units worldwide, and many people also have PCs at home.
These PCs may be used for what has become known
as ‘edutainment’, where educational packages which
parents hope will improve their children’s education
are used, as well as encyclopedias on CD-ROM
(such as Microsoft Encarta) and games, of which a
large number are available. With the development
of the information superhighway many of these
domestic PCs can now link to the Internet to access
information sources that previously were only available in a library or information centre. Many professionals, including doctors, pharmacists, veterinary
surgeons and lawyers, now have PCs on their desks.
The battery-powered ‘laptop’ computer is a portable
device that can be used when travelling on trains and
planes.
The hardware of a current PC comprises:
• Central processor. The speed with which the
processor carries out basic instructions (measured in
millions of instructions per second (mips) or given as
a frequency and measured in megahertz (MHz) ) and
the amount of main store that can be accessed are
factors used to describe a processor. The earliest
computers processed up to 10,000 instructions per
second and there has been continuous increase in
this speed so that current PCs have a processing
speed of thousands of mips. Intel is a major manufacturer of processors and in mid-1996 it announced
plans for a 200 MHz Pentium processor which
means that it will operate at two to three times the
speed of current Pentiums. RISC or Reduced
Instruction Set Computer chips have been designed
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with the aim of speeding up the time taken to
process an instruction by limiting the number of
instructions to include those most often used.
Another approach to improve speed is to have parallel processors so that the processor is not, as in most
situations, processing a set of instructions one after
another (or serially), but instead several processors
obey instructions in parallel. Although the speed of
processing has increased dramatically the cost of
processors has decreased equally dramatically.
• The main memory. The main memory of any
computer is used to store information that is currently being processed. The earliest computers were
capable of storing only 1,000 to 8,000 characters of
information. The amount of store has increased continuously over the years with a parallel decrease in
costs. The most common form of memory can be
written to as well as read from, and is referred to as
RAM (Random Access Memory). The standard PC
of today has a RAM of about 8, 16 or 32 MB (the
unit normally used to refer to storage of one character is a byte; 1,000 bytes are called a Kilobyte or KB,
and 1 million bytes are called a Megabyte or MB).
• Input. A variety of input devices may be attached
to a computer to enable information in any form (for
example, text, voice, image) to be converted into the
appropriate binary codes. The keyboard (many of
which follow the QWERTY layout developed for
typewriters in the late nineteenth century) is often
the primary device for entering information. The
original ASCII code was seven bits long and capable
of recognizing 128 separate symbols. This is not adequate for representing the range of symbols used in
languages throughout the world. There are various
other standards used. For instance the Arab
Organization for Standardization and Metrology
(ASMO) developed the ASMO 449 for Arabic characters, and the East Asian Character Code is based
on work undertaken by the Research Libraries
Group (RLG) in the United States for the processing
of Chinese, Japanese and Korean ideographic char-
acters. Unicode is the general name used to refer to
the International Standards Organization (ISO)
10646 standard 16-bit code which encompasses the
world’s principal scripts and has been developed by a
consortium involving computer manufacturers such
as IBM and Apple, and software developers such as
Microsoft, as well as RLG and ISO.
A major input device of the 1990s has been the
mouse, and its use to ‘point and click’ at sections of
the screen is a common feature of current computer
systems. Scanners can also be attached to PCs to
input images or graphics. Laser scanners are used to
input the information from barcodes on books and
borrower cards in circulation systems or from journal issues for serials control systems. Video scanners
can be used as input devices so that a videoconference can be set up over linked PCs with the participants able to see each other, or for medical diagnoses.
Touch-sensitive screens allow the user to point
directly at, for instance, a particular option from a
menu of possibilities displayed.
• Storage devices. The traditional medium for storing data is based on magnetic materials. Most PCs
have a hard disk which is in a sealed cartridge that
contains the read/write heads. The capacity of hard
disks has increased greatly over the years from about
5 MB in 1980 to as high as 2.5 GB in 1996 (a
Gigabyte, or GB, is equal to 1,000 MB). Data can
also be input and output on to floppy disk and most
workstations have a floppy disk drive capable of
reading and writing 3.5 inch diameter disks. Optical
storage media have become increasingly popular in
recent years and many PCs now have an integral
CD-ROM reader. The price of CD-ROM technology has dropped dramatically over recent years
owing mainly to the popularity of CD-ROM as the
medium for games and entertainment products.
• Output. The most common output device is the
screen or monitor. Many monitors now do not just
display text information but can also display the
complex graphics and video that have appeared for
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games in the home computer market, and are also
used in multimedia CD-ROMs. Speakers can be
attached to deliver sound linked to images on the
screen so that, for instance, Nelson Mandela’s voice
or the national anthem of Estonia can easily be heard
when using Encarta. Laptop computers use flat
screens based on liquid-crystal display technology as
this consumes little power. Hard copy printout is
still required and there are now many high-quality
laser printers available. Again the technology of
printers has developed greatly and prices have
decreased over the years.
The July 1996 issue of Personal Computer
World published a comparison of what £1,500 would
buy at various dates, showing the incredible developments in this area:
1979 Research Machines 380Z microcomputer
with 16 KB RAM, tape interface and a second-hand teletype printer.
1983 BBC Microcomputer with disk filing and 800
KB store on two 5.25-inch floppy disks, a
colour monitor and a dot-matrix printer.
1989 PC with 10 MHz processor, 640 KB RAM,
graphics capability and a dot-matrix printer.
1992 386SX PC with 1 MB RAM, printer and
Microsoft Works.
1993 486SX PC, 10 MHz processor, 8 MB RAM,
120 MB hard disk, Works for Windows.
1994 486DX PC, 33 MHz processor, 8 MB RAM,
424 MB hard disk, Works for Windows.
1995 486DX PC, 66 MHz processor, 8 MB RAM,
528 MB hard disk, multimedia capabilities
with double-speed CD-ROM and sound
card.
1996 Pentium PC, 75 MHz processor, 16 MB
RAM, 1 GB hard disk, quad-speed CDROM drive, 17-inch monitor and modem
(for Internet connection).
Probably the major recent software development for
library, information and archive work has been the
use of the Windows interface. In the mid-1980s an
operating system known as PC-DOS (PC-Disk
Operating System) was produced by the American
firm Microsoft for IBM to use with its PC. At about
the same time a completely different interface and
operating system was developed for the Apple
Macintosh computer; this made use of the point and
click features of a mouse with different options displayed on the screen in the form of small pictures or
icons. This type of interface became very popular
with users and by 1990 Microsoft had developed a
similar type of interface, known as the Windows 3
interface, for the IBM PC. Microsoft has also developed a wide range of office support software that is
used in many libraries, information units and
archives. Examples include Word (for word processing), Access (for basic database management) and
Excel (as a spreadsheet). Many archive and records
offices use industry-standard software for their
work. Simonson (1995) describes the use of general
word processing and database management software
(that is easily and cheaply available) for archive purposes at the Surrey Record Office in the United
Kingdom. He notes that
the advent of multimedia computing, networks and the
information superhighway places the onus on archivists to
find ways of making the information in their custody
available electronically. There is also an urgent need for
archivists to understand and get involved in the information revolution that is currently taking place, so that a
coherent strategy can be developed for managing the electronic archives of the future.
During 1995 Microsoft launched Windows 95, a 32bit multi-tasking operating system, and this is now
beginning to be used in libraries and information
units worldwide.
Network developments
The general technology, history and worldwide
implications of the huge developments in network-
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ing are discussed in Chapters 17 and 18. This section
will provide a small flavour of how these developments impact on libraries and information units.
When computers were first used in libraries it
was often necessary to link terminals or workstations from remote branch libraries to the main
computer system, or to link together various PCs so
that they could, for instance, share a CD-ROM drive
or a printer. These activities involved the implementation of some form of data communications network. A network used to link equipment over a limited area is known as a local area network or LAN.
In many universities around the world there are
campus-wide LANs that enable students and staff
from all over the campus to link to, amongst other
things, the library’s Online Public Access Catalogue
(OPAC). Many libraries and information units have
also become involved in providing access to a range
of CD-ROMs via a LAN. There are many advantages to this approach:
•
Several users may have concurrent access to the
same CD-ROM.
•
Library users may connect to a number of CDROMs from their own desktop PCs without
having to handle the actual disc.
•
Expenditure on CD-ROM licences may be
reduced.
•
CD-ROM discs and drives are protected from
vandalism and theft.
•
CD-ROM titles can be centrally updated.
There are various approaches to providing a CDROM network. The CD-ROMs can be attached to a
network file server such as SCSI Express. Another
approach is to use an optical server which is dedicated to running a group of CD-ROM drives. Products
which provide this facility include CD-Net, CDManager and CD-Connection. A final approach,
which is beginning to be popular, is to copy the
CD-ROM data to magnetic disks. A major recent
advancement in this area has been the development
of products such as SilverPlatter’s Electronic Refer-
ence Library (ERL), which provide the user with
a seamless way of accessing CD-ROM databases,
local databases and remote databases. CD-ROM
has proved to be very useful in many countries.
However, bibliographic databases on CD-ROM do
provide users with information on items that may
not be accessible locally and so the number of interlibrary loans rises significantly. Siddiqui (1995), of
the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals
in Saudi Arabia, reports on this as well as the extra
workload and stress on reference staff.
National or regional networks that link LANs
or other computing facilities are known as wide
area networks, the major one being the Internet.
Often national libraries act as focal points in helping
others in a particular country with this activity.
The Conference of European National Libraries
(CENL) is involved in the development of Gabriel –
a World Wide Web server – which provides links to
sources of information about the services and collections of members of CENL (Gabriel is to be found
at http://gabriel.bl.uk/). It developed from work on
Web servers carried out at the British Library (with
its Portico server which, inter alia, provides access to
images of treasures including the Magna Carta and
the Beowulf Manuscript) and the Koninklijke
Bibliotheek (KB) in the Netherlands (with its
Alexicon service and the Hundred Highlights of the
KB, recognized as a model virtual exhibition of a
national library’s treasures). The National Library of
Malaysia (http://pnm.my/) is co-ordinating a project
known as JARINGAN ILMU (or knowledge network) which involves many libraries in the country
providing information for access on the Internet.
The Network of Networks project in Latin America,
which is supported by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), aims to improve the
flow of information between eighteen networks in
the region by the use of electronic mail, computer
conferencing and the distribution of databases on
CD-ROM (Ciurlizza, 1996). The project started in
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1993 and, as it developed, the possibilities of regional
communication increased owing to the establishment of Internet nodes in places such as the University of Costa Rica and the University of Chile.
Development of library housekeeping
systems
Library housekeeping (or management) systems
typically are integrated packages which include
modules for various cataloguing, OPAC, acquisitions, circulation, serials control and interlibrary
lending. A detailed description of almost forty such
library systems available in Europe is given by
Leeves (1994). These systems include those that originate in one of the European countries and
are available in others (for example, BIBDIA
(Germany), LIBER (France), Pica (Netherlands),
SuperMax (Denmark) and VUBIS (Belgium)), as
well as those that are non-European in origin, mainly coming from North America (for example,
ADVANCE from Canada and Dynix, Unicorn and
VTLS from the United States). An overview of some
twenty-seven companies involved in library housekeeping systems for North America is provided by
Barry et al. (1996), who report that minicomputerbased systems were sold by nineteen vendors, and
sales in 1995 totalled 1,605 (as compared to 1,364 in
1994); the corresponding figures for microcomputerbased systems were ten vendors with sales in 1995
of 25,364 compared to 24,064 in 1994. The vendors
selling most systems to academic libraries were
Innovative Interfaces (INNOPAC), IME (TINLIB),
Ameritech (Dynix and Horizon) and Data Research
Associates (DRA).
Great political changes have taken place in
Eastern Europe during the 1990s and this has,
amongst other things, opened the market for library
systems. Borgman (1996) reports on developments
related to library automation in Croatia, the Czech
Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.
The Regional Library Programme of the Open
Society Institute in Budapest, Hungary, was established in 1994 to support, promote and advance the
information sciences in Central and Eastern Europe
and the Commonwealth of Independent States, and
has recommended long-term goals for automated
access to library information. In order to support
these goals a series of library automation workshops
has been held in various countries of the region.
Some of the library housekeeping systems hold
records in the Machine-Readable Records (MARC)
format whilst others allow for the import and export
of MARC-based records. There are a variety of
MARC formats available and Campos et al. (1995)
provide an overview of some of the national MARC
formats (for example, CATMARC (Catalonia, Spain)
and IndoMARC (Indonesia)) as well as the increasing use of the UNIMARC format. Countries that
have adopted UNIMARC as a national standard
include Croatia, Greece, India, Italy, Portugal and
Slovenia.
The OPACs of many libraries worldwide can
now be searched using the Internet. Some of these
OPACs have been designed to be searched over the
Web whereas others can be accessed using a Telnet
connection. A special facility known as Hytelnet
(http://www.light.com/hytelnet/) was developed in
Saskatoon, Canada, and is designed to help users in
searching OPACs at all Internet-accessible libraries
via Telnet. Facilities are available to search by country and by system type, and to look at help files for
searching the different OPAC types. Recent additions to the list of OPACs looked at during the writing of this chapter included those of: the National
Library of Turkey (ALEPH), Shanghai (China) Jiao
Tong University (in-house system), Universitat de
Girona (Spain) (VTLS) and Universidad de Mexico
(TINLIB).
The concept of an integrated library housekeeping package with the various modules accessing
the same bibliographic record is beginning to be
replaced by the concept of de-integration, with
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libraries buying different packages from different
suppliers, and mixing and matching to best suit their
particular needs. This has become possible because
of various recent developments:
•
The move away from the proprietary operating
systems used by the integrated systems of the
1980s to open systems based on UNIX; examples include Geac’s ADVANCE, Innovative
Interfaces’ INNOPAC, Fretwell Downing’s
OLIB, Sirsi’s UNICORN and IME’s TINLIB.
•
The move away from the proprietary database
management systems to industry-standard relational database management systems. Examples
include Geac PLUS’s use of Informix, Dynix
HORIZON’s use of Sybase and OLIB’s use of
ORACLE.
•
The use of client-server architecture in the
design of systems. In the client-server model of
computing a division is made between the
applications software (which runs on a computer known as the client) and the database
software (which runs on a computer known
as the server). The two communicate with
each other over a network using a communications protocol. Processing which involves data
manipulation or screen display can be carried
out on the client computer (thus reducing
traffic on the network) and only database
queries from the client and responses from the
server need be communicated across the network.
•
The use of Z39.50. As defined by Dempsey et
al. (1996), Z39.50 is a ‘retrieval protocol which
allows client programs to query databases on
remote servers, to retrieve results and to carry
out some other retrieval-related functions’. Its
main impact on libraries is to enable users to
search, say, the OPAC of a neighbouring
library using the same OPAC interface as in
their local library. For this to happen the local
system must have a Z39.50 client and the remote
system must have a Z39.50 server. Dempsey et
al. list some of the library systems which incorporate Z39.50 client-servers; these include Geac
ADVANCE, Dynix, INNOPAC, LIBERTAS,
OLIB, Talis and UNICORN. Some of these
clients are integrated with the standard OPAC
(for example, LIBERTAS) while others are
available as stand-alone products (for example,
Dynix’s WinPAC).
•
Networking developments. Library housekeeping systems no longer operate in a standalone fashion. Libraries which use a system to
manage local processing of stock also need to
provide their users with access to a range of
information services as part of the electronic
library; this could include access to networked
CD-ROMs, locally loaded databases, the
Internet and so on. Several suppliers now make
information about their products and their
company available on the World Wide Web (for
example, http://www.vtls.com).
Pachent (1996) describes the process of choosing an
automated information system for libraries, museums and archives in the county of Suffolk in the
United Kingdom. The chosen system provides traditional library management functions as well as access
to networked CD-ROMs, local databases, the
Internet and (for a trial period) access to OCLC
FirstSearch databases. Chisenga (1996) reports on
the factors influencing the choice of library software
in sub-Saharan Africa. There, as in many other
regions, good vendor support is an important factor
as there is a marked absence of staff in libraries with
relevant computer skills. Some software producers
organize for local agents to supply the necessary
training and maintenance functions of support. If
local support for Western software is poor and/or
very expensive there is an argument for the development of local software; examples include the
SISPUKOM library management software developed within Malaysia and the INGRID system,
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based on Informix, developed at Tartu University
Library in Estonia.
Library systems of the future will be very
dependent on adhering to international standards.
Work on standards forms part of the Open Interchange Initiative being carried out for the European
Commission, and current information on a wide
range of relevant standards for library and information work can be found on the Commission’s web
server (http://www2.echo.lu/impact/).
Developments in information retrieval
systems
A general overview of the developments in both
local and remotely accessible information retrieval
systems is provided by Tedd (1993). Particular developments will be highlighted in this section.
Te x t r e t r i e v a l s o f t w a r e
For many years a range of software has been available specifically aimed at information storage and
retrieval of text-based information. Examples of
such software include BRS/Search, CAIRS, CDS/
ISIS, Cardbox Plus, HeadFast, IdeaList and InMagic.
CDS/ISIS is very widely used all over the world as it
is available free of charge to non-profit organizations
in UNESCO Member States and exists in a number
of language versions. A regular feature on CDS/ISIS
is included in Information Development. One recent
example given of the use of CDS/ISIS is the DRAiN
(Drainage Information System) project which aims
to co-ordinate information from various relevant
research organizations in Egypt, France, India,
Mexico, Pakistan and Uzbekistan involved in irrigation and drainage research.
For many years text-retrieval software was
used to process bibliographic data, but recent developments in storage technologies have meant that this
software can now be used also for full-text retrieval
purposes. The producers of this software have continued to develop their products and many now run
under Windows, can deal with graphical data as well
as text data and can be used when creating local CDROMs. The directory by Wood and Moore (1993)
provides details of about 100 such packages. A special category of text-retrieval software is personal
bibliographic software (such as Pro-Cite, Reference
Manager and EndNote Plus) which may be used by
academic researchers and which offers pre-defined
data structures and pre-defined output structures (to
comply with bibliographic styles adopted by organizations such as the American National Standards
Institute (ANSI)) as well as standard facilities such as
Boolean searching and batch importing of records.
An introductory essay by David Bearman
(1994) in a directory of about eighty software packages for use in archives and museums notes that the
‘problem with archives software has historically
been that the market is too small and diffuse to support a range of products’. However, he points out
that the Internet provides an exciting domain for
archivists with the possibility of setting up World
Wide Web servers of archives holdings which might
include images and sound information as well as
document delivery services (for example, British
Columbia Archives and Record service (http:
//www.bcars.gs.gov.bcca). This is also discussed in
Chapter 24.
Geographic information systems (GIS)
GIS software comprises tools for the collection,
analysis, retrieval and display of spatial information.
Technologies that integrate the management and
analysis of this type of data (from maps, weather
satellites and so on) are being used in a variety of
ways for environmental studies, global change
research, transportation planning, urban planning,
marine studies, and so on. As with bibliographic
data, there is a need to share resources worldwide
and the MARC format is being investigated as one
possible solution. One of the projects – Project
Alexandria (not to be confused with the plan for
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the new library of the same name at Alexandria in
Egypt) – being funded in the United States as part of
the National Science Foundation (NSF) digital
libraries programme, is developing a system to access
spatial data in distributed databases. A number of
papers on GIS is included in Information Technology
and Libraries, June 1995 (Volume 14, Number 2).
Range of publicly accessible databases
Traditionally the information that can be stored and
retrieved in computer systems used for library and
information work has been structured into databases. The growth of databases has been rapid (from
300 in 1975 to 8,261 in 1994). Dalrymple and
Roderer (1994) define a database as ‘a collection of
data or a body of information that is organized for
retrieval via a computer in any storage medium’, and
they cover databases that may be online directly
from the producer, through a third-party online
service or in CD-ROM format. The types of information covered in these databases include:
•
Bibliographic data relating to articles published
in the primary journals: MEDLINE (medical),
Compendex (engineering), LISA (librarianship), Inspec (electrical engineering and computer science).
•
Details from the book trade (BookBank, BNB,
BookFind, Books in Print).
•
Full-text information such as newspapers (The
Times, the Guardian, the Independent), articles
from specialist journals (ADONIS – Biomedical, BPO (Business Periodicals Online), New
Scientist), literature (English Poetry) and patents
(US Patents FullText).
•
Company information (Dun & Bradstreet,
Jordans).
•
Multimedia products (McGraw Hill’s Encyclopaedia of Mammalian Biology, Hulton
Deutsch CD Collection, Encarta, Cinemania).
There is a wide range of organizations involved in
publishing databases; these include traditional acade-
mic publishers (Oxford University Press, Elsevier),
learned societies (Institute of Physics, Institute of
Electrical Engineers), commercial companies
(Institute for Scientific Information, Derwent), the
computer industry (Microsoft) and the entertainment industry (Sega, Disney, Nintendo).
Work on quality issues of publicly available
databases has been undertaken by various online
user groups, and Armstrong (1995) describes the
concept of ‘database labelling’, which would provide
the potential user with basic information about the
database and the extent to which the information
contained could be trusted.
Access to publicly available databases
As well as the traditional online search services (such
as Dialog, DataStar, STN and ESA-IRS) there are
now many others ways in which libraries and information centres provide access to publicly available
databases for their users. Examples include standalone and networked CD-ROMs, locally mounted
databases and Internet access.
The online search services provide access to a
range of databases. Many of the early databases were
bibliographic and dealt with scientific and technical
information. During the 1980s more specialist services appeared and the existing services broadened
their scope. FT Profile, for instance, specializes in
the provision of full-text online information tailored
for the business community. OCLC entered the
online search service field in late 1991 with
FirstSearch, a service designed particularly for endusers. In the United Kingdom the Joint Information
Systems Committee (JISC) of the funding bodies for
higher education has organized the establishment of
centralized databases for the academic community.
By charging a university a fixed annual fee, searching
becomes ‘free at point of use’ for researchers, teaching staff and students.
The rise in the use of the Internet has been
accompanied by the development of commercial,
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consumer-oriented online services. Examples include
America Online, Prodigy, Compuserve, Genie and
Delphi which are popular with end-users as they
cover a range of information such as news, general
health matters, encyclopedias, business information
and magazines.
Growth of Current Alerting Services
Instant Article Supply (CAS-IAS)
CAS-IAS provide access to the table of contents of
several thousand current journals and also provide
means of transmitting requested articles. By making
use of CAS-IAS services some libraries are moving
from a just-in-case mode of operation with respect
to serials holdings to a just-in-time mode. Examples
of CAS-IAS include OCLC FirstSearch (with the
Article 1st and Contents 1st databases), UnCover
(now owned by Knight-Ridder, which also owns
Dialog and DataStar) and Inside Information (from
the British Library).
Interface developments
The early online search systems such as Dialog,
DataStar and ESA-IRS relied heavily on command
languages for carrying out online searches, and this
helps to explain why these systems were mainly
searched by specially trained intermediaries.
With the developments of OPACs and CDROMs in the 1980s, an interface was needed which
could be fairly intuitive with searchers and needed
no special training. The technique adopted was to
provide the searcher with a menu of options on the
screen so that an appropriate option could be selected which would then lead to another set of options
or to the data. On the positive side, menus can be
self-explanatory, easy for the novice searcher and
give a structure to the search. However, they may be
slow to work through and irritating for frequent
searchers.
With the major move to a Windows environment, many producers of search systems are devel-
oping their software to work in Graphical User
Interface (GUI) mode. When a screen of potentially
clickable items is presented it is not always obvious
to the novice searcher where to go next in this twodimensional environment and so there are many
aspects of screen design that need to be borne in
mind by the interface developer. Schneiderman
(1992) outlines eight golden rules for any designer of
a search interface. Paraphrased these are: strive for
consistency, enable frequent users to take shortcuts,
offer informative feedback, give action sequences a
logical structure, offer simple error handling, permit
easy reversal of actions taken, make the user feel in
control and reduce short-term memory load.
Retrieval techniques
Most retrieval software is based on the user combining chosen terms or phrases using the standard
Boolean operators AND, OR, NOT in the search
statement. Over the years various alternative techniques have been developed by researchers; these are
referred to in the literature as best match, nearest
neighbour, probabilistic retrieval, fuzzy sets, relevance ranking or ranked output. Some of these ideas
are now appearing in commercial services such as
Personal Library Software’s Personal Librarian,
Dialog’s TARGET, and FREESTYLE developed for
the LEXIS legal service and the NEXIS news service.
Evaluating the performance of various information retrieval systems has been a topic of interest
for many researchers over the years. A major initiative, known as the Text Retrieval Conference
(TREC), involves a number of research groups from
around the world testing their information retrieval
techniques on the same databases of full-text items
(Harman, 1995).
Human aspects of automation
There are many potential problems related to the use
of information technology in archive, library and
information work, and these can result in useless,
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expensive and inappropriate systems. There have
been examples of libraries where much time, effort
and money is spent on the latest software and
hardware but little time has been spent on revising
work practices or ensuring that workstations are
ergonomically designed for the people who use
them. Only about 10% of the literature on library
automation covers human aspects, whereas about
80% of the problems that arise in automation projects are thought to be caused by human or organizational matters. It is most important to consider people at all levels when setting up any form of computer system in a library. The real needs of the users
must be taken into account in the design; library staff
and computer staff need to know enough about each
others’ areas of expertise so that they can communicate properly; systems librarians and network managers need to have suitable job descriptions so that
they do not become too ‘techno-stressed’; workstations need to be suitably designed for their likely
users; users need to have realistic expectations of
the new system; and library staff need to be kept
informed in an appropriate way. Traditional organization structures may need to be adapted with the
introduction of new systems. In many countries
where legislation is in place to cover the health and
safety aspects of, say, working with VDU (Visual
Display Unit) screens, managers are being forced to
think about the human aspects of automation. There
is much to be done in making sure that human factors are considered at all stages in the design of a
computer system for use in libraries or information
units. The impact on people of electronic libraries
(IMPEL) is one of the supporting studies to the
e-Lib project. Day (1995) reports on this work and
notes that all librarians and information workers
must be able to cope with the vast quantity of electronic information now available as well as to advise
their users how to cope with it. Del Castillo (1995)
reports on the use of information technology in
libraries in the Philippines, and notes that problems
are due to lack of know-how, lack of direction, lack
of funds and a weak telecommunication infrastructure. The first three reasons could be applied to
many libraries all over the world.
Some manufacturers make their products available on the world market and have invested efforts in
translating the interface dialogue of their systems
into various languages. TINLIB, for instance, is
available in about twenty-five different languages
and is used in libraries on five continents. ALEPH,
from Israel, can handle several different scripts
(including Arabic and Hebrew) within a single
record and has been used in many East European
countries, including the Czech Republic, Hungary,
Slovakia and Romania. There are, though, few examples of truly multilingual systems for information
retrieval; the Institut Textile de France developed a
system (TITUS) which enabled searchers to search,
in say German, for a document which might have
been input in Spanish; the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology in Zurich has developed ETHICS; and
in Malaysia, SISDOM is a retrieval system which
deals with documents in Malay and English.
Crawford and Gorman (1995) in a brilliant collection of essays warn against the madness of technolust and describe how ‘effective users of electronic
resources must learn to surf the networks, and on
occasion, to swim in information without drowning
in data’. ■■
References
ARMSTRONG, C. J. 1995. Do We Really Care About
Quality? In: D. I. Raitt and B. Jeapes (eds.), Online
Information 95. 19th International Online Information Meeting Proceedings, London, 5–7 December
1995, pp. 49–59. Oxford, Learned Information.
612 pp.
BARRY, J.; GRIFFITHS, J.-M.; WANG, P. 1996. Automated
System Marketplace 96: Jockeying for Supremacy in
a Networked World. Library Journal, Vol. 121, No.
6, pp. 40–51.
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BEARMAN, D. 1994. Trends in Software for Archives and
Museums, 1994–5. In: Brenda Wright (comp.),
1994–1995 Directory of Software for Archives and
Museums, pp. ii–iii. Pittsburgh, Archives and
Museums Informatics.
BERRY, J. W. 1996. Digital Libraries: New Initiatives with
Worldwide Implications. IFLA Journal, Vol. 22, No.
1, pp. 9–17.
BORGMAN, C. L. 1996. Automation is the Answer, but
What is the Question? Progress and Prospects for
Central and Eastern European Libraries. Journal of
Documentation, Vol. 52, No. 3, pp. 252–95.
CAMPOS, F. M.; LOPES, M. I.; GALVAO, R. M. 1995. MARC
Formats and Their Use: An Overview. Program, Vol.
29, No. 4, pp. 445–95.
CHISENGA, J. 1996. Factors Influencing the Choice of
Library Software in the SADC-PTA Region. African
Journal of Librarianship, Archives and Information
Science, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 52–6.
CIURLIZZA, A. 1996. A Network of Networks in Latin
America. Information Development, Vol. 12, No. 1,
pp. 21–5.
COLLIER M.; ARNOLD, K. 1995. Electronic Library and
Visual Information Research: ELVIRA 1. London,
Aslib. 173 pp.
CRAWFORD W.; GORMAN, M. 1995. Future Libraries:
Dreams, Myth and Reality. Chicago, American
Library Association. 200 pp.
DALRYMPLE, P. W.; RODERER, N. K. 1994. Database Access
Systems. In: M. Williams (ed.), Annual Review of
Information Science and Technology. Vol. 29, pp.
137–63. Medford, N. J., Learned Information.
DAY, J. 1995. Towards the Electronic Library: Impact on
Librarians. In: L. Dempsey et al., Networking and
the Future of Libraries 2. Managing the Intellectual
Record, pp. 23–36. London, Library Association
Publishing. 212 pp.
DEL CASTILLO, V. 1995. IT in the Philippines – Current
State and Prospects for the Future. Asian Libraries,
Vol. 4, No. 4, pp. 72–88.
DEMPSEY, L.; RUSSELL, R.; KIRRIEMUIR, J. 1996. Towards
Distributed Library Systems: Z39.50 in a European
Context. Program, Vol. 30, No. 1, pp. 1–22.
HARMAN, D. (ed.). 1995. The Second Text Retrieval
Conference (TREC-2). Information Processing and
Management, Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 345–60.
LEEVES, J. (ed.). 1994. Library Systems in Europe: A
Directory and Guide. London, TFPL. 400 pp.
PACHENT, G. 1996. Network ’95: Choosing a Third
Generation Automated Information System for
Suffolk Libraries and Heritage. Program, Vol. 30,
No. 3, pp. 213–28.
SHNEIDERMAN, B. 1992. Designing the User Interface:
Strategies for Effective Human–Computer Interaction. 2nd. ed. Reading, Mass., Addison-Wesley.
573 pp.
SIDDIQUI, M. A. 1995. Compact Disc Indexes Effect on
Interlibrary Loan at a University Library. Libri, Vol.
45, Nos. 3/4, pp. 178–95.
SIMONSON, R. D. 1995. Surrey Record Office Information
Technology Developments: The Use of Industry
Standard Software. Program, Vol. 29, No. 5, pp.
135–46.
TEDD, L. A. 1993. An Introduction to Computer-based
Library Systems. Chichester, Wiley. 316 pp.
WOOD, J.; MOORE, C. (eds.). 1993. European Directory of
Text Retrieval Software. London, Gower. 380 pp.
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Lucy Tedd, who has a B.Sc. in
Computer Science from Manchester
University, is currently a lecturer at the
Department of Information and
Library Studies (DILS), University of
Wales, Aberystwyth. She is also Director of the
International Graduate Summer School held annually
in DILS and run in conjunction with the University of
Pittsburgh. She is editor of the quarterly journal,
Program, and a member of the Editorial Board of the
Journal of Documentation. Ms Tedd has published a
large number of papers, and has spoken at conferences
or delivered courses in many countries. Recently she
has been involved in running library automation
workshops for the Regional Library Programme of the
Open Society Institute. Her main publication, An
Introduction to Computer-based Library Systems, was
first published in 1977, and the third (completely
revised) edition was published in 1993. She is also a
co-author of Online Searching: An Introduction,
published in 1980, and its successor, Online Searching:
Principles and Practice, published in 1990.
Lucy Tedd
Department of Information and Library Studies
University of Wales
Aberystwyth
Dyfed SY23 3AS
United Kingdom
Tel: (1970) 622188
Fax: (1970) 622190
E-mail: [email protected]
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Chapter 16
Multimedia
technologies
Ching-Chih Chen
Simmons College,
United States
D
uring the last decade, there have been endless
and dramatic technological changes in all
three major areas of information technology
– computing, communications and content. We have
witnessed the advent of personal computers, worldwide packet networks, optical disk and other mass
storage media, interactive video technology, image
technology, digitizing and scanning technology,
computer graphic technology, and the growth in
both size and number of massive public and private
databases – bibliographic first, then numeric, and
now multimedia. These three major areas were rather
disparate in earlier years. Now, they are becoming
integrated and quite international in scope and
impact. There is every reason to believe that this
situation will continue at an even faster pace. Now,
the world is going digital, and there is no turning
back.
Background and history
The concept of mixed media or multimedia has been
around for some time, the form and its impact having been registered well before the advent of the
computer, personal or otherwise. Though many people even today think of the computer mainly as a
number-cruncher, early visionaries like Vannevar
Bush already saw its future role as an information
and media processing powerhouse in the 1940s. In
his famous ‘As We May Think’, published in the July
1945 issue of Atlantic Monthly, Bush (1945) advocated mechanizing scientific literature by association
with a device called ‘memex’.
Bush’s idea endured and inspired two people
about twenty years later – Douglas C. Englebart of
the Stanford Research Institute and Ted Nelson of
Xanadu. Englebart, influenced by Bush’s vision,
developed a system for knowledge workers, called
NLS (oNLine System) in 1963, which embodied
many original ideas and concepts of hypertext,
including windows, the mouse, electronic mail, and a
hypertext-like ability to link and annotate documents. Nelson coined the word ‘hypertext’ in the
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1960s, which he described as non-sequential reading
and writing that links different nodes of the text.
Hypertext and hypermedia/multimedia
Hypertext mimics the brain’s ability to access information quickly and intuitively by reference. At the
basic level, a hypertext system is a database management system which permits one to connect screens
of information using associative links, and by allowing users to link information together, thereby creating trails through associated materials.
At the more sophisticated level, a hypertext
system has a software environment which supports
collaborative work, communication and knowledge
acquisition. When the system’s database structure is
complex, it is common to supply a special node
called a graphical browser which displays the structure of the database and serves to re-orient users
who are dislocated.
Hypertext is the forerunner of multimedia/
hypermedia. Although the concept of hypertext has
been with us since the 1940s, it was brought down to
the ‘household’ level only after the introduction of
Apple’s HyperCard in late 1987. Using HyperCard,
one can create links in a given work – an electronic
book, multimedia presentation or anything that
might best be explored in a non-linear way. Then,
when users are reading or exploring, they can click
on icons to zoom to related topics which may be in
the same file or in another one.
Hypermedia extend the hypertext concept to
link textual material to all forms of material – graphics, image, video, animation and sound – that may be
digitally encoded for storage and retrieval through
computer-based systems. As early as 1988, CasaBianca (1988), in his attempt to publish a hypertextlike journal, Hyper-Media, graphically presents a
typological framework of hypermedia in what he
calls HyperMedia Map. He uses graphic icons, as
shown in Figure 1, to illustrate how the world’s
communications media – audio, audiovisual, film,
music, video – have been incorporated with comput-
ers, communication networks, publishing and information resources, 3-D graphics, design and system
management to enable us to provide multimedia/
hypermedia information in a new, global, ‘wired
society’.
Clearly, multimedia technologies are not one
single technology, and there is no single product, or
definable market. The term ‘multimedia technologies’ epitomizes technology integration through the
use of multimedia tools.
In order to summarize the above and facilitate
our discussion on multimedia, a simple working
definition of multimedia is proposed as follows.
Multimedia extends the hypertext concept of
non-linear and non-sequential links of textual material to all forms of material that may be digitally
encoded for storage and retrieval through computerbased systems, including images, sound, graphics
and animation . . . Thus, multimedia refers to a
synthesis of text, data, graphics, animation, optical
storage, image processing and sound. Clearly, multimedia technology is not a single technology, and
Fig. 1. HyperMedia Map.
Computers
Publishing
Audio
Music
Audiovisual
Film
Video
3-D Graphics
Interactivity Communications Management
AEC
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there is no single product, or definable market. It
epitomizes technology integration.
Multimedia tools and technology
Input and output technologies: hardware
and software for digital data, sound,
i m a g e , v i d e o a n d fi l m s
As librarians and libraries everywhere are still handling largely printed materials, it is important to
understand that the information seekers are no
longer satisfied with only printed materials. They will
want to supplement the printed information with
more dynamic sound, music, graphics, animation,
photography and video, all of which can now be fed
into an ordinary computer where they can be cut,
changed, shaped, combined, manipulated, enhanced
and reconstructed into all kinds of exciting information products. In order to benefit from the current
multimedia environment, one needs to know the
multimedia tools available in the market-place so that
they can be used to bring multimedia to the desktop.
Hardware and software for users of
multimedia
Currently the market-place is full of multimedia
products, as shown by the thousands of titles included in any directory of multimedia titles, many of
which are multimedia CD-ROM titles. For libraries’
interest, multimedia products of every reference
type, as well as subject topics, are available. Because
more and more products have incorporated rather
large numbers of images, sound and digital videos,
much more powerful hardware than the bare minimum requirement for a PC system will be required:
•
80386 CPU.
•
EGA/VGA or VGA A Plus Graphics.
•
2 MB RAM.
•
Double-speed CD-ROM Drive.
•
Microsoft Windows 3.1.
The general rule is that whenever possible, try to
acquire a system with as much speed, hard disk space
and RAM as possible. For example, some products
will run properly only with a 486 or Pentium
processor with at least 16 MB of RAM and a fourspeed CD-ROM drive. The unfortunate fact is that
most multimedia application products are developed
for users with the higher-end systems, and few have
kept the low-end systems users in mind.
Multimedia production tools
Only a couple of years ago, producing multimedia
applications was generally difficult, since most multimedia production tools were either not readily available or simply too expensive for general use. But fast
technological development has made it possible for
many to consider producing their own multimedia
applications now. To facilitate librarians’ use of these
tools for production purposes, those for both
Macintosh and PC systems are included below.
Although Macintosh tools are often preferred for the
development of multimedia applications, they might
not be readily available to libraries in developing and
less developed countries.
There are simply too many multimedia production tools to cover all adequately. For example, for
the Macintosh platform alone, the Macintosh
Multimedia & Product Registry (1995) lists on fortyfive pages over 700 tools in every possible category
of production work. A similar publication including
tools for the PC platform is IBM’s yearly issue,
Multimedia Today: The Sourcebook for Multimedia.
The issue for 1995 lists over 600 production tools.
For illustrative purposes, the following discussion
covers only a very small number of selective tools in
some distinctive categories.1
1.
Price information will be indicated by ranges of list
prices for 1996. Although products can generally be
obtained at lower cost from computer warehouses, list
prices represent better the prices for countries outside the
United States. The ranges are: L for up to US$299, M
between US$300 and US$699, and H for more than
US$700.
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Animation
Fig. 2. Macromedia’s Director 3.1.
The best known animation tool is Macromedia’s
Director 4.0 (H) which is available for both Mac and
Windows (Fig. 2 shows a screen from version 3.1).
Macromedia’s Director is a powerful animation and
authoring tool. Users can create, combine and synchronize graphics, text and animation with audio
and video; add full interactivity with buttons and
scripts; export and import QuickTime movies, etc.
Conversion software is also available to convert Mac
Director applications to PC and vice versa. Other
notable software includes Adobe’s Premier 4.1 (H),
Avid’s VideoShop 3.0 (M) for Mac, and Gold Disk’s
Animation Works Interactive 2.0 (L) for PC.
Clip art and photography
In this category, Photo-CD technology has been utilized fully by most producers to store about 100
images of clip art and photographs on almost every
subject for both Mac and PC platforms (some store
600 when the top two levels of higher-resolution
images are sacrificed). Of international interest,
Educorp’s International Graphics Library is a CD
with 32-bit QuickDraw images (L). These clip art
images can be copied and pasted on multimedia
applications. More clip art CDs can be found in various software catalogues from Image Club in
Milwaukee (United States).
Development tools
The market-place has over fifty development tools
for multimedia authoring and digital publishing. For
Macintosh, the most noteworthy is HyperCard (L)
(current version is 2.3). It features an intuitive interface designed to guide users through the construction of hypermedia programs and presentations of
various media elements such as pictures, paint graphics, QuickTime movies, audio, videodisk sequences
and text, where users want them simply and quickly.
Other popular ones include Macromedia’s Authorware 3.0 (H) (Fig. 3) for both Mac and Windows, the
Voyager Co.’s Expanded Book Toolkit (L) and
SuperCard 3.0 (M). Other PC systems include Aim
Tech’s IconAuthor (H) and Motion Works’ MediaShop (M) and ToolBook (M).
Drawing and painting
Most noteworthy in the drawing and painting category are Adobe Illustrator 5.5 (M) (Fig. 4), Canvas
3.5 (M), Macromedia’s Freehand 5.0 (M), Claris’
MacPaint 2.0 (M), and Adobe’s SuperPaint 3.5 (M).
All are powerful illustration and design tools that
simplify the creation, manipulation and refinement
of artwork with advanced features for editing, text
handling, colour support and more.
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Fig. 3. Macromedia’s Authorware Professional.
Fig. 4. Adobe Illustrator.
Fig. 5. Adobe’s Photoshop 2.5.1.
Image processing
Adobe’s Photoshop (M) for both platforms
(Photoshop 3.0.3 for Mac) (Fig. 5) is the most recognized and most powerful image processing tool. It
lets users design artwork with a wealth of powerful
painting and selection tools, or retouch and correct
true colour or black and white scanned images with
image editing tools and filters. It also has a wide
range of third-party plug-ins for enhanced image
manipulation, most notably Kai’s Power Tools 2.1
(L), which provides a set of three dozen powerful
extension and filter plug-ins that expand the ability
to create computer-generated artwork and manipulate scanned images. Aldus PhotoStyler 2.0 (M) for
Windows is also a popular tool for PCs.
Media catalogues
A number of tools are available for organizing and
quickly retrieving digital photos in categories.
Adobe’s Fetch 1.2 (L), Inspace System’s Kudo Image
Browser (L) and Kodak’s Showbox (L) fall into this
category for Mac, while Electronic Imagery’s Image-
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Fig. 6. Macromedia’s Swivel 3D Professional 2.0.4.
multitrack recording, precise editing of all musical
events, etc. These include Unicorn’s Performer 5.02
(M) and Opcode Systems’ Vision 2.0 (M) for Mac,
Midisoft’s Studio (M) for Windows and Turtle Beach
System’s Wave for Windows (M) for PCs. DigiDesign’s SoundTool (M) consists of a sound accelerator card and Sound Designer II (software) which
allow hours of CD-quality sound to be recorded on
to a hard drive and edited with unparalleled precision.
Optical character recognition
Manager (L) and Lenel Systems’ Media Organizer
(L) are for PC users.
Modelling and rendering
Numerous powerful tools are available in the
market-place for creating photo-realistic computer
images and animation at an affordable price (under
US$1,000) for the type of sophisticated work that
was possible only with mainframe and minicomputers a few years ago. Some powerful tools are
Specular International’s Infini-D 3.0 (M), Strata Inc’s
Strata Virtual (L) for real-time renderer, Macromedia’s Swivel 3D Professional 2.0.4 (M) (Fig. 6) and
Virtus Corp.’s Virtus VR (L). Tools from Strata and
Virtus are for both Mac and PC systems.
Music software
Music is an important element of a multimedia production. Various tools are available as a MIDI
(Musical Interface for Digital Instruments) sequencer, editor and performance tool that provides
For multimedia applications, there is a great need for
text materials as well. Thus, it is important to have
effective tools to be able to turn hard-copy printed
texts into digital word-processing files. Optical character recognition (OCR) software is very useful for
this process. An outstanding example is Caere’s
OmniPage Professional (M) (Fig. 7), which is an
advanced OCR solution to turn printed texts into
word processing files. It is available for both Mac
and PC. Another competitive OCR software for
Windows is Xerox’s TextBridge Pro 96 (M).
Presentation and video-editing software
Many high-powered software tools are available for
on-screen animation presentations with motion,
sound and QuickTime, and flexible non-linear editing systems for Mac. For presentation purposes,
Gold Disk’s Astound and Adobe’s Persuasion 3.0
(M) are powerful graphic and digital video software
that will produce or deliver data-intensive multimedia presentations. Macromedia’s Director 4.0 (H),
Adobe’s Premier 4.1 (H), and Avid’s VideoShop 3.0
(M) are powerful tools providing an economic
means of professional video editing. Director and
Premier are available for both Mac and PC systems.
Other PC desktop presentations include Motion
Works CameraMan (L), Eduquest’s Linkway 2.01 (L)
and Linkway Live! (L), Lenel Systems’ MultiMedia
Works (L), and IBM’s Storyboard Live! 2.0 (L).
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Fig. 7. Caere’s OmniPage
Professional.
Special effects
Like clip art and photographs for fast and easy use of
still images, there are many clip media products
available for immediate use of ready digital videos,
such as Macromedia’s ClipMedia (M) with professional animation, sounds and videos arranged
on CD-ROMs in various subject categories (education, business, medicine, etc.). Many products, like
Olduvai Corp’s Sound Clips 1.0 (L), feature an average of 100 sounds per volume.
In addition, software tools are available for
producing special effects for multimedia production.
One of the most used is Gryphon’s Morph 2.5 (L)
for Mac, which smoothly transforms one image into
another with dynamic morphing. Gallery Effect 1.51
(M) is another tool that transforms scanned photographs and other bit-mapped images into works of
art. The counterpart of Griffin’s Morph (L) for PC is
North Coast Software’s PhotoMorph 2 (L), which
allows users to combine and apply sophisticated special effects to bit-map images and AVI video clips,
with features for desktop video, including motion
morphing.
Multimedia peripherals
Multimedia requires hardware and software power
and speed as well as special capabilities to capture
sound, image and video. Thus, peripheral devices
which can accelerate any process as well as performing any of the capturing functions are essential. In
addition, because all multimedia elements will consume a large quantity of memory and storage space,
there will be a need to look into those peripherals
that can double memory as well as compress and
decompress multimedia files. The following are samples of peripherals which are worthy of serious consideration.
Accelerators
Many accelerators and chargers, such as DayStar
Digital’s Image 040 (H), can accelerate imaging functions up to 600%. Unfortunately these boards are
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IBM’s M-Motion Video Adapter/A (H) for PS/2 can
receive and process analogue signals from multiple
external video and audio sources, and then send
them to a monitor and external speakers for immediate viewing/listening in multimedia application settings. In this way, a PC can be connected directly to
an analogue videodisk device and grab the analogue
videos directly to integrate into multimedia applications. The Creative Labs’ Sound Blaster 16 boards
for PCs provide rich CD-quality stereo sound for
multimedia, education, business, home and entertainment applications at affordable prices.
and video. For example, Macromedia’s MacRecorder
Sound System (previously marketed by Farallon)
includes both the digital sound recorder hardware
and SoundEdit software for users to record, edit
and play back live or pre-recorded sounds on a
Macintosh. Digital frame and video grabbers are
abundant in the market-place. For example, Radius’
SpigotPower AV (M) provides full-screen, fullmotion capture and playback of interlaced and noninterlaced JPEG video. It is able to capture and save
full 24-bit colour data. Creative Labs’ Video Blaster
boards of different models can bring full-motion
video sequences to a PC. Users can capture analogue
video sequences at up to thirty frames per second.
Generally one connects the television video recorder,
and/or video camera to these boards.
Digital cameras
Scanners
In the last two years, several reasonably priced highperformance digital cameras have been introduced.
Apple, Canon, Kodak and others have produced
such digital image capture devices at a cost ranging
from $350 to over $1,000. Users should acquire cameras only after studying carefully their need for digital images. These digital cameras can be connected to
hardware systems using any platform. Most digital
cameras function like regular cameras and therefore
are mainly for capturing individual images. Another
type of digital camera which can capture both colour
pictures and videos is becoming quite popular.
Examples include VideoLab’s FlexCam (L) and
Connectix’s QuickCam (L). These are compatible
with all leading video digitizing boards. Each is an
integrated colour camera and microphone and can
produce video output in both NTSC and PAL.
Scanners are essential for turning hard-copy texts,
pictures in both positive and negative forms and
films into digital files. Because of these different
original formats, there are also different types of
scanners. These include:
•
Flat-bed scanners, such as Microtek’s
ScanMaker II (M) and III (H) models, that convert printed and artwork to digital files. For
example, the ScanMaker III (H) is a 36-bit
colour high-resolution flat-bed scanner up to
1,200 dpi. Generally, a scanner with at least 300
dpi can be quite effective for multimedia application development. Although more expensive
and higher resolution drum scanners are also
available, they are generally too expensive (some
are over $35,000) for general-purpose use.
•
Slide scanners that will do the same with photographs, such as Microtek’s ScanMaker 1850S (M).
•
Film scanners, such as Microtek’s ScanMaker
35t (H), that can scan any 35 mm slide in 24-bit
colour mode in up to 16.7 million colours or in
8-bit grey-scale mode to capture up to 256
shades of grey.
generally quite expensive (over US$1,000) and are
intended for high-end operations.
Audio/video controllers
Digitizers and frame grabbers
In addition to software, built-in hardware capabilities or addition digitizers and frame grabbers (generally these are additional peripheral boards) are
required for real-time digitizing of sound, images
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•
Hand-held scanners (L) that generally provide
a low-cost alternative for producing digital
images for multimedia applications. However,
the resolution of these scanned images is low
and the images can easily be distorted.
Need for mass storage in information
work (archives, library and information
services)
Library, information and archival work generally
deals with very large quantities of information.
Regardless of whether information sources are in
printed or electronic formats, space is always a key
issue. Mass storage is required to meet:
•
The need for a large-volume digital storage system for archival management.
•
The need to provide users with immediate
access to the rapidly growing volume of data
and information that is stored in digital information systems and is likely to be distributed
on optical media in the future.
•
The need to provide users with access to multimedia information quickly and interactively
through the integration of technologies.
•
The need to transfer a large volume of data
and/or files from one system to another.
The following will discuss briefly the technologies
available for mass storage and the types of storage
media as well as the drives available for using these
media.
Va r i o u s t e c h n o l o g i e s a v a i l a b l e f o r m a s s
storage
Traditionally libraries have used conventional media
like film, microfilm and microfiche to store information materials, but they are bulky and rather expensive. With the advent of computer and optical technologies, mass storage has shifted mostly to electronic media. There are several different technologies
available for mass storage on magnetic tapes, highdensity floppy disks, portable hard disks with a
capacity of over 2 GB, and optical disks. But it is
optical media that are the primary ones for mass
storage. Because of this, the following section will
explore further the different types of optical media.
Storage media: optical disks, CD-ROM, etc.
The various types of optical media offer different
storage densities, media formats, transfer rates, capabilities and compatibility among commercial vendors’ products. In the last decade alone, a flood of
new media and applications – CD-ROM, laser
videodisks, write-once and read-many devices,
erasable disks, to name just a few – have been introduced, promoted and utilized. There is a wide range
of optical alternatives available to provide the highest application flexibility to end-users.
Figure 8, modified from a figure from Chen
(1989), shows that optical media can be grouped into
three major categories:
•
Read-only media.
•
Write-once and read-many.
•
Erasable.
Under each of these major categories, a multitude of
optical storage media can be found. For more
detailed information on each of these optical media,
see Chen (1989). All of them are essential for multimedia application developments.
Drive and interface
Each different kind of optical media requires an
appropriate drive to be connected to a microcomputer system.
Videodisk players
Multimedia CD-ROMs have become popular products in recent years. Earlier, interactive videodisks
were the popular means of presenting multimedia
applications. Even today, some applications still
choose videodisks as end products if quantities of
still and moving images are large. For example, one
side of a videodisk can store 58,000 still images and
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thirty minutes of video in dual sound tracks. These
are huge in comparison to what can be stored digitally on a multimedia CD-ROM even with high-ratio
compression. For the latter, we are talking about a
few hundred digital images and less than twenty
minutes of digital video in small windows. Thus,
videodisk disk applications are still substantial. The
major manufacturers of videodisk players are Philips,
Pioneer and Sony. Each has produced several different models – industrial or general models with different playing speeds, and some with the capability
of playing both NTSC (National Television System
Committee) and PAL (Phase Alternation Line) disks.
CD-ROM drives
The CD-ROM drive is currently the most popular
device; it can be used to play regular CD-ROMs
(mostly text-based) and Photo-CDs as well as multimedia CD-ROMs. Speed is one of the most
significant considerations when acquiring such a
drive. In order to run a multimedia CD-ROM, the
minimum requirement is a double-speed (2X) drive.
However, 4-speed and even 6-speed are available in
the market-place. The 4-speed drive is very affordable and can be purchased for less then US$200 per
unit in the United States.
CD recorders
WORM and erasable drives are essential for mass
storage, publishing and back-up of multimedia
development materials. Earlier WORM drives
played discs generally holding 100 MB to 200 MB of
data. The latest WORM CD medium is CD-R (CDRecordable) which can store 600 MB of data and
requires a CD recorder with appropriate software to
record information on the disc according to the
appropriate CD standard. For example, JVC’s
Personal RomMaker, Kodak’s PCD Writer and
Philips’ CDD 522 Compact Disc Recorder are only
a few samples of such CD recording devices with
hardware and software solutions that allow users to
premaster and master their own CD-ROMs inhouse on the desktop for both PC and Mac platforms. Optical Media’s TOPiX is a CD publishing
system used to record information on CD. Once the
information is recorded, the disc will be used in the
same manner as any other CD-ROM by using a regular CD-ROM drive. It goes without saying that for
multimedia application development, such CD
recording devices are most useful!
Erasable drives
For multimedia work, no matter how big the size of
the hard drive, one will quickly run out of storage
space. Thus every multimedia product developer has
some kind of device that can expand the hard drive’s
capacity substantially. Such devices are also used to
back up the materials on the hard drive. An erasable
medium is very attractive for this purpose as it can
be modified and/or re-used. However, erasable optical disk technology is still not very stable, and both
the medium and the drive are quite expensive. An
erasable drive can cost over US$2,000. Thus, one of
the more popular products has been the SyQuest
drive; each SyQuest cartridge can store from 44 MB
to about 200 MB of data/information.
Two of the hottest products in this line now are
Iomega’s Zip and Zap drives, which are both easy to
use and affordable. The Zip drive, which runs with
its Zip disk (100 MB per disk) costs only a meagre
$199 per drive and the disk is less than $20, depending on the quantity purchased (over ten will cost
only $14.99 per disk). The Zap drive, with a disk
capacity as big as 1 GB, costs only around $599.
Because of this incredible offer, many personal computer manufacturers have decided to include a Zip
drive as part of the regular system configuration.
M u l t i m e d i a o p e r a t i n g a n d fi l e s y s t e m
Multimedia hardware and peripherals
To enter the interactive multimedia world, a minimum equipment configuration should be more than
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the bare minimum described earlier. It should consist
of the following components:
•
A computer system with a minimum of 4 MB
of RAM.
•
A 350 MB hard disk drive.
•
A 14.4 kbps modem (fax modem would be
preferable).
•
A double-speed CD-ROM drive.
•
A portable videotape recorder.
•
A fixed videotape recorder capable of being
connected to a computer output either directly
or through an appropriate AV card inserted
into one of the bus slots in the computer.
•
A television monitor for use during taping and
playback.
•
A scanner.
Additional hardware in the form of an LCD display
panel or LCD projection system is highly recommended.
output to hard, floppy disk or to read/write
compact disc.
Costs and equipment/software
The equipment cost varies greatly from one model to
another, and from one configuration to another.
Thus it is best to check with the vendors for current
price information. However, it is safe to estimate that
a PC Pentium multimedia system can be acquired
from US$1,500 to $4,000, and a Macintosh Power
Mac from US$2,000 to $5,500, depending on the system model, RAM size, hard disk size, and connected
peripherals. Whenever possible, efforts should be
made to acquire a system with as large a RAM and
hard disk storage capacity as possible.
The cost of software also varies greatly, ranging
from less than $100 to over $1,000. However, powerful software like Adobe Photoshop costs about $600
and Macromedia’s Director about $900.
Multimedia software
Creating multimedia applications
The minimum software configuration for using
multimedia products is rather low, since most products have plug-and-play capabilities with very few
requirements other than the installation processes.
However, the following are varying levels of software requirements for producing simple multimedia
applications:
•
A basic editing software package, such as
those available from Adobe, Avid, Radius and
others.
•
An intermediate-level software system that
would include all of the above plus a freestanding audio editing software package, a twodimensional modelling or rendering software
package and a graphic/titling package such as
Adobe Photoshop.
•
An advanced-level software system that would
include all the above plus an advanced-level
three-dimensional modelling or rendering software package, and an authorware package for
The abundant multimedia tools are to be used for
creating multimedia applications. Yet how one goes
about developing multimedia depends on the nature
of the application and how it will be viewed and
used. Although there is no multimedia development
formula, the process does follow a series of basic
steps (Jerram and Gosney, 1993, p. 29). These steps
include:
•
Concept.
•
Content and interface.
•
Product.
It is impossible in a short paper like this to cover
every aspect of the process, but each major step, and
the subsets within each step, are clearly indicated in
Figure 9.
Planning and design (including data
preparation and processing)
Planning and design is always the most important
component of any development, regardless of whether
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Fig. 9. Basic steps in developing multimedia applications.
Concept
• Conceiving an idea
• Planning the development process
• Outlining and prototyping
Interface
Content
• Designing the architecture and
interface
• Creating interface elements
• Acquiring and producing
content
• Preparing content
Product
• Assembling the elements into
a cohesive production
• Testing and making adjustments
• Duplicating and distributing
the final product
it is technology-related or not. Usually at least
half to two-thirds of project effort is devoted to
this phase. In other words, the better a project is
planned and designed, the more likely it is that
it will be successful, effective, efficient and useful.
For a multimedia application, after the idea is
conceived and a conceptual framework developed,
the planning process will have to go into the more
minute details of plans and design, so that these will
lead to the successful implementation of the application development. Many questions will have to be
addressed:
•
What are the goals and objectives of the application?
•
Who is it intended for?
•
What is it going to deliver which is either not
available or not sufficiently available now?
•
What is the delivery platform?
•
What multimedia elements will the application
include?
•
What are the existing information sources and
which and how will these be used for the application?
•
Where can help and/or contributions be
found?
•
What is the budget for the application, and how
will it be budgeted?
•
What are the environmental limitations?
•
What existing multimedia tools – both hardware and software – are required?
•
Who is going to do what?
•
How will it be published?
•
What is the target completion date?
Once these questions have been addressed, the
multimedia developer can deal with all the problems
and issues surfacing during both the pre-production
and production periods. It is important to stress the
importance of project design. This includes both the
application design and interface design. Remember
that an application can deal with ‘gold-mine’ source
materials which are rich, relevant and essential, but if
the presentation is not well thought out and the
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interactive feature of multimedia technology is not
fully utilized, then the richness of the available
knowledge base will not be fully exploited. On the
other hand, even if the presentation of the multimedia application is well designed conceptually, it
can still fail if the interface design is either poor
or uninviting/confusing to the user. Few would be
willing or able to visit the ‘gold-mine’.
Design criteria for effective integration
of different media
In designing multimedia applications, it is essential
to realize that the process of linking multimedia
information in a hyperweb environment can be both
confusing and disorienting. Gaines and Vickers
(1988) list the following multimedia functionalities
under three categories – essential, expected and
desirable:
tion and licensing must be developed. Industry standards must emerge to facilitate diversity and universal connectivity.
Preparation of multimedia documents
After the planning, one has to determine what kind
of information is to be included and published, and
then prepare and process this information. Information sources can include all formats – textual, still
images and motion videos, sounds and animation.
This step involves information-gathering and preparation, and electronic management. The former
determines the format to be chosen for inclusion,
and the latter considers how to turn all the desired
information to electronic forms and also how to
manage them.
Data preparation and processing
Data conversion
Essential
Expected
Desirable
Integration
Diversity
Programmability
Freedom
Extensibility
Orientability
Flexibility
Sociality
Guidability
Usability
Spatiality
Recreatability
Attributability
Communicability
One needs to remember that beyond the many
demanding technical elements that allow multimedia
to come together, there is a sense of transcendentalness that occurs during the production process.
While combining massive amounts of information,
one commonly observes coincidences and encounters baffling developments. Great care must be taken
to separate the intelligent realities from the illusions.
Integrating the complex threads of interactive electronic communication requires an emphasis on the
relationship between the designer/producers and
their reader/listener/user/viewer. New access paths
to source material and new procedures for protec-
Text. The existing text information can be available
in both printed and electronic forms. For the
printed information, all three popular ways of
conversion to an electronic format – keyboarding, imaging (scanning), and optical character
recognition – will be used. For the electronic
files, once the delivery platform is decided,
electronic text files will have to be converted
for the chosen platform.
Images. Hard-copy images will have to be scanned
and stored in acceptable format for multimedia
applications. The most popular format is
JPEG ( Joint Photographic Experts Group), but
PICT (a Macintosh graphics file format, closely
related to PCT and commonly supported in
Macintosh format) and TIFF (Tag Image File
Formats) are also popular with multimedia
application software. When multimedia is moving closely with Internet and World Wide Web
applications, GIF and JPEG with a very high
rate of compression are preferred. Scanned
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images often need to be processed and enhanced
by the use of software like Adobe Photoshop.
Video. Using the video-capturing software via a
video-capturing board, one can convert video
sources from television, video recorder and
video camera to digital video and save them in
popular formats such as QuickTime movies (in
both platforms), or AVI (Audio-Video Interleaved) for PC applications. The standard for
digital video is MPEG (Moving Pictures Experts
Group). Again, liked the scanned images,
captured digital videos will have to be edited
by the use of software tools like Macromedia’s Director, Adobe’s Premier or Avid’s
VideoShop.
Sound. Through the use of sound recording software and a sound recorder, sound sources from
tapes, cassettes and video can be converted to
digital sound files, which can also be manipulated and enhanced by means of existing tools,
some of them described earlier in this paper.
Data compression for digitized data, sound and
fixed and moving images
Non-text files consume a large amount of storage
space (for example, one colour image at screen resolution can easily take up about 1 MB of disk space or
more); thus the issue of size becomes very significant, and hence compression and decompression.
Compression is a widely employed technique
to reduce the size of large files without appreciably
changing the way a viewer sees the images or digital
videos or hears the sounds. Once compressed, the
file must be decompressed before it can be used.
Compression and decompression can be accomplished by software alone or through the use of a
combination of software and hardware. Take image
as an example: compression software analyses an
image and finds ways to store the same amount of
information using less storage space. Compression
hardware usually consists of a ROM chip with built-
in compression routines for faster operation, or a coprocessor chip that shares the computing load with
the computer’s main processor.
There are different levels of software compression:
•
Lossless compression: no information lost
through the compression process. In this way,
the file size is generally not reduced much.
•
Lossy compression: through the compression,
some information is lost. This will reduce the
file size more dramatically than the lossless
one.
The most common method for compressing image is
called JPEG, which is a standard way of reducing
image file size that discards information which could
not be detected easily by the human eye. In compressing the digital video, the standard is MPEG.
MPEG is an industry standard for moving images
that uses interframe compression (or frame differencing) as well as compression within frames. There
are different MPEG standards, such as MPEG I,
which optimizes for data rates in the 1 to 1.5 MB/sec
range (the common transfer rate of CD-ROM drives
and T-1 communications links), and MPEG II,
which optimizes for data rates above the 5 MB/sec
rate (specifically for broadcast video applications).
Interactivity in multimedia technologies
There are many compelling reasons for using multimedia for education, training, information delivery,
business, entertainment, etc. First of all, the power of
pictures is enormous. Only recently, with the advent
of multimedia technologies, have we been able to tap
the undeniable power of visual images and other
non-textual information sources.
But equally appealing for multimedia technology is the power of interactivity – a concept extended
from hypertext as discussed in the introductory section. Through the ages, information has been presented and absorbed in a linear fashion. Interactive
multimedia brings the incredible freedom to explore
a subject area with fast links to related topics.
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Distribution, storage and use of digital
data and documents
on the Internet or the World Wide Web. The important thing is being digital!
Portability
Long-term conservation of electronic
data
Mass storage and storage media were discussed
above. Currently, most digital data have been stored
on optical media such as CD-ROMs, CD-Rs, and
Photo-CDs, and most interactive multimedia products are produced and distributed as multimedia
CD-ROMs, or interactive laser disks. The portability of these products, specifically those on CDROMs, is great.
When multimedia applications are stored or
published on an optical medium such as CD-ROM,
they can be distributed easily for intra-organizational use. For a few copies, in-house CD-R technology
can be used to produce the CD-ROMs. When
published formally, whether commercially or not,
the CD-ROMs or laser disks will be mastered by
companies like 3M, DMI, Philips, etc. The cost of
production generally is around US$1,000 to $1,500,
with an additional cost for each unit ranging from
$1.50 to over $10 depending on the quantity of the
order.
Commercially produced CD-ROMs are generally published and distributed much like books, and
they will be properly packaged with an attractive
graphically designed cover, and publicized for sale
either directly from the publisher or via distributors,
or both. Currently over 10,000 multimedia products
have been published.
Use and re-use of stored documents
When information source materials are in digital
form and stored electronically on a digital medium,
they can be used and re-used for any suitable purpose. They can be retrieved easily to answer an
information inquiry, used to create multimedia
applications, or used for resource-sharing in either a
network environment or for electronic publishing
We are very much aware of the need to back up electronic data with additional copies of floppy disks,
backup tapes, Zip or Zap disks, or CD-Rs. It is
important to add that optical media, specifically
something like CD-ROM, tend to give an impression that they are the ultimate conservation medium
with no possibility of data loss. Actually this is not
the case. There are reports on the lifetime of optical
media such as CD-ROM, suggesting thirty years or
more. However, it is difficult to verify the accuracy
of these predictions at this time. All electronic media
have the possibility of wearing out, and thus it is
important to make duplicate copies in order to avoid
data loss due to wear and tear. Optical media such as
CD-ROMs and laser disks should be used carefully
to prevent possible scratches on the surface. Nonoptical electronic media, such as magnetic tape and
floppy disks, should be stored under proper temperature and humidity control.
As for the storage of the source materials, it is
important to continue finding the best ways to preserve and conserve them regardless of whether they
are electronic or not. Most images and videos originally came from film or microfilm sources. These
should be kept using the best conservation methods,
since electronic image-capturing – still or moving –
cannot currently produce images of as high a resolution as those on films and microfilms. Thus, as technologies advance, there will be need still to re-use the
source materials in order to produce new images of
higher resolution (see Chapters 14, 24 and 25).
Emerging technologies and future trends
As the use of multimedia will continue to expand, it
is fair to expect that more tools in every category
outlined earlier will be introduced with more func-
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tionalities and at lower cost. Thus, creating multimedia applications will be easier as time goes on.
With the explosive development and use of the
Internet and the World Wide Web, and the exponential growth in use of Web browsers like Netscape, we
are witnessing the exciting marriage of multimedia
and the Internet/World Wide Web in a way never
possible before (see Chapter 18). Instead of Web
publishing with mainly still images, graphics and
text, now virtual reality and Web publishing with
avitars are being introduced by all major companies
like Netscape and Microsoft. The forthcoming versions of Web browsers, like the 3.0 version of
Netscape, are filled with all kinds of features and
capabilities to present digital videos, sound, animations, etc., as shown in Figure 10.
In addition to the increasing capability to
include all types of multimedia publishing on the
Web, emerging technologies will enable exciting live
multimedia Internet publishing as well as real-time
fast delivery of multimedia broadcasting onto the
desktop. A good example of live multimedia Internet
publishing is the ‘24 Hours in Cyberspace’ event on
8 February 1996 (Arnold, 1996). On that day, Rick
Smolan, producer of award-winning multimedia
products such as From Alice to Ocean and Passage to
Vietnam, pulled off the most ambitious Internet
event ever undertaken by deploying hundreds of
Fig. 10. Advanced multimedia capabilities of Netscape Navigator 3.0.
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Fig. 11. The homepage of Global Digital Libraries (accessing the Louvre web site).
photographers and journalists around the world to
electronically transmit stories, images, videos and
audio annotations onto a live, one-day Web site. In
total, sixty-three photo-illustrated articles from
every part of the world were electronically published
for global access within twenty-four hours. The
event demonstrated the immense power of a new
medium that goes far beyond the scope of television
news, magazines, radio or newspapers.
Clearly this big-time project involved hundreds
of millions of dollars and offers us a glimpse of
where the future of multimedia and Internet/World
Wide Web are heading. But what about the immediate future for libraries? The prospect is equally excit-
ing. It is clear that more than ever, libraries around
the world will be able to share information resources
in a way that was never possible before. The digital
global library concept has been advocated for quite
some time, and it is possible now for us to have such
a digital global library. Global communication makes
it possible to connect national libraries from different part of the world. These national libraries
become regional ‘knowledge centres’ which can
access information from the entire global ‘network
of networks’. High-density optical storage in jukeboxes makes a vast increase in global collection size
possible. Cutting-edge technologies such as multimedia and digital imaging are available in this high-
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speed global network so that texts, images and even
voices can be transmitted from one part of the world
to another. At the same time, however, nationalism
becomes a stronger theme: building national collections, serving as an information source for national
government, and collecting national history or culture are of concern now more than ever. The use of
multimedia and Knowledge Navigator permit the
delivery of this information, as well as information
from other countries, to citizens’ homes, schools and
offices. In this kind of environment, printed information sources, such as books, journals and archival
materials, meet a highly competitive technology.
Digital information sources become essential (Chen,
1994). The enormous possibilities for combining
multimedia and the Internet/World Wide Web
together have also been demonstrated. Figure 11
shows how one is able, at the click of an icon, to
jump to any national library or other major library
in a given country instantly (Knauth, 1996). Access
can also be gained to information on the award-winning multimedia product, The First Emperor of
China (see Figure 12).
As long as the resources are in digital format –
regardless of whether they are still images, video or
sound – and are on a Web server, one can obtain this
Fig. 12. Accessing information on The First Emperor of China through the Global Digital
Libraries Web site.
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information almost instantly from anywhere in the
world. A graphic directory of over thirty national
library homepages around the world can be found in
Chen (1996). This is an exciting time! ■■
References
ARNOLD, K. 1996. Rick’s World. Multimedia Producer,
Vol. 2, No. 6, pp. 58–63, 84.
BUSH, V. 1945. As We May Think. Atlantic Monthly, Vol.
176, No. 1, pp. 101–8.
CASABIANCA, L. 1988. HyperMedia Map. HyperMedia,
Premier Issue, p. 5.
CHEN, C. 1989. HyperSource on Optical Technologies.
Chicago, LITA.
——. 1994. Information SuperHighway and the Digital
Global Library: Realities and Challenges. Microcomputers for Information Management, Vol. 11,
No. 3, pp. 143–155.
——. 1996. Global Digital Library Initiative: Prototype
Development and Needs. Microcomputers for Information Management, Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 133–64.
GAINES, B. R.; VICKERS, J. N. 1988. Design Considerations
for HyperMedia Systems. Microcomputers for
Information Management, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 1–28.
JERRAM, P.; GOSNEY, M. 1993. Multimedia Power Tools.
New York, Random House.
KNAUTH, K. 1996. Linking Libraries Worldwide: Profession Demonstrates the Power of Global Networking. LC Information Bulletin (US Library of
Congress), Vol. 55, No. 8, pp. 166–7.
Macintosh Multimedia & Product Registry. 1995. Vol. 8,
No. 4. 448 pp.
Multimedia Today: The Sourcebook for Multimedia. 1995.
Vol. 3, No. 1. 312 pp.
Ching-Chih Chen, Professor at the
Graduate School of Library and
Information Science, Simmons
College, Boston, is an international
consultant and international speaker
on cutting-edge technology application in
information-related fields. The author/editor of
twenty-six books, including Planning Global
Information Infrastructure (Ablex and NIT, 1994) and
several books on multimedia and optical technologies,
and over 100 journal articles, she is the founding
Editor-in-Chief of Microcomputers for Information
Management: Global Internetworking for Libraries.
Active in several professional associations, Dr Chen
has directed many R&D projects, including the
interactive multimedia project PROJECT
EMPEROR-1, and is the creator of the interactive
videodisk product, The First Emperor of China, as
well as multimedia CD-ROMs. Since 1987, Dr Chen
has organized a series of New Information
Technology (NIT) conferences in many parts of the
world.
Ching-Chih Chen
Professor and Associate Dean
Graduate School of Library and Information Science
Simmons College
300 The Fenway
Boston MA 021155898
United States
Tel: 617-521-2800
Fax: 617-512-3192
E-mail: [email protected]
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Chapter 17
Telecommunication
technologies
Martin B. H. Weiss
University of Pittsburgh,
United States
T
elecommunication technologies have been
changing the nature of personal and business
transactions since the commercialization of
the telegraph in the 1840s. The synergy between
information service providers and telecommunication carriers was recognized in the United States as
early as 1867, when an exclusive contract between
Associated Press and Western Union was signed.
The impact of telecommunication control on information dissemination has been researched by many
authors since then (see, for example, Smith, 1980).
But telecommunication is more than a means of
information dissemination; it also provides information users with a means of searching out and interacting with information. With the emergence of digital computers, information became represented more
frequently in digital format, so that it became possible to search databases and transfer information
from remote locations. This trend began with large
corporations and their centralized databases and has
since permeated many aspects of life in industrialized countries, especially with the emergence of the
World Wide Web on the Internet.
Since the 1980s the use of computer-based
information retrieval systems has become popular
with many libraries and information service providers. In many public libraries, computer-based
catalogues have replaced their traditional card counterparts, offering capabilities such as simultaneous
access by multiple users, keyword searching and
remote access. With the emergence of the CD-ROM,
much original information has become accessible
over computer networks. This paper addresses many
of the key questions surrounding the basic technology and its application to the information industry.
Common applications of
telecommunication technologies in
information services
This section defines and describes the requirements
for the most common forms of services in use by
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information service providers. Many of these require
telecommunication technologies, although analogous services are often available without this technological infrastructure. In subsequent sections, the
commonly used implementations and infrastructure
requirements will be described.
Remote access
Remote access is a user’s ability to make use of an
information provider’s services at a distance. This is
desirable because it enables information service
providers to economize their operations (through
appropriate centralization) without eliminating
access for distant users. Thus, a large population of
users can be served without extensive need to travel.
Traditionally, remote access has involved the
use of postal or telephone inquiries. This method has
a number of both advantages and disadvantages over
electronic information technology solutions. These
can be summarized under three main headings: cost,
training and speed. Traditional remote-access technology is more labour-intensive but less capitalintensive; electronic technologies are more capitalintensive and require skilled ‘backroom’ personnel, but fewer information specialists. Traditional
remote-access technology requires virtually no user
training but considerable information-specialist
training; electronic remote access requires user training as well as computer professionals. Finally, traditional remote access is very slow by comparison to
electronic access.
Electronic remote access generally requires
users’ data terminals to connect to an information
service provider’s serving computer. This connection
may be handled via a modem and telephone lines or
a public or private packet data network. When connected to the service provider’s computer, users are
able to interact with the system as though they were
local to the service provider’s computer.1 In the
Internet, the Telnet service is an example of this service type; in Open Systems Interconnection (OSI)
systems, this service would be the Virtual Terminal
(VT) service. Electronic remote access also implies a
reliable, high-quality telecommunication infrastructure.
File transfer
Remote access implies that the information being
sought remains at the server when the session is over.
If any information is retained by the user, such as
notes or printouts, it is generally a small fraction of
the information and is not kept in digital form. If the
user wishes to acquire pieces of information of a
larger size, then a file transfer operation is usually
preferred. Traditionally, this might involve the acquisition, either in person or via the postal system, of
books, journals, articles, etc. This analogy is not perfect because electronic file transfer allows pieces of
information to be transferred that may not exist in
print or other traditional media.
While file transfers can be accomplished using
remote-access services (if the user’s device has
sufficient capabilities), this operation is limited and
not efficient. Using file transfer mechanisms instead
enables the efficient transfer of both text and nontext characters without the insertion of special characters. Furthermore, most file transfer protocols
have additional error-checking functionality built
into them. Thus, information transfers can take place
completely and efficiently. Commonly used file
transfer protocols are ftp for the Internet, and File
Transfer, Access and Management (FTAM) for OSIbased information systems.
1.
When using a personal computer as a data terminal,
users must first execute terminal emulation software on
their personal computer so that it behaves as though it
were a terminal. More sophisticated systems using the
‘client-server’ computing model enable users’ local personal computers to share the processing tasks with the
serving computer. Although this requires unique client
software for each server, it can reduce the communications
load between the user and the server.
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The most common form of this technology is
electronic mail, although it need not be limited to
this. The objective in electronic messaging technologies is to allow the efficient transfer of messages of all
kinds between the users of a network (humans as
well as machines). Recent research has taken a
broader view of this question and considers the use
of still, animated and video images, as well as audio,
graphics and text, to pass messages. In this broader
context, then, ‘voice mail’ is also a form of electronic
messaging.
Numerous standards exist for electronic mail.
By far the most widely implemented standard is
Internet mail. Designed to support the transfer of
text files only, this standard has been modified to
support non-text information, such as images and
binary files, through the Multimedia Internet Mail
Extensions (MIME) system.
As with most Internet standards, these represent relatively limited, although highly functional,
solutions to specific problems. In response to the
more comprehensive needs of the user community,
the International Telecommunications Union (ITU)
developed the X.400 series of standards. These standards represent a systematic and comprehensive
approach to meeting the needs of electronic mail
users. The implementation is much more complex,
hence costly, than Internet mail; as a result, it has yet
to be adopted as widely.
quently a collection of independent databases that
must be queried separately.
Traditionally, database searches have been
performed by attaching to the computer that houses
the database a remote-access protocol (such as
Telnet) and executing queries on the database. In
recent years, searches based on the American National Standards Institution/National Information
Standards Organization (ANSI/NISO) standard
Z39.50 and Z39.59 have begun eliminating the need
for users to connect directly with, and therefore have
accounts on, remote database machines. These standards allow for the delivery of query results to an
end-user using a standardized remote-access protocol. This mode of database searching is more
efficient and flexible for both the network and the
database machines, so it can be expected to be implemented more widely in the future.
On the World Wide Web, search engines (such
as Lycos and Yahoo) have emerged to facilitate information searching in this decentralized environment.
These systems create an index of Web pages that can
be searched. The results of these searches are brief
descriptions of a page and the links to those pages.
These are different from traditional database-searching systems in that the search engines must actively
compile and update information, since the World
Wide Web is perhaps the ultimate example of a distributed and decentralized database in which no
attempt at consistency is made.
Database searching
Electronic data interchange
Database searching is an application that is increasingly network-based. The databases that are
searched were organized historically as a single database on a single machine. This is gradually changing
with the introduction of distributed databases, in
which the database is logically a single database but
is physically distributed over several computers.
Many of the CD-ROM-based databases seem to
exhibit this characteristic, although they are fre-
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is the direct computer-to-computer exchange of information. While
this is a very general definition, EDI is really focused
on the exchange of information normally provided
in business documents such as bills of lading, purchase orders and invoices. With the emergence of
EDI standards, such as EDIFACT and ANSI X.12,
EDI has gained significant popularity. When both
partners in a transaction use compatible EDI sys-
Electronic messaging
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tems, the benefits of using this approach over traditional mechanisms include cost savings, speed, error
reduction and security. EDI standards define specific
transaction sets that in turn define the way in which
information is to be communicated; a transaction set
is the equivalent of a form in a paper-based communication system. A transaction set must have certain
content and format specifications to ensure that both
parties can interpret the information correctly. Just
as a form has ‘boxes’ for information, a transaction
set has segments that contain defined data elements.
Telecommunication technologies
The user needs defined above must be implemented
on computer systems that are interconnected by
telecommunication technology. This section will
present an overview of the telecommunication technologies that are relevant to the user needs defined
above.
Physical infrastructure
In broad terms, the physical infrastructure consists
of three components: cables, switching systems and
signalling systems. Cables are used to interconnect
devices, switches are used to route calls through the
network (over cables), and signalling systems allow
network devices (such as telephones and switches) to
exchange information. This section will summarize
each of these components.
Cables
The physical infrastructure consists of a combination of cables and their associated outside plant. The
primary types of cables in use are twisted pair, optical fibre and coaxial. Twisted-pair cables consist of
two insulated wires twisted together; these types of
cable are most often used to connect the subscriber’s
equipment with the telephone network. Optical
fibre is used most often for high-capacity transmission within the network, that is, to connect large
subscribers. Finally, coaxial cables are used both
within the telephone network and for high-bandwidth transmission to subscribers’ premises, as in
cable television applications. The former use is being
replaced by fibre optics, while the latter use is fairly
well developed and embedded.
Wireless infrastructures have been important
since the 1940s, but the locus of their use has
changed. Early non-broadcast uses of wireless were
focused on interconnecting telephone company
facilities using point-to-point microwave systems or
satellite-based systems. The emergence of fibre
optics as a technically and economically viable technology in the 1980s has stimulated the replacement
of existing wireless facilities of this kind and limited
the new installations to situations where cable is not
feasible. Today, the use of wireless is focused more
on connecting ‘nomadic’ or ‘untethered’ subscribers.
Cellular, General System for Mobile (GSM) and
Personal Communications System (PCS) systems
are examples of this use.
Switching
While many other elements do exist, the other key
element of the infrastructure is switches. Switches
serve to interconnect subscribers with each other,
either directly (if they are local) or via other switches
and inter-office transmission facilities (if they are not
local). In order to function properly, the devices on
the network must pass certain information to each
other, such as ‘off-hook’ and ‘on-hook’ (which corresponds to ‘busy’ and ‘idle’) and the dialled number.
The mechanism by which this information is passed
is the signalling system.
Switching technology has undergone a radical
evolution since the early days of telephony. The simplest (and also the earliest) switches consisted of a
panel of electrical jacks, one for each subscriber and
trunk (as an inter-office transmission channel is
called). A human operator connected subscribers
with each other (or to trunks) using patch cords with
plugs on both ends. In the United States, these man-
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ual systems were gradually replaced with electromechanical switches during the early part of the
twentieth century. In the 1960s, these electromechanical switches began to be replaced by digital
electronic switches. In other countries, this investment/replacement cycle may not be consistent with
the experience of the United States.
Signalling
Signalling technology also has changed. The earliest
signalling consisted of sharply rapping the transmitter to get the attention of the operator or called
party. This was soon replaced by a combination of
magneto and bell. The destination number was originally spoken into the telephone by the caller to the
operator, who would complete the call. As automated switches and digit dialling came into service,
these signalling functions were replaced by in-band
techniques (with in-band signalling, the signalling
information is passed through the same channel that
the user’s speech will eventually use). As the network grew in size, and as electronic switches were
introduced, it became possible to introduce out-ofband signalling systems, such as Signalling System 7,
that allow faster call set-up and the implementation
of new services.
Out-of-band signalling systems, like Signalling
System 7, are implemented by creating a packetswitched data communications network, and treating the voice switches and service providers as users
of the network. The messages and protocols are standardized and optimized for the rapid exchange of
short messages between these devices. Many ISDN
(Integrated Services Digital Network) systems
require a Signalling System 7 infrastructure (see
below).
Digital and analogue communications
When a voice is transmitted over the telephone, the
speech is converted to electrical energy by a microphone. Microphones create an electrical signal that is
modulated in proportion to the strength and characteristics of the speech energy. Commercially available microphones always generate an electrical signal
that is continuous in time; such a signal is called an
analogue signal. Voice telecommunications were
transmitted in analogue format throughout the telephone network until the 1960s.
As an electrical signal is transmitted over distance, it is subject to certain deleterious effects, most
notably noise and distortion. Noise consists of all
unwanted electrical signals that are added to the signal in the transmission channel. Distortion is generally due to imperfections in the design of transmission equipment. Neither noise nor distortion can be
avoided. Many types of noise are additive; that is,
they are added to the signal in the transmission channel. As the distance increases, more noise and distortion is added, so that, as a rule, the signal deteriorates
as distance increases. In an analogue system, the
noise and distortion cannot be removed from the
signal at the receiver because of the continuous
nature of both the signal, noise and distortion.
In the 1940s researchers at Bell Laboratories
developed methods by which an analogue signal
could be sampled in such a way that the samples
could be used to reconstruct an accurate facsimile of
the original signal. When a signal is sampled in this
way, it becomes possible to represent these samples
by a number that is proportional to the strength of
the analogue electrical signal at the time it was sampled. Since this number can be represented in any
number system, the engineers chose the binary number system. In the binary system, the number takes
the form of multiple digits (eight, in the case of telephony) comprising only ones and zeros.
The primary advantage of representing a signal
and transmitting it in this way is that the essential
information contained in the signal is in discrete levels rather than in continuous levels. Thus, when the
signal with the added noise and distortion arrives at
the receiver, the receiver can remove much of the
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noise because it can reconstruct the signal that was
transmitted based on the discrete levels (if the system
was properly engineered). It is possible to engineer a
digital transmission system with very low noise levels. Since binary numbers are in the format that is
natural for computational devices, it is also possible
to engineer a reliable transmission system through
long and noisy channels using sophisticated signal
processing and error detection and correction techniques. The spacecraft that send pictures to Earth
from distant planets provide an example of such a
demanding environment.
Data and voice communications
When speech is rendered as a digital signal, the distinction between voice signals and data signals
begins to become arbitrary, since neither the switches nor the network equipment can distinguish
between them. None the less, the services that are
constructed on the network infrastructure to support voice applications and data applications are different. These different applications place different
demands on the network infrastructure.
Voice communications, whether analogue or
digital, historically have been implemented by dedicating a portion of the network capacity to a call for
the duration of that call. No other call can use the
bandwidth dedicated to that call. For data applications, this arrangement was wasteful, since the line
was idle for a large fraction of the time. Communications between computers are frequently ‘bursty’,
that is, communication between devices occurs infrequently but when it does the devices need a fast connection for modest quantities of data. As a result,
engineers developed mechanisms for sharing a line’s
bandwidth among several simultaneous but different
calls so that the line would be utilized more efficiently. The most widely adopted technique for this uses a
set of technologies referred to collectively as packet
switching. In packet switching, several data streams
are bundled and transmitted together by sending a
small portion of each data stream at a time in the
form of a ‘packet’. Each packet contains the address
of the destination computer as well as other necessary control information, so that the packet switches
(special purpose computers in the data communications network) have the information to handle each
packet. The packet switches collect traffic from many
computers and determine how to direct each packet
so that it reaches its destination (a function called
routing).
While packet-switched networks clearly provided a more economical solution for data communications applications, packets can arrive with a variable delay because all facilities in the network are
shared by all packets in the network. Although this
is not troublesome for most data applications, it
can pose difficulties when traffic, such as voice traffic, is routed through packet networks. New network technologies, such as those based on the
Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), are seeking to
solve these difficulties so that a single network infrastructure can be constructed for all major telecommunications applications.
Integrated services digital network (ISDN)
ISDN is an approach to extend the digitization of
the telephone network to the user’s telephone. It is
defined by a set of ITU standards that were developed in large part during the 1980s. Today, these
original services are known as Narrowband ISDN,
or N-ISDN. In recent years, the ISDN concept has
been extended to high-speed services under the auspices of Broadband ISDN (or B-ISDN). This section
will focus on N-ISDN, since those services today are
defined and supported by commercially available
equipment and services.
ISDN goes beyond a simple definition of a digital signalling and transmission standard for the local
loop (which connects the user’s telephone with the
telephone switch). It defines an architecture for the
delivery of a comprehensive set of integrated services
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over an end-to-end digital architecture. This architecture includes the standards for the necessary
hardware, communications protocols and software
functionality.
From a user’s point of view, the most common
N-ISDN services that can be purchased are the Basic
Rate Interface (BRI) and Primary Rate Interface (PRI)
services. Residential subscribers are most likely to
purchase the BRI service, since it consists of the digital equivalent of two voice lines and a data line. In digital terms, each of the two voice lines is a channel with
a bit rate of 64,000 bits per second (a 64 kbps channel,
in telecommunications jargon). In ISDN terminology,
channels that carry information at 64 kbps are called
‘bearer’ channels (or B-channels). The BRI signalling
channel (data or D-channel) has a 16 kbps bit rate.
The D-channel is used to provide services to the subscriber, including basic services such as call set-up.
Because of its configuration, BRI ISDN is often
referred to as a ‘2B + D’ configuration because it consists of two B-channels and a D-channel.
For large users, such as businesses, a collection
of BRI channels may not be ideal as they would lack
flexibility. Such organizations would normally opt
to purchase a Primary Rate Interface or PRI service.
Unlike BRI, users under PRI can choose several
channel configurations. Thus, PRI users (in the
Table 1. Summary of the Primary Rate Interface for ISDN
Channel type
Definition
Signalling channel (D)
64 kbps
Bearer (B) channel
64 kbps
High-speed channel
H0
384 kbps
H10
1.472 Mbps
H11
1.536 Mbps
H12
1.920 Mbps
H21
34 Mbps
H22
45 Mbps
H4
140 Mbps
United States) might choose a 23 B + D service, a H0
+ 17B + D service, or others, from the menu defined
in Table 1. Users must negotiate the specifics of the
interface with their service provider.
Much more could be said about ISDN in terms
of its functionality and its role in organizations. In
brief, ISDN provides users with the capability of
true end-to-end digitial connectivity with other
users and service providers. Furthermore, ISDN
provides much higher data rates than can be achieved
using modems, with the possibility of having valueenhancing services integrated with the transport.
Data communications standards
ISDN’s bearer and high-speed channels provide
basic transport for a user’s voice and data.
Functionally, this is similar to the traditional analogue channel provided by telecommunication service providers (although the equipment varies).
When computers are communicating, new demands
are placed on both the network and on the end-user
devices – demands that do not exist in voice communications (see above).
As computer networks evolved, many more
problems had to be addressed in addition to that of
‘bursty’ traffic. These include error control, synchronization, security and information representation. It
also became apparent that standards were important
in computer networks. Two major groups of standards have emerged for computer networks – the
standards consistent with the OSI Reference Model
and developed by the ITU and the International
Standards Organization (ISO), and the standards
that emerged out of the ARPANET project in the
United States, which are referred to as the Internet
Standards (see Chapters 18 and 21).
Open systems interconnection (OSI)
The OSI Reference Model and its associated standards (generally referred to as OSI standards)
emerged in the late 1970s. The origins of this
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movement are complex, but include user frustration with incompatibility between large system vendors and concern among the smaller of the large system vendors about the dominance of one company,
IBM.
The OSI Reference Model is a systematic
approach to the generic data communications problem. It organizes communication in seven layers,
each of which is assigned specific functionality. The
bottom three layers (1–3) are network-related layers
in that they explicitly involve network components.
The upper layers (4–7) are end-to-end, and do not
involve network components.
Specifically, the data communications function
is organized as follows:
•
Physical layer (1): Standards that relate to the
physical and electrical interconnection of computing or networking devices, and standards
related to the encoding and physical transmission of bits over a communications medium.
•
Link layer (2): Standards that relate to the
transmission of information on a single medium. This includes error control, framing, synchronization and local addressing.
•
Network layer (3): Standards related to the
transmission of information across several links
and nodes. This includes global addressing and
routing.
•
Transport layer (4): Standards related to the
transport of information from end to end over
a network. This may include multiplexing of a
connection between several user processes and
end-to-end error control.
•
Session layer (5): Standards that define naming
and control for multiple connections associated
with a single user process.
•
Presentation layer (6): Standards that are concerned with the representation of information.
•
Application layer (7): Standards that define
protocols to support higher-level user functions.
X.25 standard
Internationally, one of the most important data communications standards is the X.25 developed by
the ITU. The X.25 standard defines the interface
between a user’s equipment (Data Terminal Equipment, or DTE) and the network (Data Communications Equipment, or DCE) at the network, link
and physical layers of the OSI Reference Model. The
X.25 standard is formally limited to speeds of 64
kbps and lower, although higher-speed implementations can sometimes be found. X.25 uses the Highspeed Data Link Control (HDLC) protocol at the
link layer and the X.21 physical layer connection.
Since the X.25 Packet Layer Protocol (PLP) operates
at Layer 3 of the OSI Reference Model, it must
use globally unique addresses: X.25 uses the X.121
global addressing scheme developed by the ITU.
Since X.25 only defines the interface between
DTE and DCE, it does not define the manner in
which data are handled within a packet network. In
fact, different commercial networks use various protocols and network control techniques internally.
X.25 does not make specific statements about the
operation of a packet network; it merely addresses
the interfaces to the network.
X.25 is a connection-oriented network protocol because the protocol requires that a virtual circuit be established in the network before information can be transferred. A virtual circuit is a route
through the network that all packets between the
users will follow. It is a virtual circuit because it is
not dedicated to the two parties, as it would be in a
telephone connection; it merely behaves as though it
were, even though the physical bandwidth is shared
among many users.
X.25 assumes a relatively unreliable network
infrastructure from the point of view of bit errors.
Thus, error checking and correcting is done on each
link as it passes through the network. This process
turns out to be very time-consuming, limiting the
effective throughput of X.25 networks. As networks
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have improved over the last twenty-five years with
the introduction of optical fibre and digital transmission, this performance penalty has become increasingly apparent, resulting in technologies such as
frame relay, which forgo link-by-link error checking
in favour of end-to-end error checking.
Directory Service Agents (DSAs) to be tied together
into a logical tree structure. A DSA communicates
with as many other DSAs as necessary, using the
standard protocols defined by X.500, to resolve
requests from an attached Directory User Agent
(DUA).
X.400 and X.500 standards
TCP/IP protocols
ITU’s X.400 series of standards provides for a comprehensive approach to electronic mail services. It
gives service providers a broad range of services
that can be offered to their customers. This richness
comes at the expense of ease of implementation and
product cost, factors that have delayed the implementation and adoption of products based on the
X.400 series of standards. X.400 is a series of standards because it consists of a number of distinct,
albeit interrelated, elements. These elements include
User Agents (UAs), Message Transfer Agents
(MTAs) and several service elements, as well as the
protocols by which these elements communicate
with one another. The message body can contain
information in text, facsimile, video, image, telex,
videotex and other formats.
The X.500 series of standards is designed to
support the development of directory services. A
directory service is a system-level capability that
allows users to find the ‘symbolic name’ (or address)
of a user or a service. Broadly speaking, a directory
service supports not only the binding of a symbolic
name with an entity (such as a user or a resource),
but also allows for the management of that information in a systematic and structured way.
The developers of the Transmission Control
Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite originally solved this problem in a decentralized way by
using the Domain Name System (DNS). X.500 considered the directory problem from a global and
commercial perspective, and in the light of experience with X.25. Thus, they developed a hierarchical
system that allows a system of locally maintained
The TCP/IP protocols, referred to above, are an
important suite of protocols for data communications, developed under the auspices of the United
States Department of Defense. These protocols have
gained considerable commercial popularity and are
the foundation of the Internet. Unlike the ITU and
ISO standards, the TCP/IP-based protocols evolved
through a collegial, informal process that emphasized working implementations. As a result, these
protocols are often focused on a ‘simple’ solution to
a specific problem without considering (and sometimes explicitly ignoring) broader functionality and
systematic design. Despite these shortcomings, these
protocols always produce working prototypes that
may be (and often are) adapted for use in commercial
products.
The TCP/IP protocol suite consists of a set of
lower-layer protocols (often Local Area Network
standards such as Ethernet and Token Ring), a network-layer protocol (Internet Protocol, or IP), a
transport-layer protocol (such as Transmission
Control Protocol, or TCP), and application protocols (for example, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol,
smtp; File Transfer Protocol, ftp; and a virtual terminal protocol, Telnet). This approach completely
omits the session and presentation layers.
Unlike the X.25 packet-layer protocol (which
is connection-oriented), IP is connectionless. In a
connectionless protocol, no virtual circuit is established at the outset; instead, each packet contains the
source and destination addresses of the end-users,
and each packet is routed through the network independently. As a result, packets may take different
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paths through the network and arrive out of order.
The network provides no guarantees to the endusers, leaving error control to them. IP provides
global addressing (but not via X.121). The number of
available IP addresses has become limited owing to
the structure of IP addressing and the explosive
growth of the Internet. A new version of IP (IP version 6) is due to be released in the near future to
tackle that problem.
The most commonly used transport layer, TCP,
is connection-oriented and provides end-to-end
error control as well as flow control. Given the military environment that was assumed when TCP and
IP were developed, the combinations of protocols
make sense. IP is very resistant to node and line failures, since the connectionless packets automatically
find an available path to the destination. TCP
ensures that messages arrive error-free at the destination in a way that does not excessively congest the
network.
The TCP/IP set of protocols has been a
favourite of many academic researchers because it is
extraordinarily flexible and amenable to experimentation. As a result, new concepts and services, such as
the gopher information retrieval protocol and the
World Wide Web concept (with its associated protocols and standards) are able to emerge quickly and
easily.
The role of governments and
international organizations
Governments and international organizations have
been intimately involved in telecommunication from
its inception. The United States Government
financed Samuel F. B. Morse’s experimental telegraph line between Baltimore (Maryland) and
Washington, D.C., in 1837. In most countries the
government soon entered the business by building
networks and providing telegraph (and later telephone) services. As telegraph (and later telephone)
systems expanded in Europe, it soon became neces-
sary to interconnect separate national systems. This
interconnection imperative motivated the development of technical standards as well as guidelines for
negotiating the terms and conditions of interconnection. Out of this need, the predecessor of the ITU
was born. It did not take long for this need for interconnection to expand beyond Europe. With the
arrival of the telephone, the charter of the ITU
expanded beyond telegraphy, just as its charter
would later be expanded to include radio transmission.
Governmental roles
Government plays several important roles in
telecommunication, depending in large measure on
whether the service provider is public or private. If it
is public (that is, either a government agency or
owned by the government), then government provides financing for the infrastructure. If it is private,
the role of government falls more into motivating
infrastructure development and regulation of private
firms. Note that the term ‘public carrier’ refers to a
carrier whose services are generally available to all,
whether publicly or privately owned.
One of the important roles of governmental
and international organizations has been to finance
the development of telecommunication infrastructures. This has ranged from special projects (as in the
Morse example cited above) to complete infrastructure development, as with governmental Post,
Telegraph and Telephone (PTT) organizations. Internationally, the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) have become involved in the
financial support of telecommunication infrastructure building in developing countries.
Regulation
In countries where the telecommunication service
provider is private (an increasingly common occurence), regulation is often necessary. Regulation is
particularly important in situations where no viable
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competitor exists to prevent monopolistic pricing by
the service provider. Governments must usually
establish a credible regulatory capability as they look
to privatize their telecommunication operators. The
regulatory body must be independent of the service
providers and serves the functions of preventing
‘abusive’ pricing, ensuring the economic viability of
the service provider, and providing a stable legal and
economic framework for telecommunication to
enable the service providers to engage in long-term
planning.
Regulation frequently takes the form of tariffs.
A tariff defines a service as well as establishing the
price of the service. As common carriers, many telecommunication service providers are obliged to
apply the tariffs uniformly to all persons or parties
requesting the service. Since the underlying cost of
the service varies by customer, this averaging implies
an implicit subsidy from the low cost-of-service customers to high cost-of-service customers. As competition is introduced into telecommunication markets,
these implicit subsidies (and hence the averaging
strategy implicit in tariffs) become harder to sustain.
This occurs because the relatively high-tariffed
prices for low cost-of-service customers presents a
market opportunity for new entrants.
Regulation may also take the form of rules and
standards. Unlike tariffs, which have explicitly economic subject-matter, rules and standards seek to
restrict the behaviour of firms. Rules and standards
can govern technical matters (radio broadcast, for
example, and the ways in which different carriers
must interconnect) or structural matters (for example, how firms must separate regulated business from
non-regulated business, and which markets are open
to competitive entry). Although these rules are often
not explicitly economic, they can frequently have
profound economic implications.
International regulations have been set forth by
the ITU and tend to focus on technical standards and
mechanisms for co-operation between interconnect-
ing carriers. The ITU has not engaged in price regulation of service providers, although it has established a set of structures to facilitate the creation of
international tariffs and periodic settlements between
carriers.
International telecommunication
The establishment and operation of transnational
communication links poses some special problems.
While the ITU provides useful frameworks to facilitate this, many of the details must be worked out
through bilateral negotiations between the countries
involved. While there is a significant precedent for
most negotiations, special problems can sometimes
arise. These include landing rights for cable or satellite systems; accounting and settlements rates and
procedures; facilities ownership; and telecommunication market structure issues, such as public versus
private and competitive versus monopoly. Governments have taken active roles in defining these issues,
although there is a clear worldwide trend toward
private ownership and competitive markets (and
away from public ownership and monopoly service
provision).
When telecommunication is provided by the
government or by a government-owned firm, representation on international bodies and the status of
the carriers is straightforward. With a privately
owned carrier, or a multitude of privately owned
carriers, this becomes more difficult. While the representation on international bodies, particularly the
ITU, remains the same, the way in which international regulations are enforced and the way in which
national policy vis-à-vis international telecommunication is made become more difficult. While each
country with competitive, private carriers has developed different strategies for this, the general
approach is relatively constant: private carriers with
international links must agree to abide by ITU
regulations by registering as a Registered Private
Operating Agency (RPOA) and by collaborative
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development of public policies through national
advisory councils of the foreign ministry.
carrier to defer other investments to meet the needs
of the multinational user (see Chapter 21).
Multinational corporations
Standard-setting
Multinational corporations are often advanced users
of a country’s telecommunication infrastructure.
These corporations normally do not have the goal of
enhancing a country’s infrastructure; rather, they are
interested in the efficient operation of their global
enterprise. Multinational corporations were most
frequently the first users of technologies such as
X.25, Frame Relay and EDI, for example. But multinational firms can have a bigger impact. As a large
and advanced user, a multinational can command
significant investment by the public network service
provider because the multinational offers a future
stream of revenues to justify that investment, and
also because it has the means and technology to
bypass the public carrier, if necessary, to ensure that
its communication needs are met. While the bypass
threat can be mitigated to some extent by the use of
‘landing rights’ and licensing, the use of these
measures may be detrimental to further investments
by multinationals. Once the infrastructure investments are made, many users can take advantage
of the advanced services, since it is unlikely that
the multinational will consume the entire capacity
of the carrier. The multinational, then, can provide a stimulus for infrastructure development that
can assist a country in further economic development.
From a public policy perspective, then, a multinational can pose significant challenges to the status
quo and to public policy goals. The needs of multinationals have stimulated the move to privatization
and the entry of competition as mechanisms to meet
their needs. The focused infrastructure investments
needed to support a multinational’s needs can lead to
conflicts with social equity concerns inherent in universal service policy goals. This conflict is particularly acute if annual investments are fixed, requiring the
Telecommunication is a ‘standards-intensive’ industry by its very nature. Thus, an important role of
governments and international organizations is to
foster the establishment of standards. There are
many ways in which standards may be set and many
organizational structures within which standards
may be developed. Originally the ITU, as a treaty
organization, was created very much to serve the
needs of public telecommunication networks, while
ISO was more focused on meeting the needs of
equipment, system and software manufacturers and
vendors. The Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF), the body within which standards for the
Internet are developed, is loosely organized and
informal. The traditional distinctions between these
organizations are blurring and a good deal of cooperation takes place among them.
The two most visible standard-setting organizations in the telecommunication business are the
ITU and ISO; hence, only those will be profiled
below. These profiles are very brief; more detailed
information can be found on the World Wide Web
(http://www.itu.ch for ITU and http://www.iso.ch
for ISO).
I n t e r n a t i o n a l Te l e c o m m u n i c a t i o n s U n i o n
(ITU)
The ITU, a Specialized Agency of the United
Nations, is the primary focus for international cooperation in telecommunication. As a treaty organization, the recommendations and regulations of the
ITU carry considerable weight. It dates back to
1865, and became a Specialized Agency of the
United Nations in 1947. In 1992, the ITU was reorganized, and has been aggressively pursuing procedural reforms to accelerate the development of
technical standards. In general terms, the mission of
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the ITU is to facilitate international telecommunication, and its standards development activities are
concentrated on fostering that mission. As a result,
the ITU has been active in developing standards for
radio transmission (and co-ordinating frequency
usage), digital and analogue telephone systems, telegraph and telex, and selected data communications
standards. In the domain of data communications,
the focus has been on those standards of interest to
public network operators, including X.25, Frame
Relay and X.400.
Telecommunication standards are developed
within the ITU-T. The actual work of standards
development is not funded by the ITU; rather, the
‘volunteers’ who prepare the documents that define
the standards are supported by telephone carriers,
industrial organizations and other interested parties.
The ITU provides a framework and organizational
support for these activities.
International Standards Organization
(ISO)
Unlike the ITU, ISO is not a treaty organization. Its
purpose is to achieve worldwide agreement on international standards – a purpose with a much larger
scope than just telecommunication or information
systems standards. For example, ISO sets standards
in areas such as Fire Safety, Plastics, and Information
and Documentation. Unlike the ITU, ISO is a federation of national standards bodies, governmental or
non-governmental. As a result, industry has a strong
voice and the right to vote. ■■
Further reading
This paper has provided a high-level survey of the
major technologies that are relevant to the information industry. Many of the issues presented here are
relevant to the development of the national information infrastructures of countries around the world.
The books cited below are good starting-points for
learning more about the topics discussed.
BERNT, P.; WEISS, M. B. 1993. International Telecommunications. Indianapolis, Ind., Howard Sams. 465 pp.
FRIEDEN, R. 1996. International Telecommunications
Handbook. Norwood, Mass., Artech House. 419 pp.
HALSALL, F. 1996. Data Communications, Computer
Networks and Open Systems. 4th ed. Reading, Mass.,
Addison-Wesley. 907 pp.
SMITH, A. 1980. The Geopolitics of Information. New
York, Oxford University Press. 192 pp.
STALLINGS, W. 1993. Networking Standards: A Guide to
OSI, ISDN, LAN and WAN Standards. Boston,
Mass., Addison-Wesley. 464 pp.
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t e c h n o l o g i239e s
Martin B. H. Weiss is an Associate
Professor of Telecommunications
and Co-Director of the
Telecommunications Program at the
University of Pittsburgh. He has a
Ph.D. in Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie
Mellon University, an MSE in Computer Control and
Information Engineering from the University of
Michigan and a BSE in Electrical Engineering from
Northeastern University. His principal research
activities have focused on the issues surrounding the
development and adoption of technical compatibility
standards. Dr Weiss is also interested in
telecommunication policy, information policy,
telecommunication services and network management.
His industrial experience includes technical and
professional work at several R&D and consulting
firms. He was a member of the Technical Staff at Bell
Laboratories from 1978 to 1981 and at the MITRE
Corp. from 1983 to 1985; from 1985 to 1987 he was a
Senior Consultant with Deloitte, Haskins and Sells.
He is the author of numerous conference and journal
publications and has co-authored with Phyllis Bernt a
book on international telecommunications. Together
with Dr Bernt, he is currently preparing a detailed
study of United States telecommunication regulations.
Martin B. H. Weiss
Telecommunications Program
Department of Information Science
University of Pittsburgh
135 N. Bellefield Avenue
505 Building
Pittsburgh PA 15260
United States
Fax: 412-624-5231
E-mail: [email protected]
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Chapter 18
The Internet
Blaise Cronin and
Geoffrey McKim
Indiana University,
United States
I
n a remarkably short time, the Internet has
evolved from an academic curiosity to a mass
medium. It has been heralded as the basis of economic salvation for developing nations, as a new
scholarly communications system and even as an
entertainment alternative to television. However, the
Internet has also thrown into relief controversial
issues relating to censorship and freedom of expression, pornography and intellectual property rights
that have profound ramifications for both individuals and nation-states. This chapter describes and
seeks to explain the phenomenon that is the Internet.
Origins
The earliest experiments in what later became the
Internet began in 1966 with the United States
Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA). The first nodes in the resultant
ARPANET were created in 1969. In 1977, the
TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet
Protocol) protocols that underlay the Internet were
demonstrated for the first time. In 1986, the
National Science Foundation (NSF) created the first
NSFNET backbone and allowed regional networks,
mostly supporting universities, to feed into this
backbone. By 1990, the Internet was supporting
commercial activities. Even after all this growth and
development, the same basic TCP/IP protocols
remain in use and still serve to unify the Internet. In
March 1989, the first World Wide Web (WWW) proposal was elaborated and circulated at the European
Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) in Geneva,
Switzerland, and in November 1990 the first prototype Web browser was created (see Chapter 17).
Growth
The most comprehensive and regularly administered
survey of Internet-connected computers, or hosts, is
the Internet Domain Survey (Network Wizards,
1996). Figure 1, showing the number of Internet
hosts from 1981 to 1995, is based on this survey.
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From the data, it can be seen that the number of host
computers on the Internet doubles approximately
annually. Additional statistics on Internet growth are
provided by the Internet Society (1996), and Matrix
Information and Directory Services (MIDS, 1996).
The number of computers on the World Wide Web,
currently the most popular portion of the Internet, is
doubling every four or five months. The number of
electronic mail messages sent over the Internet is
doubling approximately every year (Internet Society,
1994). As of January 1996, there were an estimated
9,472,000 host computers on the Internet (Network
Wizards, 1996). International growth is highly variable. There is also considerable variation in Internet
presence for different industry sectors.
Organization and structure
A defining feature of the Internet is that no one person, company, government or organization has ultimate control. The Internet Society (ISOC), an international, non-governmental organization whose
members consist of governments, corporations, indi-
Fig. 1. Internet hosts by year.
13 000 000
12 881 000
12 000 000
11 000 000
10 000 000
9 000 000
Number of Internet hosts
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7 000 000
6 642 000
6 000 000
5 000 000
4 000 000
3 864 000
3 000 000
2 056 000
2 000 000
1 136 000
1 000 000
0
213
235
562
1 024
1 961
2 308
28 174 56 000 159 000
313 000
617 000
1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996
Year
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viduals and not-for-profit organizations, co-ordinates many activities related to technical standards,
globalization, administrative procedures, education
and training, and scaling. The ISOC Board of
Trustees is the governing body of the ISOC. The
Internet Activities Board (IAB), a technical advisory
group to ISOC, is responsible for oversight of
Internet technical standards, for the standardsmaking process and for all protocols and architectures used on the Internet. In addition, the IAB acts
as a liaison with other national and international
standards-making organizations, such as the International Standards Organization (ISO) and the
American National Standards Institute (ANSI), and
publishes the Request for Comments (RFC)
document series that effectively defines Internet
standards and conventions. The IAB and the Federal
Networking Council (FNC) have delegated responsibility for co-ordinating the management and dissemination of unique Internet host computer numbers, domain names and other parameters to the
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) at
the University of Southern California. The Internet
Network Information Center (InterNIC), maintained by AT&T and Network Solutions, provides
site, host, domain and personal directory services to
the Internet.
Protocols and standards are researched and
developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF), which also administers the overall Internet
standards-making process. An open organization of
network designers, vendors and researchers, the
IETF, manages Internet standards through the RFC
document series. The chair of the IETF, along with
the area directors of the IETF, form the IESG
(Internet Engineering Steering Group) that handles
policy issues related to protocol research and development. RFCs, the official and published documents
of the IETF (and thus the Internet), are divided into
four different types: Standards Track, Informational,
Experimental and Historic. Standards Track RFCs
go through three phases: Proposed, Draft Standard
and Standard.
Access
Access to the Internet is often divided into three
classes, a trichotomy first proposed by Matrix
Information and Directory Services (1994): the Core
Internet, consisting of those who can provide or distribute information over the Internet, the Consumer
Internet, consisting of people who can receive information over the Internet, and the Matrix, consisting
of users with access to electronic mail systems who
can exchange mail with Internet users, including most
proprietary, corporate e-mail systems. Until recently, the most common way to access the Internet
was through a university or government agency.
However, in the course of 1995, the number of hosts
in the commercial domain exceeded the number of
hosts in the educational domain for the first time.
Users with personal accounts generally access
the Internet by dialling in with a modem, either
through a commercial online service such as America
Online, CompuServe or Prodigy, or directly to the
Internet through a local Internet Service Provider
(ISP), otherwise known as a Point of Presence
(POP). These commercial services provide additional proprietary information not available on the
Internet as well as Internet access. ISPs can range in
size from a couple of simultaneous connections
operating from an individual’s home to large, national providers such as PSI in the United States or IWay, Pipex, U-Net and Demon Internet in the
United Kingdom. In developed nations, the telephone call to the ISP is most often a local call.
Almost all the United Kingdom and much of the
United States are covered locally by ISPs. Recently,
ISPs have also begun to appear in other countries.
In the United States, the Telecommunications
Act of 1996 makes it likely that telephone companies, both local Regional Bell Operating Companies
(RBOCs) and long-distance carriers, will begin
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offering Internet connectivity as a standard service.
France Telecom has also announced intentions to
provide a consumer Internet service, one that will
include (for an extra fee) access to its existing Minitel
service. If this happens, it is unlikely that local ISPs
will be able to survive without offering significant
added value. In addition, some users have access to
limited parts of the Internet (often just electronic
mail) through local computer bulletin board systems
(BBS) or community networks (‘freenets’). An alternative means of connection is through what is called
a ‘shell account’, in which a user dials into a remote
computer connected to the Internet. Users in this
case may have limited access to certain Internet services (e-mail, Usenet newsgroups, and even the
World Wide Web), although they generally do not
have access to graphics or many of the more
advanced services. The advantage of this type of
account, however, is that it requires only a low-end
computer and a slow modem, and it is particularly
popular in developing countries, where higher-end
equipment is often unavailable.
Economics and pricing
Pricing models for Internet access are varied, and
have been the subject of much study. Kahin (1995)
describes the economics of the Internet in terms of
the characteristics of its primary underlying technologies, leased lines and routers (computers used to
direct data traffic), both of which are subject to large
economies of scale. Additional factors to be taken
into account are the continually declining costs of
the computer hardware and the statistical multiplexing techniques used to combine the traffic from different sources into a steady average traffic stream,
both of which serve to drive down marginal costs.
MacKie-Mason and Varian (1995) approach Internet
economics from the perspective of congestion control. They compare fixed-rate access to the Internet
with the ‘tragedy of the commons’, wherein there is
no penalty for increased use, resulting in ‘overgraz-
ing’ of the resource (for example, excessive crossposting of messages). They posit an Internet costing
model based on: incremental packet cost, social cost
of delay to others, network infrastructure fixed
costs, incremental cost of connecting an additional
user, and cost to expand network capacity.
Most authors, even those in favour of a more
use-based Internet pricing model, agree that some
subsidies for civic, educational and not-for-profit use
are required. Kahin (1995) discusses the provision of
subsidies to schools and public libraries for Internet
access. Subsidies are not peculiar to the United
States, however. For example, in Tarragona, Spain,
TINET (Tarragona Internet) has begun offering
users free basic Internet service (electronic mail and
Usenet news), and below-market rate full Internet
service, and the Peruvian Scientific Network (RCP),
seeded with monies from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), is providing subsidized Internet access and training to the public.
A Web site or page can also be the level of economic analysis. Thus far, relatively few sites charge
for the content they provide, with the information
either being funded through advertising or provided
as a loss-leader to entice the user to purchase a more
complete version of the product. The Fourth World
Wide Web Survey revealed that the number of people unwilling to pay anything for access to Web sites
had increased to 31.8% from 22.6% in the previous
survey (Georgia Institute of Technology, 1995).
Internet services
Internet services are combinations of protocols and
software programs that allow people to use the
Internet in different ways. A number of genres have
emerged over the lifetime of the Internet, and most
are still being used today, albeit in various incarnations. Usenet is a distributed network of computers,
predating the Internet but now running almost
entirely on the Internet infrastructure, that exchanges messages via a set of agreed-upon protocols
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in collections of messages called newsgroups. These
newsgroups can be thought of as electronic discussion groups, and are arranged in hierarchies. There
are seven top-level international hierarchies of newsgroups, called comp (for computer-related discussions and information), sci (for the sciences), soc
(for sociocultural issues), rec (for hobbies and recreational activities), news (for activities related to
Usenet itself), talk (for debate-oriented activities)
and misc (for activities not fitting into one of the
existing categories or spanning categories). In addition to the global hierarchies, there also exist local,
regional and national hierarchies (de for Germany, in
for Indiana, etc.). Finally, there are alternative hierarchies that are carried by some news servers, including the anarchic alt hierarchy, which has been the
subject of controversy owing in part to the sexually
explicit nature of some of its newsgroups. While
there is no central Usenet authority, a number of
accepted rules and procedures have evolved that
users and news server administrators abide by in the
maintenance of Usenet newsgroups for the seven
major global hierarchies. These procedures include
calls for discussion about the creation of new newsgroups, calls for voting on the creation of such newsgroups, and protocols for the collection and counting of votes and subsequent action.
Gopher, developed at the University of
Minnesota in the United States, was the first multimedia-oriented network navigation tool. Designed
to simplify network navigation for the user by allowing providers to present their information in the
form of navigable hierarchical menus, Gopher, and
its companion Internet search index, VERONICA,
played a major role in increasing the accessibility of the Internet to the non-technical user.
Although many Gopher-based servers still exist,
Gopher has been largely superseded by the World
Wide Web, which duplicates and significantly enhances its functionality.
Undoubtedly, the most significant Internet ser-
vice is the World Wide Web – often referred to as the
multimedia portion of the Internet. The World Wide
Web is based on the concepts of hypertext and
hypermedia. Information available via the World
Wide Web is provided in the form of hypermedia
pages, which look like pages from a magazine, combining graphics and text, but with the added feature
that the user can follow links provided by the author
to other documents. Users view these hypermedia
pages with the aid of software programs known as
Web browsers. While the first widely available Web
browser was Mosaic, more recently Netscape
Navigator has become the browser of choice for
most people. Browsers on the World Wide Web
access Web servers via HTTP, or HyperText
Transport Protocol. Information on the Web is generally marked up with HyperText Markup Language
(HTML), a subset of the Standard Generalized
Markup Language (SGML). HTML provides facilities for the incorporation of text, graphics, sound,
video and hypertext links into Web-based documents, as well as document formatting. To provide
documents over the Web, information providers
mark up these documents using HTML codes (or
tags) and make them available via an HTTP server.
HTML is a continuously evolving standard, and
HTML 2.0 is the currently accepted version, supported by almost every browser. HTML 3.0 is currently under discussion, though many Web browsers have already implemented some of its features.
Some browser developers, notably Netscape and
Microsoft, have implemented non-standard features,
and a major discussion item among Web service
developers is the degree to which these features
should be utilized.
Most recent developments in Internet service
are intended to fit within the World Wide Web and
HTML framework, which has proven remarkably
extensible and flexible. Virtual Reality Modeling
Language (VRML) is a technology used to represent
three-dimensional interactive objects and scenes.
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The most successful applications of VRML to date
have been in the areas of molecular modelling and
architecture. Recently, the VRML standard has been
extended by the VRML Architecture Group to
incorporate motion, through the Moving Worlds
standard. The most significant extension of the
World Wide Web architecture has been the development of Java. Created by Sun Microsystems, Java is a
full object-oriented, distributed programming language. Instead of downloading static documents, a
Web user can download active Java programs, which
then execute in his or her Web browser (in platformindependent manner). Applications range from cosmetic enhancements of Web pages through remote
scientific instrumentation to dynamic software rental.
Specifying Internet resources
Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) are strings of
characters that specify completely the information
needed to retrieve a resource available on the Internet. They include the protocol used to access the
resource (‘http’ for the Web, ‘gopher’ for Gopher,
‘ftp’ for FTP, ‘telnet’ for Telnet, ‘mailto’ for electronic mail, etc.), the Internet host on which the resource
is accessible, the port number on the host through
which the resource is being made available (usually
this number is absent, and a default is assumed), and
the location (usually the directory path name) within
the host at which the resource may be found. The
location may also be omitted; in this case, the
resource retrieved is usually the primary home page
available on the specified host. Example of URLs
include http://www.unesco.org/general/eng/about/
constitution/index.html (UNESCO’s Constitution),
and telnet://infogate.ucs.indiana.edu (the Indiana
University library catalogue). Web browsers use
URLs both to retrieve documents directly and to
link to documents from other pages.
The URL scheme has some significant limitations. First, as URLs are primarily instructions for
retrieving a resource, they do not identify the con-
tent or title of the resource itself. Consequently, the
contents of a document may change, but its URL
will not change at all if the location remains constant.
Second, multiple copies of a document in different
locations may have entirely different URLs, providing no clue that they are indeed the same document.
There have been efforts to develop a more consistent
and location-independent scheme for referring to
Internet resources (usually referred to as Uniform
Resource Identifiers (URI)), but so far there has
been no agreement, nor standard implementation.
Navigation
Today’s best-known navigation tools include
Yahoo!, Lycos, WebCrawler, OpenText, AltaVista,
Inktomi, InfoSeek and Magellan. Each has its own
particular focus, way of gathering material to be
indexed, search language and interface. Several also
offer value-adding features, such as Yahoo!’s browsable ontology. These tools are typically funded in
one of four ways: subsidized by a university (many
search engines start out this way, and then become
commercial); a fee levied for access (such as with
InfoSeek, which has a two-tier structure – the first
level is free to users, and the more advanced capability is charged on a subscription and per-search basis);
as a demonstration of indexing software or hardware
(OpenText, AltaVista); and, most significantly, by
advertising. Many search engines are funded using
the broadcasting model – the content is not so much
the product as the bait to deliver users to advertisers’
doors.
These navigation tools also differ in terms of
the body of documents to which they provide access.
Yahoo! sources much of its content directly from
document owners. This subject categorization, limited indexing and browsability make it ideal for initial
investigation into the range of resources available on
a topic, but less desirable for finding more obscure
or specific information. Others, such as AltaVista
and Inktomi, focus on speed and comprehensive-
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ness. Some search engines, such as McKinley’s
Magellan, include reviews and ratings of many Web
sites. Most of these search engines obtain indexable
material through the use of a ‘spider’. Also known as
robots or crawlers, spiders are software agents that
rove from site to site, retrieving information, indexing it and following all links recursively. This is a
lengthy, computationally- and bandwith-intensive
process, and there are always more Web sites than
have been visited by the spiders. There are several
problems with this approach to indexing. The first is
that sites which have not been linked to any of the
sites indexed by a spider may not be discovered by
the spider. Second, many sites have changed since
they were originally indexed, and thus the indexes
are often out-of-date, and contain many ‘dead links’.
Third, many users may not want their sites to be
indexed by these publicly available search engines,
considering it an invasion of privacy. In addition,
from the user’s perspective, these search indexes
often generate a large number of false hits, which
provide useless information.
Internet addressing and the domain name
system
Each host on the Internet has a unique address, or
hostname. These are arranged hierarchically in
groups called domains. The largest domains, toplevel domains, contain all of the hosts in a particular
country, and are identified by the ISO 3166 twoletter country code. For example, the domain for
Japan is jp, the domain for Brazil br, and for South
Africa za. The full list of these country codes can be
found at http://www.nw.com/zone/iso-countrycodes. Although the United States has a top-level
domain, us, it also has the additional top-level
domains com, edu, org, gov, net and mil (for commercial organizations, higher education, not-forprofit organizations, government, network providers and the military, respectively). Within each of
these top-level domains are other domains, usually
representing a particular organization (a university, a
government agency, a corporation). Within these
may be Internet hosts, or subdomains, often representing particular organizational units. For example,
the hostname of the primary Indiana University
School of Library and Information Science Internet
server is ‘www-slis.lib.indiana.edu’. This means that
the host is in the edu top-level domain, and is thus a
United States higher education institution. The ‘indiana.edu’ is a domain registered to Indiana University. The ‘lib’ is a subdomain within Indiana
University, and ‘www-slis’ is the actual name of the
computer.
Commercial use and users
The business potential of the Internet has been evident for some time. It has been estimated that use of
the Web is growing at 40% per month. Of course,
there are many outstanding technical issues, relating
in particular to bandwidth and responsiveness,
which affect perceptions of credibility and reliability
(for example, gateway failures, capacity limitations,
dead links and server overloads). As a market-place
the Web is unusual. The number and range of suppliers is unlike any other market-place: it is a World’s
Fair, souk, shopping centre and direct mail catalogue
rolled into one. Within the Web, marketing can be
business-to-business, business-to-consumer or consumer-to-consumer. This plurality is a defining feature, and offers a mix of benefits for both producers
and consumers.
Producer perspective
The generic attractions of the Web from a supplier
perspective include (Cronin and McKim, 1996):
•
Lower entry costs: Virtual markets are easy to
penetrate.
•
Re-purposing: A digitized product base can be
configured in a variety of ways to create secondary product lines.
•
Direct customer access: The Web creates direct
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•
•
•
•
•
•
•
connections between producers and consumers
without recourse to distributors or a sales network.
Lower distribution costs: The separation of content from the storage medium eliminates several steps in traditional industry value chains.
Indirect sales channels: Retailers can exploit the
Web to generate referrals to conventional
wholesale/retail outlets.
Pre-segmented markets: The Web encourages
self-branding/self-segmentation.
Lower advertising costs: Merely to have a presence on the Web is to advertise.
Lower transaction costs: For providers of certain categories of goods the costs of doing business drop significantly.
Lower exit costs: The converse of low entry
costs are low exit costs.
Secondary markets: Additional revenue streams
can be generated by selling advertising space or
designing home pages.
Consumer perspective
The underpinning dynamic of the virtual market
changes traditional relationships between suppliers
and buyers in a number of ways (Cronin and
McKim, 1996):
•
Shift from push to pull: The Web gives consumers a voice and the option of drilling down
into product information.
•
Greater choice: The breadth and depth of product range that the Web encourages will translate
into greater consumer choice.
•
Transparency: The Web creates transparency by
facilitating consumer-to-consumer information
exchange.
•
Disintermediation: The Web has been described
as the instantiation of frictionless capitalism.
•
Price drivers: Transparency in the market-place
makes it harder to fool consumers.
•
Convenience: Electronic shopping adds a new
•
•
dimension to the concept of customer convenience.
Customer feedback: Vendors will become highly sensitive to the voice of the consumer.
Impersonality: Some consumers enjoy the sense
of anonymity afforded by electronic shopping/trading.
Producer/consumer concerns
Many companies’ reluctance to move quickly into
electronic trading is a function of the perceived
threat of break-ins to their internal networks by
hackers. Other concerns have to do with the vulnerability of soft goods to piracy and the resultant loss
of revenue. From a consumer perspective, Web markets raise issues of privacy. Consumers may seek
safeguards that transaction meta-data will not be
used for unauthorized purposes.
From Internet to Intranet
Many businesses, recognizing that the technologies
of the Internet (and particularly the World Wide
Web) are robust, easy to use, well-tested and flexible,
have begun to use them not only in the construction
of public Web-based presences, but also in the creation of internal corporate information-sharing networks. The Georgia Institute of Technology (1995)
Fourth WWW User Survey notes intra-enterprise
use of the Web as the most common commercial use.
Such internal networks, often termed ‘intranets’, are
a natural intention of the Internet, which has been
used since its inception to facilitate discussion and
the dissemination of information.
Electronic transactions
Models for secure commercial transaction over the
Internet fall into three classes: those that seek merely
to provide secure transportation of transaction
information from purchaser to merchant; those that
attempt to facilitate the actual funds’ authorization
and transaction settlement process; and those that
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aim to reproduce the essential features of money in
digital form. The first class is concerned with the
provision of secure transfer of information from
a browser to a server. There are two competing
standards for the provision of this service: Secure
HTTP (S-HTTP) and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL).
Although from time to time the security in such systems may be penetrated (for example, certain weak
points can theoretically be exploited), in practical
terms they are sufficiently fail-safe for the purposes
of ordinary commerce.
The second class is concerned with facilitating
the entire electronic purchasing process. After an initial period of dispute, a draft standard for secure
electronic transactions emerged in early 1996.
Known as the Secure Electronic Transactions (SET)
standard, it provides a framework within which
confidentiality can be protected, payment integrity
ensured, and both merchants and customers authenticated to each other. CyberCash also provides a
secure, though not yet SET-compliant, transactionfacilitation service. Most existing secure transaction
techniques depend on public-key cryptographic
techniques, which do not require the sender and
recipient of encrypted data to agree upon a secret
encryption password beforehand. These crypto-systems can also be used to provide facilities for authentication and digital signatures. One of the primary
impediments to the spread of secure transactions
internationally is the ITAR (International Tariff in
Arm Regulations) that restricts the export from the
United States of software using strong cryptographic
techniques. Countries such as France also have
strong laws against the export or use of cryptographic software.
The DigiCash payment scheme is different in
that the customer withdraws electronic cash from a
DigiCash bank, and that electronic cash is actual
money rather than just a credit card number. When
the customer transfers DigiCash to the vendor, then,
it is as though cash has been exchanged – the item of
value itself has transferred from customer to vendor.
The DigiCash scheme also provides another ‘cashlike’ feature – payer anonymity. When electronic
cash is exchanged, the payer is not necessarily identified to the vendor (as would be the case if a credit
card number were exchanged). This ensures additional customer privacy, and prevents the purchasetracking and marketing information-gathering that is
possible with credit card transactions. Finally, there
are commerce models, such as that of First Virtual,
which rely not on sending encrypted information
over the Internet, but on e-mail verification and purchase confirmation.
Government applications
Government organizations have been leaders in
making information available over the Internet. The
United States Federal Government has been at the
forefront, with Web sites such as THOMAS, a
repository of current and past legislative information, the LC Marvel information system (of the US
Library of Congress), and the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration (NASA) Web site. The
Bureau of the Census also makes extensive data
available. National Technical Information Services,
through FedWorld, provide pointers to all United
States Federal Government information resources.
Government organizations as diverse as the
Brazilian Ministry of Planning (http://www.seplan.
gov.br), the Ministry of Interior Affairs in Latvia
(http://www.ugdd.lv) and the Ministry of Information and Communication in the Republic of Korea
(http://www.mic.go.kr) all provide information
about their functions and services via their homepages. Similar enthusiasm can be seen among nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The United
Nations itself has a Web site (http://www.un.org),
with pointers to the sites of its departments and
divisions, or to its Specialized Agencies such as
UNESCO (http://www.unesco.org). A guide to the
use of United Nations Internet-based resources has
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been released. The World Bank (http://www.world
bank.org), too, has a well-developed Web presence.
Education, research and scholarship
Although the Web is relatively tiny today, containing
only a fraction of the world’s publicly available data,
it is quadrupling in size annually and in six or so
years may grow a thousandfold. It would be shortsighted, however, to see the Web merely as a distributed document store and/or digital reference library,
though it increasingly satisfies both these functions.
The Web is much more than a virtual equivalent of
existing archival and library institutions. It is a
dynamic environment that supports new kinds of
foraging and communication in which scholars are
anything but passive participants. Moreover, the
Web is as much a showcase for authors as a source of
documents. In its far-sighted electronic publishing
plan, the Association for Computing Machinery
(ACM) acknowledges that many authors view their
works as ‘living on the Web’ and see networks as
opportunities ‘for collaborative authoring and for
dynamic documents that incorporate other documents’ (Denning and Rous, 1995). Features and
issues worth considering are: size and scope, cost,
ease of use, novelty, community and legitimacy.
Size and scope
The bypassing of traditional (institutional) information suppliers and reference sources will be a consequence of progressive migration to the Web.
Commercial publishers, for their part, are coming to
recognize the importance of digital publishing, and
are struggling to develop a business framework for
online enterprise. First, materials located on a server
in Addis Ababa, for example, need be no less accessible than those hosted by one’s own institution in
Bloomington. Second, statistical data sets, image
banks, textual archives, information services, entertainment and much else are available on the Web
without any partitioning on the basis of content, for-
mat or nature of medium. Third, the boundary lines
drawn by disciplinary groups are ignored by the
infinitely extensible latticework of hypertextual
links that give the Web its unique character. Fourth,
‘grey’ literature is no longer the stepchild of primary
publishing; the Web entertains semi-published and
vanity items, irrespective of provenance or pedigree.
Cost
Although the commercial character of the Web is
developing rapidly, many organizations, including
universities, research institutes and government
agencies, are actively making materials available at
zero cost to users. Scholars, in many cases, benefit
from their parent institution’s willingness to provide
subsidized and unmetered Internet access in support
of the teaching and research functions. The general
absence of direct or metered charges, coupled with
the savings in time and effort afforded by desktop
access to the World Wide Web, underscore the costeffectiveness of the technology from the standpoint
of time-pressed scholars with limited budgets for
consumables and subscriptions.
Ease-of-use
Simplicity of use combined with interactivity make
for a powerful technology, and recent software
developments, notably Java, offer new levels of
dynamic interaction. The increasing availability of
statistical data sets on the Web will allow scholars to
acquire and interactively analyse remote data. The
implications, however, extend beyond local convenience. The worldwide reach of the Web means that
academics and researchers in less-developed nations,
handicapped by lack of resources or unable to travel
abroad and work in foreign research institutions, can
compensate, in part, by connecting and interacting
with remote data sets hosted by First World institutions. In fact, the Web makes possible new kinds
of technology transfer for educational purposes
between centre and periphery nations. Convenience,
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combined with cost-attractiveness and local control,
helps explain the success of non-conventional electronic publishing/storage ventures such as the Los
Alamos Preprint Archive or the CERN Preprint
Server in high-energy physics. These (and other) collectivist ventures have in a relatively short time
established themselves as the primary information
exchange/pre-publishing forums for international
research communities, bypassing established mechanisms and procedures. Their success and transparency are such that concerns about legitimacy and institutional oversight seem to count for little, least of all
with opinion leaders in the scientific cultures in
question.
The search for novelty
Experientially, the World Wide Web offers scholars
something new: a tool that eliminates distance,
erodes arbitrary boundaries between domains and
facilitates associative learning. Although the Web can
be used as a document locator, its real strength may
lie in the fact that it supports query-free browsing
and promotes serendipity. The ability to forage for
new ideas and insights in a hypernavigable and
unbounded space is a singular aspect of the Web.
Cyber salons and digital communities
The Web functions as a global common; a shared
space which creates new forms of social interaction.
Berghel (1995) uses the term ‘digital village’ to capture the defining characteristics of cyber communities. The Web, with its unparalleled capacity to link
scattered communities, can be a powerful catalyst for
highly intensive and participatory exchange across
national boundaries and disciplinary borders,
though the outcomes of these interactions will not
always or necessarily be for the better. As Poster
(1995) observes, segments of virtual social space differ from the public sphere in important ways: they
can be places where ‘rational argument rarely prevails, and achieving consensus is widely seen as
impossible’. Gresham’s Law seems, in some cases, to
apply to the currency of digital discourse.
The evolution of communities of interest, of
virtual communities not bound by geography, ranks
among the most notable developments stimulated by
the Internet. One of the earliest, and most influential, of these virtual communities was the WELL
(Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link), an 8,000-member,
San Francisco-based virtual community. While it is
impossible to measure the number of these virtual
communities, their impact is undeniable. They take
many forms, including LISTSERVs, Usenet newsgroups and various Web-based forums. General
social norms and guidelines for discussion groups
and virtual communities on the Internet, often
known as ‘netiquette’, have emerged.
Legitimacy
Many of the barriers to the use of the Web in scholarship relate to the perceived legitimacy of digital
documents, that is, the acceptability of documents
existing only in electronic form as a part of the
scholarly record. The first concern relates to plagiarism. The ease of copying, coupled with the sheer
number of potential electronic texts, creates unparalleled opportunity for plagiarism. The second obstacle has to do with the difficulty in establishing the
authenticity and authorship of electronic documents.
The technologies and protocols that enable authentication of documents and document authorship, digital signatures and public key cryptography in particular, do exist but, for a variety of technological and
political reasons, public acceptance and implementation of these has been slow. The third problem is that
of ephemerality. Documents on the Web may be here
today, but gone tomorrow, if the host organization
loses funding, the individual providers leave their
organization, or the will to make older documents
available is absent. For the scholarly community to
accept digital documents, reliably managed archives
that use digital signatures and public key cryptogra-
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phy to ensure the integrity of their holdings will be
required. But perhaps the most serious obstacle is
the problem of version control. Documents available
on the Web can change regularly, without their corresponding references (e.g. the URLs) changing. A
scholar may cite a document, but by the time the
citation is checked, the Web document may have
changed (often providing little or no indication of
the changes made). Archives of digital documents
will have to take into account the need to cite a
document as it exists at a particular moment in
time.
In the university sector, there is significant
investment in the World Wide Web as an enterprisewide utility to support a range of core functions –
teaching, scholarship, administration and market
positioning. Rates of adoption and development are
differential (within and across both institutions and
countries), but the Web is clearly seen as a means of
enhancing and accelerating scholarly communication, fostering indigenous/local publication, facilitating computer-mediated teaching and underpinning
distance learning strategies. Also, at a time of
increasing competition for revenue and resources,
the Web can act as a lever in gaining an edge in terms
of advertising, branding and recruitment.
Disillusionment and controversy
There has been some evidence in recent months that
use of the Internet may actually be slowing and frustration rising. Ironically, as bandwidth overall on the
Internet increases, more and more people are accessing it from home using at best a 28.8 Kb per sec
modem, and thus have effectively less bandwidth.
This problem is accentuated by the increasingly
graphical nature of most Web pages, which slows the
transmission of documents greatly. Add to this the
still-greater bandwidth required by more advanced
multimedia formats (video, animation, sound), the
proliferation of graphically intensive advertisements
that do not contribute to content, and the expecta-
tion of television-like responsiveness, and user frustration is bound to result.
The Internet has also provoked serious controversy. The original Internet users were primarily
scholars and computer experts, whose prevailing
ethos might be characterized as ‘anything goes’ and
‘information wants to be free.’ Commerce was originally forbidden by the NSFNET usage guidelines,
and even thereafter was strongly discouraged.
However, as the Internet grew and became more
tightly integrated with society in general, many governments attempted to regulate it as they did established media, by applying stringent copyright and
anti-obscenity legislation. The result has been several
well-publicized clashes. For example, the 1996
Communications Decency Act in the United States
applies legally weak ‘indecency’ standards to traffic
on the Internet, which has spawned high-profile
public protest. Controversies on the Internet have
ranged from clashes of cultures to conflicts of
national law. In one case the book Le grand secret,
which dealt with François Mitterand’s battle with
cancer, was banned in France by a judicial decision
only to be posted on the Internet, thus infringing
French copyright law. This event led some to consider stricter controls on Internet content. In another
well-publicized case the Church of Scientology, an
American-based religious sect, successfully obtained
restraining orders and search warrants after a disaffected member posted copyrighted Church documents on the Internet.
The Internet and development
Although there are computers on the Internet in
most countries, penetration is strongest in the developed world. The top seventeen nations in terms of
number of Internet connections are all members of
the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD). Countries such as Turkey,
Brazil and Thailand, however, have made recent
rapid advances in terms of Internet connectedness. It
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Table 1. Internet hosts by country, January 19961
Country
Hosts
United States
6 053 402
Germany
452 997
United Kingdom
451 750
Canada
372 891
Australia
309 562
Japan
269 327
Finland
208 502
Netherlands
174 888
Sweden
149 877
France
137 217
Norway
88 356
Switzerland
85 844
Italy
73 364
Spain
53 707
New Zealand
53 610
Austria
52 728
Denmark
51 827
South Africa
48 277
Belgium
30 535
Israel
29 503
Korea, Republic of
29 306
Taiwan
25 273
Poland
24 945
Singapore
22 769
Brazil
20 113
Hong Kong
17 693
Czech Republic
16 786
International Organizations
15 570
Ireland
15 036
Russian Federation
14 320
Mexico
13 787
Hungary
11 486
Portugal
9 359
Chile
9 027
Greece
8 787
Iceland
8 719
Slovenia
5 870
Turkey
5 345
Argentina
5 312
Malaysia
4 194
Estonia
4 129
Thailand
4 055
Slovakia
2 913
Indonesia
2 351
Country
Hosts
Country
Ukraine
Colombia
Croatia
China
Philippines
Luxembourg
Latvia
Costa Rica
Kuwait
Venezuela
Bulgaria
Romania
Peru
India
Lithuania
Uruguay
Bermuda
Egypt
Faroe Islands
Ecuador
Cyprus
United Arab Emirates
Bahamas
Iran
Morocco
Kazakstan
Jamaica
Antigua and Barbuda
Brunei Darussalam
Panama
Bahrain
Nicaragua
Dominican Republic
Zimbabwe
San Marino
Greenland
Lebanon
Tunisia
Armenia
Malta
Bolivia
Macao
Georgia
Uganda
2 318
2 262
2 230
2 146
1 771
1 756
1 631
1 495
1 233
1 165
1 013
954
813
788
630
626
608
591
533
504
384
365
276
271
234
187
164
160
156
148
142
141
139
93
90
88
88
82
77
68
66
65
60
58
Monaco
Guam
Trinidad and Tobago
Fiji
Liechtenstein
Cayman Islands
Macedonia
Albania
Uzbekistan
Guatemala
Saudi Arabia
Gibraltar
Belarus
El Salvador
Anguilla
Jordan
Nepal
Pakistan
Kenya
Algeria
Senegal
Namibia
Moldova, Republic of
Andorra
Solomon Islands
Antarctica
Ghana
Sri Lanka
Côte d’Ivoire
Barbados
Vatican City
Guinea
Swaziland
New Caledonia
Belize
Azerbaijan
Ethiopia
Tonga
Cuba
Cook Islands
1. Data are from the Internet Domain Survey (http://www.nw.com).
Hosts
56
55
55
52
44
42
39
36
35
27
27
26
23
23
23
19
19
17
17
16
14
11
10
10
9
7
6
6
3
2
2
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
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is only in the United States and a few other OECD
nations that users routinely have access to the
Internet from their homes. Otherwise, access is provided almost entirely through universities, government agencies and businesses. Table 1 provides a
breakdown of Internet hosts by country. Even
assuming that a reliable telecommunications infrastructure and logistical support system exist, the prevailing culture, social structures, community values
and established rhythms of life in many LDCs will
challenge simplistic assumptions about the nature of
technology transfer. How is indigenous knowledge
shared and diffused throughout local communities
from generation to generation, and how do these dissemination practices differ from the knowledge
transfer process in industrialized countries? In their
review of computing in North Africa, Danowitz et
al. (1995) acknowledge that Internet connectivity, in
particular, could weaken the enforcement of prevailing social values and hinder censorship of ideas and
opinions inimical to ruling powers. To illustrate the
importance of cultural relativism, it is only necessary
to compare information access policies in, say,
Sweden or the United States with those of China or
Singapore.
In the United States, the present administration
is committed to connecting public schools, libraries
and hospitals to the Internet as part of its National
Information Infrastructure (NII) initiative. If public
libraries have Internet connections, so the logic goes,
local citizens and community groups will become
electronically empowered. Approximately 21% of
American public libraries and 35% of public schools
have some connection to the Internet – although
such access is not equitably distributed. In many
societies, pervasive networking may stimulate
greater participation in the democratic process and,
at the same time, add a further set of checks and balances on all levels of government. Networks can
enable concerned citizens, local action groups or disaffected individuals to challenge authority directly,
to source important background information and to
mobilize support from like-minded, but often geographically dispersed, groups. But universal democracy comes with a price tag: the technology platforms which facilitate open exchange also support
electronic eavesdropping and cyber surveillance of
dissident voices by, for example, government departments, national security agencies, or corporations
(see Chapter 20).
Of course, it is not an accident that Internet
connections are scarce in closed societies. The perception among ruling élites is that real-time communication of news and views, whatever the medium, is
potentially threatening. As Travica and Hogan
(1992) noted, computer networks (particularly RELCOM and GlasNet) were a key source of otherwise
inaccessible information at the time of the 1991
attempted coup in the Soviet Union and a means of
mobilizing counter-action. Networking ruptures
centralized control. Networks have the capability to
destabilize autocratic regimes by diffusing and
amplifying unorthodox views in both vertical and
horizontal directions. A few governments have
already expressed concern that the Internet will
enable their citizens to obtain information from outside groups – in particular, dissident groups from
outside the country – and are working on an infrastructure that will allow them a much greater control
over Internet content. In 1993, the Institute for
Global Communications launched the PeaceNet
World News Service, which offers news rarely found
in the mainstream press. Currently, a group of
human rights organizations (Amnesty International,
Human Rights Watch, PEN) is exploring the possibility of establishing a communication system over
the Internet.
Internet demographics
There have been very few reliable studies of Internet
demographics. Most have been delivered through
the Internet itself, and have thus been highly
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skewed towards advanced computer users. In 1995,
CommerceNet, an organization dedicated to promoting standards for commerce on the Internet,
along with Nielsen Media Services conducted perhaps one of the first controlled, random-sample surveys on Internet demographics in the United States.
Among other things, the survey found that people
with access to the Internet fell into the following
age-groups: 16–24 (22%); 25–34 (30%); 35–44
(26%); 45–54 (17%); 55+ (5%). Overall 64.5% were
male, 88% had some college education, and they
were primarily either professionals (37%) or fulltime students (16%), while 55% had a household
income of US$50,000 or higher. The survey also
found that 17% of the total population of the United
States and Canada had some access to the Internet,
8% had used the Web in the last three months, and
11% the Internet. Approximately 14% of all
Internet users had purchased goods or services over
the Internet.
General demographic surveys of Web users
have also been carried out by the Georgia Institute
of Technology (1995) for the past three years, and
provide a snapshot of Web users’ lifestyles, behaviours and attitudes. The mean age of Web users is
32.7; approximately 70% are male; median income is
US$63,000 (well above the $36,950 United States
median income); 76.2% are from the United States,
10.2% from Canada and 9.8% from Europe; 31%
work in computer-related and 24% in educationrelated fields. More than 40% use their browser for
six to ten hours per week, with shopping a much less
frequently cited activity than entertainment or
accessing reference information. Some trends can be
inferred when comparing data from the third Web
survey as compared with the current survey. The
median income of Web users is dropping, indicating
that use of the Web is becoming less socially exclusive. The proportion of women responding to the
survey increased by 15%, although not by nearly as
much outside the United States. The average age of
the respondents was down from 35 to 32.7 years.
Finally, the proportion of Web users from the
United States is diminishing, as usage from Canada,
Mexico, Europe, Latin America, Africa, the Middle
East, Asia and Oceania increases.
Conclusions
Although the Internet growth curve must inevitably
slacken from exponential to logistic, there are no
signs yet that the rate of adoption is abating; indeed,
predictions of a billion users by the year 2000 are
commonplace. While congestion is often cited as a
major impediment to sustained, widespread use, it is
conceivable that the technology/capacity trajectory
will keep pace with the demand curve. Another factor to take into account is the phenomenon of intelligent agency, and whether in fact the Internet will be
roamed mostly by programs, not people. It may,
therefore, be helpful to think in terms of three
worlds: the Internet (public space), the intranet
(closed communities), and what we have chosen to
term the ‘infranet’ (the backgrounded portions of
the public Internet increasingly inhabited by automated agents working on behalf of the great majority of ordinary users).
However, technical matters will not necessarily
dominate. As transnational usage grows, a cluster of
sociocultural issues will move dramatically to the
fore. Primary among these will be concerns relating
to censorship, social control, cultural contamination,
linguistic hegemony and computer crime, though
nations and individuals will, of course, differ
markedly in the perspectives they bring to bear and
their assessments of the benefits and drawbacks of
open electronic communications: what one nation
might consider an egregious example of censorship
might well be considered wise social stewardship in
another. More optimistically, there are those who
view the Internet as a powerful tool for constructing
identity, cultural self-awareness, and local selfsufficiency on an unprecedented scale. ■■
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URL: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/
survey-10-1995.)
INTERNET SOCIETY. 1994. Growth of the Internet: Internet
Messaging Traffic. (Available from URL: http://
www.isoc.org/ftp/isoc/charts/90s-mail.txt.)
——. 1996. Internet Society Information Services.
(Available from URL: http://info.isoc.org: 80/
infosvc/index.html.)
KAHIN, B. 1995. The Internet and the National
Information Infrastructure. In: B. Kahin and J.
Keller (eds.), Public Access to the Internet, pp. 3–23.
Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press. 390 pp.
MACKIE-MASON, J.; VARIAN, H. 1995. Pricing the
Internet. In: B. Kahin and J. Keller (eds.), Public
Access to the Internet, pp. 269–314. Cambridge,
Mass., MIT Press. 390 pp.
MATRIX INFORMATION AND DIRECTORY SERVICES. 1994.
MIDS Press Release: New Data on the Size of the
Internet and the Matrix. (Available from URL:
http://www.tic.com.)
MIDS. 1996. MIDS Home Page. (Available from URL:
http://www.mids.org.)
NETWORK WIZARDS. 1996. Internet Domain Survey.
(Available from URL: http://www.nw.com.)
POSTER, M. 1995. The Net as a Public Sphere? Wired, Vol.
3, No. 11, pp. 136–7.
TRAVICA, B.; HOGAN, M. 1992. Computer Networks in
the Former USSR: Technology, Uses and Social
Effects. In: D. Shaw (ed.), ASIS ’92: Proceedings of
the 55th ASIS Annual Meeting, Pittsburgh, PA,
October 26–29, pp. 120–35. Washington, D.C., ASIS.
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Blaise Cronin is Professor of Information Science at
Geoffrey McKim,
Indiana University and Dean of the School of Library
Manager of Information
and Information Science. He is also the BLCMP
Systems at Indiana
Visiting Professor of Information Science at
University’s School of
Manchester Metropolitan University in the United
Library and Information
Kingdom, and an Associate Consultant with Solon Consultants,
Science, has degrees in mathematics, and
London. From 1985 to 1991 he was Professor of Information Science
library and information science. A
and Head of the Department of Information Science, Strathclyde
former network analyst for Indiana
Business School, University of Strathclyde, United Kingdom. He has
University Computing Services, he has
taught or consulted in more than thirty countries, and been an invited
been involved in the development and
speaker at fifty universities worldwide. Dr Cronin is author or editor
management of Internet resources for
of more than 200 books, reports and articles on strategic information
over seven years. He has taught courses
management, information marketing, scholarly communication and
in Web server design, Internet resource
citation analysis. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Information
use and management, and information
Scientists, Institute of Management, and Library Association, and a
technology in organizations. He is
member of several other professional associations. His editorial board
author of a recent book, Internet
memberships include Journal of Documentation, Library Quarterly,
Research Companion, and a member of
International Journal of Information Management and Revista
the Internet Society, the Society for
Española de Documentación Científica, and he was Founding Editor
Social Studies of Science, the American
of the Journal of Economic and Social Intelligence.
Society for Information Science, and the
Association for Computing Machinery.
Blaise Cronin
Dean, School of Library and Information Science
Geoffrey McKim
Indiana University
Information Systems Manager
Bloomington
School of Library and Information
Indiana 47405-1801
Science
United States
Indiana University
Tel: 812-855-2848
Bloomington
Fax: 812-855-0078
Indiana 47405-1801
E-mail: [email protected]
United States
Tel: 812-855-2848
Fax: 812-855-0078
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Chapter 19
Design criteria
for large library
buildings
Harry Faulkner-Brown
Chartered Architect,
United Kingdom
T
his paper considers planning and design
aspects of new library buildings, and extensions and major reconstruction of existing
buildings, with special attention to libraries that
make a significant contribution at the national level.
So many factors influence these buildings that a
rationalization of common features is presented,
since there are many similarities in the functions of
large buildings designed to meet the needs of academic and research institutions, historical societies,
state and national libraries. The many similarities are
balanced by differences caused by the unique nature
of governmental, educational, cultural, geographical
and urban philosophy and practice, and by the community they serve.
Some results are well illustrated in a recent
publication (Melot, 1996). Several authors describe
and illustrate many of the features of fifteen recent
major library buildings. The variety is staggering;
some are quite inspirational and cover regions as
dispersed as the west and east coasts of the United
States, Europe and Scandinavia, the Middle and Far
East and parts of Africa. This is an important book
of reference which can be of value to decisionmakers in any country contemplating a project for a
major library building.
Functions
Keyes Metcalf, the doyen of library consultants,
wrote his important book Planning Academic and
Research Library Buildings in 1965, and has become
the great guide on this particular subject. The revised
edition (Metcalf et al., 1986) contains the following
statements of purposes:
•
Protection of books and collections of other
records from the elements, poor environment
and mishandling.
•
Housing of books and other collections in a variety of accommodations for ease of access.
•
Housing of the various catalogues and related
bibliographic tools which enable the reader to
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find relevant materials in the local collections
and supplementary holdings in other institutions.
•
Accommodation of readers and other clientele
who need immediate or frequent access to collections and services.
•
Provision for staff who select, acquire, organize,
care for and service the collections, and who aid
readers in their informational needs.
•
Quarters for ancillary functions such as photocopy services, bibliographic instruction, audiovisual materials preparation, computer support
facilities.
•
Quarters for library administration and business offices: such functions as personnel, finance,
fundraising, publications, graphics or signage,
building operations, security, supplies, mail and
delivery services.
•
Study, research, and writing quarters for students, faculty and visiting scholars.
•
Space to publicize resources or services through
exhibits, lectures, publications, etc.
•
Structure to serve as a memorial to an individual and symbolism of the institution’s academic
life in pursuit of scholarly achievement.
These physical provisions are designed to meet the
present needs of the library building, but at the same
time must be arranged in such a way that it remains
possible to adapt to inevitable changes in government or institutional policy, educational variations,
social patterns and technological advances, and which
are difficult or impossible to predict.
Brief (Programme)
It is important that the needs of a new, extended
or reconstructed building should be clearly and
unambiguously stated. This is one of the most
important activities in the life of any building. It
is formulated for clarity of communication. It is
important here to define what is generally accepted
as the brief or programme. The final brief is a
comprehensive list of all the requirements necessary to inform the design team adequately, and is
gradually developed over an extended period of
consultation. (This is sometimes undertaken at the
outset by brief-writing specialists.) It is based on
the initial brief given by a client to an architect,
usually when the building is first commissioned,
and can form the conditions and rules of a competition. It can be defined as a short, concise
statement of the problem, its objectives, organization, operation, technical requirements and
schedule of accommodation, and sets out factors
affecting the design standards and qualities required;
it should be comprehensible to lay committees
and be used for subsequent design evaluation. Prejudices and suggested design solutions should be
avoided. Examples are given in Faulkner-Brown
(1993).
Fixed-function
For all practical purposes, before 1940 library buildings were fixed-function buildings. Each part was
designed for a specific, known and predictable
function. This type of building was successful only
while the function remained constant. By 1945 the
function of academic libraries and others, including
very large libraries with a legal deposit role, stopped
being constant. Three principal items revolutionized
library planning, resulting in massive changes to the
building: the changing role of and expansion in education; new forms of communication and access to
information; and the massive development of all
forms of relevant technology. However, in larger
buildings requiring the storage of considerable
amounts of both book and non-book material
(generally in closed access), bookstacks and specialist
stores in fixed-function accommodation form a large
part of the whole. The rest of the building provides
space which can be adapted, enlarged and changed to
rearrange functions and activities easily, without
undue disruption.
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Modular
The flexible modular building is now a mature building type and is the result of several decades of development and refinement. Some buildings have not
managed to cope with the changes that have taken
place in activities and access to information,
although many have – but will they and unborn
schemes continue to cope in the future when needs
and activities are changing so rapidly and in such
unforeseen ways? It is difficult, or virtually impossible, to predict how library buildings will change in
the future: the only certainty is that they will change.
Qualitative factors
In examining what exists at the moment, an enormous range of solutions to the problem presents
itself. To attempt to analyse or even comment
on aspects of resolution and to either review or criticize building design solutions would require a volume on its own. Major buildings, especially national
libraries, are unique, and some are so unusual that
they should not be studied as role models. It is therefore more appropriate to try to establish common
ground, so that in making projections for the future
a clear picture can emerge of what the library building of today and tomorrow should be like.
To attempt to illustrate an ideal library would
be to ignore the many and varied basic factors affecting the buildings, such as national culture and education, user needs, patterns of use, the influence and
constraints of the site, the financial climate and
national pride. There is, therefore, justification for an
examination of desirable qualities rather than theoretical details.
Although internal arrangements and user services vary from place to place, and from one type of
library building to another, recent buildings of all
sizes have several common factors, which have been
crystallized into the following desirable qualities or,
as some colleagues call them, ‘Faulkner-Brown’s ten
commandments’.
A library building should be:
Flexible, with a layout, structure and services which
are easy to adapt.
Compact, for ease of movement of readers, staff and
books.
Accessible, from the exterior into the building and
from the entrance to all parts of the building,
with an easy comprehensible plan needing
minimum supplementary directions.
Extendible, to permit future growth with minimum
disruption.
Varied, in its provision of book accommodation and
of reader services to give wide freedom of
choice.
Organized, to impose appropriate confrontation
between books and readers.
Comfortable, to promote efficiency of use.
Constant in environment, for the preservation of
library materials.
Secure, to control user behaviour and loss of books.
Economic, to be built and maintained with minimum
resources both in finance and staff.
These are the broad outlines of ten important qualities. Irrespective of size, these qualities can be
applied in varying degrees. It is worth examining
them in more detail. Several library buildings discussed in Melot (1996) have adopted these qualities,
including the National and University Library in
Reykjavik, Iceland, Bibliotheca Alexandrina in
Egypt, and the Juma Al-Majid Centre for Culture
and Heritage in Dubai.
Flexible
Flexibility, of course, does not mean that the structure is flexible and will bend or move under stress. A
flexible library building is one which permits flexibility in the layout of its planning arrangements,
with structure, heating, ventilation and lighting
arranged to facilitate adaptability. By arranging
columns with regular spacing, or reducing the number of columns with long span beams, and by design-
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ing the floors to carry a superimposed live load of 7.2
kN/m2 (150 lbs/ft2) for bookshelf loading, it is easy
to move departments, issue and service desks, bookshelves, reader places or other library functions to
any part of the building.
Better flexibility is achieved when floors are
level, without steps, and when the heating, ventilation and lighting are uniform and allow rearrangement without the need for any alterations and yet
maintain an adequate environment. The planning
arrangements are much more flexible if the internal
walls are concentrated in certain areas to form
‘cores’, containing immovable features such as stairs,
lifts, toilets and ducts. Other walls, where security
and privacy are absolutely essential, are not structural and are designed to be demounted and erected
elsewhere. The building and its components are
designed to facilitate this. All other areas can be left
open and, through applying the well-tried experience of offices designed on Bürolandschaft principles, visual and aural privacy are achieved very simply, with the bonus of much improved communications and supervision.
The necessary visual privacy is achieved by
varied furniture arrangements with bookshelves providing indigenous screening, and movable indoor
planting additionally providing colour, a variety of
forms and life to the interior.
Aural privacy is achieved by acoustic material
on both the floors and ceiling, plus the introduction
of an even level of ambient noise in the ventilation
system. These factors ensure that the noise levels of
normal library functions and conversations are
absorbed in a satisfactory manner, and are not distinguishable at distances of beyond four metres from
source.
In an open-planned building designed flexibly
to cater for adaptations, the relocation of departments and activities is achieved without having to
resort to expensive contractual alterations, and the
librarian is not inhibited from making changes or
instituting experiments – they are achieved merely
by moving furniture and bookshelves. If, however,
the furniture is fixed or built-in, or built of brick,
steel or reinforced concrete, then it does present a
more difficult problem, The furniture is immovable
for all time, which assumes that needs will not
change.
Furthermore, it can be demonstrated that the
open-plan flexible library can be economical in staff
resources, since overseeing and informal control are
facilitated by the openness rather than by dividing
up the building into rooms or halls, thereby requiring fewer staff.
It can be seen, therefore, that the open plan has
many advantages, that enclosed rooms disappear, or
are drastically reduced in number, and that departments are in loosely defined areas, informally
arranged in relationship to each other.
Compact
A compact building will assist the librarian in many
ways. Theoretically, travel distances will be reduced
to a minimum if the building is a cube and on entry
users are brought to the centre of gravity. Books,
staff and readers will need to move shorter distances
in a cubic building than in a linear building or one
extended by moving away from a deep plan. There is
also a bonus in economy of consumption of fuel and
energy.
Accessible
The quality of ‘ease of access’ to the building and to
the books is one to which much attention needs to
be paid. An easy and inviting route to the entrance
should also be unambiguously defined. Once inside
the user should be aware of the location of the principal elements of the building – inquiries, the main
desk, reference, catalogue and stairs – and the routes
should be strongly stated without an overproliferation of signs and directions.
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Extendible
Until recently all librarians and some architects
maintained that library buildings, especially academic libraries, are not finite. They should be capable of
extension and land should be reserved for future
expansion.
A significant development in British academic
libraries was the report of a working party on Capital
Provision for University Libraries – the Atkinson
Report. Among other things it recommended the
adoption of the principle of a ‘self-renewing library
of limited growth’, and established new norms. This
meant that academic library buildings were to be
finite with no provision for extension.
It is a commonly held view that every library
building should be capable of extension, that the
construction of the building will facilitate extension,
and that at each stage of development the building
should appear to be a complete entity. Naturally the
choice of exterior materials and construction will be
heavily influenced by this latter factor. The exterior
wall of a library building can consist of a series of
simple repetitive units which can be removed from
the façade and re-used in an extended building. If the
library is not extended it can stand in its present state
as a finite and apparently complete building. If the
needs of the library change, the building can be
changed reasonably easily. Some of the ten commandments can be bent, some diluted, but this one
should not be abandoned.
Va r i e d
The variety of book and of user accommodation in a
library adds interest to the interior but also provides
for the many needs and preferences of the users.
These will vary considerably depending on size,
function and location.
are made freely available to all’, then a principal
quality in a library building is that the display of its
library materials can be organized so that they are
accessible and easily available. Simplicity in layout,
arranged in an easily understood and inviting way, is
vital in both small and large libraries.
Comfortable
Before beginning the design of a library, the librarian
and the architect together should visit a large number of libraries of all types. It is important to observe
how libraries are actually used. Photographs and
notes should diligently record this, and will probably include many cherished photographs of sleeping users. Almost without exception they will have
occurred in large libraries with antiquated or inadequate ventilation and without air-conditioning. A
fresh, constant temperature and humidity not only
promote efficiency of use, but encourage use. In
some climates discomfort is caused if windows in a
large library are opened – heat, cold, dirt and noise
are offered ‘open access’ from the external environment. In other climates, to achieve the desirable
comfort conditions, it is important and economic to
use the free facility nature offers from the external
environment and induce it into the building with
controls to regulate it according to need. Generally
speaking this applies to large library buildings, especially those with a deep plan, and to those where
study conditions can be offered with a secure aural
environment.
In all libraries a good standard of lighting is
necessary – there is a lot to be said for an evenly
maintained level of a minimum of 400 lux at the
working plane throughout the public areas. This will
be adequate for most needs, including the illumination of the book titles on the lowest shelf.
Organized
Since it has been said that ‘the library is the principal
means whereby the record of man’s thoughts and
ideals, and the expression of his creative imagination,
Constant in environment
Research into the preservation of library materials
indicates that a constant environment is necessary,
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and when this requirement is linked to the former –
comfort of the user – an unvarying level of illumination, heating, cooling, ventilation and acoustics will
give the type of environment needed in a library. The
wall should be considered to be an environmental
filter or regulator. It should reduce heat loss in winter and solar gain in summer. It should keep out
intrusive external noises yet provide windows for
prospect.
Temperature and relative humidity (RH) standards, which are generally acceptable for libraries,
are 18.5˚C to 21˚C and 50%–60% RH (never to
exceed 65% RH).
Secure
Security of the collections has always been of prime
importance in libraries. The reduction of public
access and egress to a single point well-controlled by
electronic book detection systems or other means,
and the openness of planning to assist automatic
overseeing of most areas, goes some way to reduce
the loss of books and to control the behaviour of users
in many instances, so that vandalism is reduced.
Economic
The energy crisis has hit all of us. Libraries can be
expensive buildings to build and they can be expensive to run; in fact running costs have become a
major financial consideration to librarians. In large
libraries the deep compact plan requires long hours
of artificial illumination and air-conditioning to create an even and constant environment. Every acceptable method must be examined to minimize cost
without impairing service.
In the first instance, when designing a building
economy in running costs can be effected by reducing the surface of the exterior skin of the building
(walls and roof) as much as possible, so that the ratio
of wall area to floor area is low.
A building form with a cube shape is ideal, but
may not suit the library planning needs. However, it
is important that the building shape is as close to a
cube as possible.
Second, windows allow heat to pass out of the
building in winter and to pass into the building in
summer from solar penetration. Window openings
should be as small as possible and as a guide the recommended total area of window should not exceed
25% of the total wall area. Shaping the exterior of
the building to provide shading for the windows can
keep out solar penetration in the hottest part of the
year, thereby reducing the cooling load in summer.
There is no need to stress the importance of wall and
roof thermal insulation.
Contrary to a widely held belief, the great consumer of energy in a deep plan building in temperate
climates is not the heating requirement in cold
weather. Well-insulated walls of minimum area are
the only substantial source of heat loss. The centre
part of the deep plan is not losing heat, since it is surrounded by a cocoon of warm air in the perimeter
bay. In addition to the lighting the major consumers
of energy are the fans to circulate air through the
building and the refrigeration equipment to reduce
the temperature in warm weather. The period when
maximum energy is required is in hot weather with a
full library, when the air-conditioning plant has to
deal with high outside temperature, and with permanent artificial lighting to a high, even standard.
Space requirements
The Standing Conference of National and University Libraries (SCONUL) co-ordinates the results of
investigations and experiences in British academic
libraries. In one of its recent papers (McDonald,
1996) attention is drawn to the inadequacy of the
British norms for the size of libraries and to the need
for increasing the allowance.
According to what have become known as the
Atkinson Norms, the appropriate net size of a university’s central library should be assessed by the following formula:
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1.25 m2/student numbers FTE (full-time equivalent)
+ 0.2 m2/student numbers FTE in ten years’ time
+ assessed provision for special collections
+ adjustment for special circumstances
Table 1. Space requirements in the AmerikaGedenkbibliothek
Areas
Public open access
The gross size of the library can be derived by
adding the balance area (for toilets and staircases,
etc.) to this net figure. Depending on the shape of the
building, this balance area is commonly about 25%.
The figure of 1.25 m2 was based on 0.40 m2 for seating and 0.62 m2 for bookstacks, with an additional
20% allowed for administration (library staff ). It
was also suggested that there should be one reader
place for every six students (FTE) on average, and
the space required for each reader place was 2.39 m2.
It was recognized that different provision was appropriate for different academic disciplines; for example,
one place for every two law students was recommended. These norms have been widely adopted not
only in the United Kingdom but also around the
world, and have been used by many universities in
planning their libraries and bidding for the necessary
resources. On the other hand, some universities have
never achieved the level of funding necessary even to
approach these minimum standards.
The existing space norm was based on a reader’s module with a table measuring 900 mm 3 600
mm. It has become increasingly clear that this was an
absolute minimum even in print-based libraries; but
as the use of equipment, especially computing equipment, has grown, this table size has become grossly
inadequate. In order to provide space for books,
computers and readers’ papers, a table size of 1,200
mm by 800 mm is necessary. As a result of increasing
information technology provision, the old space
norm of 2.39 m2 per reader space has therefore been
found to be insufficient, and in recent projects universities have found it necessary to make a more generous space allowance of between 2.5 m2 and 4 m2
per reader space.
Staff open access
Staff accommodation
Closed access bookstacks
Total usable net area
Add 30% for circulation, toilets and services
Overall gross building area
m2
8 718
600
1 660
1 550
12 528
3 758
16 286
Public and academic buildings
There is a natural difference between the types of
provision for academic or research libraries and for
public libraries. To illustrate the differences, I have
provided extracts from two of the many briefs I have
written for libraries (Faulkner-Brown, 1993).
The first is from the brief for the proposed extension of the Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek (Berlinen
Zentral Bibliothek, Germany). The total areas required are summarized in Table 1.
Standards
In estimating the area of new buildings required,
the standards as established for the AmerikaGedenkbibliothek are presented in Table 2.
Table 3 shows the required floor areas in
the brief and schedule of accommodation for the
Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt.
Special technical requirements
In large library buildings storage accommodation for
books, pamphlets, maps, sheet music, slides, records,
compact discs, and audio or video tapes should be
available as appropriate on open access. But a large
part of the collection inevitably will be housed in
closed access stacks. There is merit in considering
furnishing the stores with static shelving initially,
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Table 2. Standards in the Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek
Stock accommodation
(per m2)
Books on open access
Children, fiction
Books on closed access
Catalogue trays
Journals
6.66
50
200
8 (1 000 cards per tray)
Reader accommodation
(m2)
Estimated average issues permanently on
loan (shelving required for balance; %)
Reader places
2.5
Children’s books
Reader places for study
3.0
Fiction, German
50
carrels, micro-catalogues,
Foreign languages
20
language learning
Subject departments
30
Gramophone records
50
50
20
40
Scores
200
Compact discs
Gramophone records
200
Musical scores
5
Compact discs
400
Video cassettes
30
Video cassettes
100
Table 3. Required floor areas, Bibliotheca Alexandrina
Unit
Cultural Activities Dept
Collection (vols.)
Public
Staff
Usable floor area (m2)
20 000
380
34
2 700
1 800
93
28 500
250
48
4 200
Books and Periodicals Collections Dept
Books
Periodicals
3 880 000
260 000
Special collections
Books
Periodicals
Music scores
Special documents
Maps
150 000
40 000
20 000
1 000 000
50 000
Administrative Services Dept
Technical Services Dept
5 000
Operational Support Services Dept
International School of Information Studies
52
800
142
2 000
129
8 000
(including 6 000 m2
for car park)
32
Conference centre ancillary services
Total
Books
Periodicals
2 430
4 055 000
300 000
Music scores
20 000
Maps
50 000
Special documents
2 400
1 800
1 000 000
530
50 400
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with the physical provision to convert to compact
mobile shelving when necessary.
As a guide, the parameters given in the
Bibliotheca Alexandrina brief (see box, p. 365) for
various types of room are as follows:
•
Reading rooms and offices: sound reduction factor 43–45 dB (decibel); natural lighting as far as
possible; artificial lighting about 500 lux at
table level; finishings designed to avoid glare;
temperature 21–24°C; relative humidity
55–65%; air change 2V/h (volume/hour).
•
Lecture rooms, classrooms in the International
School of Information Science (ISIS): sound
reduction factor 45–55 dB; finishings designed
for acoustic absorption; natural lighting for
classrooms; artificial lighting about 500 lux at
table level; temperature 21–24°C; air change
10V/h.
•
Closed access book storerooms: artificial lighting
about 300 lux; temperature 18–20°C; relative
humidity 45–55%; floor load 1,300 kg/m2.
•
Laboratories and workshops: designs ensuring
acoustic absorption; variable artificial lighting
about 500 lux; temperature 18–21°C; air change
2V/h; own air extraction system; de-ionized
water supply; uninterrupted power supply for
computer; standby power source.
Major reconstructions of existing
buildings
The great difficulty encountered in conversions or
alterations to buildings to make them suitable for use
as up-to-date library buildings usually lies with the
existing structure and services. If the structure has a
floor loading capacity of 7.2 kN/m2, from a structural point of view it should be reasonably flexible since
it can carry static bookstacks. A floor loading capacity of 13.5 kN/m2 will permit the use of compact
mobile bookstacks. If the building is a historic or
architectural national monument, then problems of
interference with parts of the building fabric might
be overwhelming.
A major cause of interference can be ductwork
for a ventilation system. There is wide experience in
this problem in most parts of the world. The new
problems which are showing themselves are generally concerned with the proliferation of communications and information technology. So much cabling
needed in public parts of a library building is difficult
to conceal. However, new techniques could be helpful. Digital cordless communication technology is
developing. This eliminates the need for horizontal
wiring, has minimal space requirements, causes little
disturbance to the fabric of an existing building and
is quick to install. Generally it is in its infancy – it
will be most interesting to see how it develops.
Ecological library buildings
Library buildings protect the contents and occupants from the external environment and phenomena such as rain, wind, temperature and humidity.
Indigenous design makes use of naturally occurring
materials and works with the environment.
Examples of man-made materials for building which
work with the environment, in addition to those
occurring naturally, are concrete, brick and tile.
Those which do not are glass, steel and plastics.
In the 1960s the style of building was in
conflict with ecology. Glass boxes and lightweight
structures made huge demands on energy supply
(and therefore costs) and, among other disadvantages, contributed to the ‘sick building syndrome’.
Fortunately there is a steady move towards reducing
wasteful expenditure on energy by maximizing the
use of ambient, renewable sources of energy in place
of generated energy by:
•
Providing a thermally massive structure (which
to a large extent is needed for floors substantial
enough to support bookshelves) and gaining
free night-time cooling.
•
Achieving an effective balance between the use
of advanced automatic controls on building
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i n266f o r m a t i o n w o r k
plant and the opportunity for users to exercise
direct control of their environment.
•
Improving natural ventilation.
•
Maximizing the use of daylight and sunlight
with the possible introduction of an atrium,
provided it does not impair the acoustic environment.
The above suggestions when applied in differing
climates will produce quite different solutions. It
is a complicated technology but can produce a
simple energy and cost-saving solution.
Architectural options
For several decades the design of large library buildings generally followed the pattern of this building
type in the United States, which evolved as a deepplan squarish building, with open access bookstacks
in the centre and reading spaces on the perimeter. In
some instances, sometimes for good visual reasons,
large windows occupied substantial areas of the
façade.
Technically the buildings were similar in a variety of climates since they were sealed, without opening windows. Heat gains due to solar effects on both
the structure and, in many cases, unshaded windows
caused problems which could only be relieved by
artificial cooling. In addition, the centre bookstacks,
because of their remoteness from the perimeter daylighting, needed to be artificially illuminated during
opening hours.
Damage to the biosphere has become an
increasing concern of all those involved in construction. The energy crisis of the 1970s has made us recognize the critical effect on human and economic
costs. There is an increasing realization that many of
the problems can be avoided by designing for natural
light and ventilation.
Human response to daylight indicates that
most people value the variety of daylight, enjoy its
presence and at least want a view of the world outside. There is a subtle benefit in that occupants’
metabolic rhythms are synchronized properly with
the time of day or night.
Natural and artificial heating, lighting and ventilation of buildings are interdependent and there has
been a noticeable move towards replacing the totally
artificial internal environment with a more natural
system. In large library buildings it is difficult to
bring the benefits of daylight to all parts of the floor
areas used for human occupancy. A new pattern is
appearing where the introduction of an atrium
allows natural daylight to reach parts that were previously inaccessible. Too much or too little glazing,
of the wrong kind or in the wrong place, will produce heat losses or heat gains, which may have to be
counteracted by artificial cooling or heating. This
has to be balanced with the avoidance of glare, down
draughts, lack of privacy, severe temperature variations or ultraviolet damage. Examples can be seen in
Copenhagen, both in the extension to the Royal
Library and in the University Library at Amager.
The emerging style of library buildings
towards the end of this century seems to indicate
that the needs of the users are paramount, and that
the consideration of using natural daylight, heating,
cooling and ventilation is a pattern that must be followed. ■■
References
FAULKNER-BROWN, H. 1993. The Initial Brief. The
Hague, IFLA Section on Library Buildings and
Equipment. 68 pp. (Library Building Planning
Leaflet No. 4.)
MCDONALD, A. 1996. Space Requirements for Academic
Libraries and Learning Resource Centres. London,
SCONUL. 8 pp.
MELOT, M. 1996. Nouvelles Alexandries. Les grands
chantiers de bibliothèques dans le monde. Paris,
Cercle de la Librairie. 399 pp.
METCALF, K.; LEIGHTON, P. D.; WEBER, D. C. 1986.
Planning Academic and Research Library Buildings.
2nd ed. Chicago/London, American Library
Association. 630 pp.
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Harry Faulkner-Brown is an
architect and library planning
consultant. Before retiring from his
architectural practice in 1986, he was
involved in the design and construction
of the national and parliamentary libraries in Canada,
as well as ten academic and three public libraries in the
United Kingdom. Since then he has given specialist
planning advice to: the Central Library, the Hague;
Amerika Gedenkbibliothek, Berlin; the Beijing
Agricultural University Library, Bibliotheca
Alexandrina, Alexandria; the Royal Library,
Copenhagen; the Icelandic National and University
Library, Reykjavik (for which he was recently invested
with the Knight’s Cross of the Icelandic Order of the
Falcon, for his contribution to its design and
development); and several college libraries in Oxford
and Cambridge. He is currently extending the
Cambridge University Library. He was formerly
Chairman of the IFLA Section on Library Buildings
and Equipment and has lectured extensively for the
British Council, LIBER and IFLA. He was made an
Honorary Fellow of the Library Association and
awarded an OBE in 1982.
Harry Faulkner-Brown
Chartered Architect
Anick House, Anick, Hexham
Northumberland NE46 4LW
United Kingdom
Tel: (1434) 607764
Fax: (1434) 600186
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Part Three.
Issues
and trends
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Chapter 20
The information
society
Nick Moore
Policy Studies Institute,
United Kingdom
A
pproaching the end of the twentieth century,
societies all over the world are changing. In
countries of many different kinds information now plays an increasingly important part in
economic, social, cultural and political life. This phenomenon is taking place regardless of a country’s
size, state of development or political philosophy.
Changes that are happening in Singapore, with a
population of 2.5 million, are similar to those taking
place in Japan with its population of 125 million.
Developing countries like Thailand are striving to
build information-intensive social and economic
systems just as hard as countries like the United
Kingdom or France. And the goal of creating an
information society is shared by the capitalist states
of North America as well as the communist states of
China and Viet Nam.
The characteristics of information
societies
Information societies have three main characteristics.
First, information is used as an economic resource.
Organizations make greater use of information to
increase their efficiency, to stimulate innovation and
to increase their effectiveness and competitive position, often through improvements in the quality of
the goods and services that they produce. There is also
a trend towards the development of more information-intensive organizations that add greater amounts
of value and thus benefit a country’s overall economy.
Secondly, it is possible to identify greater use of
information among the general public. People use
information more intensively in their activities as
consumers: to inform their choices between different
products, to explore their entitlements to public services, and to take greater control over their own
lives. They also use information as citizens to exercise their civil rights and responsibilities. In addition,
information systems are being developed that will
greatly extend public access to educational and cultural provision.
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The third characteristic of information societies
is the development of an information sector within
the economy. The function of the information sector
is to satisfy the general demand for information
facilities and services. A significant part of the sector
is concerned with the technological infrastructure:
the networks of telecommunications and computers.
Increasingly, however, the necessity is also being recognized to develop the industry generating the
information that flows around the networks: the
information-content providers. In nearly all information societies, this information sector is growing
much faster than the overall economy. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) estimates
that in 1994 the global information sector grew by
over 5% while the overall world economy grew by
less than 3%.
The creation of individual information societies
is taking place within a much greater, international
process of change. Partly this is because the developing information systems are global, or at least international, in their reach: satellite broadcasting systems do not recognize national boundaries; telecommunication networks provide connections between
countries and continents, while the Internet is perhaps the ultimate example of a global system.
Both developed and developing countries are
being transformed into information societies. Most
of them are concerned to use information to improve
their relative competitiveness or, at least, to retain
their position in an increasingly competitive global
market. As part of this, countries of all kinds, from
Australia to Zimbabwe, are actively developing their
local information industries so that they can participate in the growing international market for information. But it goes beyond international trade. The
development of information societies represents
a series of attempts to achieve more general economic and social advance. Countries as diverse as
Singapore, Sweden and South Africa are building
economies that encourage information-intensive
companies. And they are creating information systems that will raise levels of education, strengthen
community links and stimulate public participation
in decision-making.
There is a concern, however, that the shift
towards information societies will increase the gap
between the developed and the developing countries.
To counter this, the World Bank has recently
launched its Information for Development initiative.
Origins and causes
The origins and causes of information societies lie in
two interrelated developments: long-term economic
development and technological change.
In the long term, the structure of economies
changes. It begins with a reliance on the primary
sector: agriculture, forestry and mining. Gradually,
the secondary sector – manufacturing industry –
becomes more important, contributing a larger proportion of Gross Domestic Product and usually also
contributing to exports. The rise of the secondary
sector is then followed by an expansion of the
tertiary sector. The commercial and service sector
grows and makes a greater contribution to the
national income.
At each stage in this progression, the productivity of labour grows, more value is added by each
worker, capital investment increases and the economy expands. Just as significantly, the relative importance of the different sectors of the economy
changes. The effect of this is shown quite clearly
in the United Nations Development Programme
(UNDP)’s Human Development Report (1994). This
shows that in economies as diverse as Singapore or
Senegal, Hong Kong or Hungary, the service sector
accounts for more than 60% of the nation’s economic activity. Even in the world’s least developed
economies, the share of the service sector (43%) is
higher than agriculture (37%) or industry (20%).
These changes have been taking place throughout the world for the last thousand years. Over the
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last fifty years, however, as economists like Fritz
Machlup, Marc Uri Porat and Daniel Bell have
shown, the tertiary or service sector has become ever
more concerned with processing information in different forms.
Technological change is a major contributor to
this process of economic development. Certainly in
recent years, the rapid development of information
and communication technologies has vastly
increased our capacity to process information and in
so doing has undoubtedly accelerated growth in the
information-intensive tertiary sector.
Some economists claim that in addition to
relatively short-term economic cycles it is possible
to identify periods of sustained economic growth
that are triggered by technological change. The
development of steam power, it is argued, triggered
the expansion of economies in Europe and America
during the Industrial Revolution. Electricity and the
internal combustion engine accounted for the dramatic economic expansion during the mid-twentieth
century. And now we have information and communication technologies.
The impact of information technology arises
from three of its characteristics. First, it is an
enabling technology. It can be applied in a wide
range of different circumstances and can itself contribute to further technological change. Second, the
capacity of the technology has been increasing at an
exponential rate for nearly twenty years and shows
no sign of slowing down. Finally, and perhaps most
important, the cost of the technology has fallen
rapidly over the same period and, again, seems likely
to continue to do so. These three factors have led
economists like Chris Freeman to reason that information and communication technologies will trigger
a new long wave of economic growth stimulating the
development of information societies.
The impact on employment
The structural changes that continue to take place in
the economies of different countries have an enormous effect on the patterns of employment, bringing
with them displacement, unemployment and social
disruption. Throughout the world there has been a
steady shift in the pattern of employment: from the
primary to the secondary sector, and again from the
secondary to the tertiary. In each case, however, capital investment has meant that, even though the
labour input has declined, output has grown.
In the primary and secondary sectors, labour
was displaced by machines. It is now possible to see
the same thing happening in the emerging information societies. Large numbers of clerical and administrative workers are losing their jobs as work is
automated. In developed countries, for example, the
introduction of electronic financial transactions is
causing substantial reductions in the numbers of
people employed in the banking sector. It is likely
that many of these people will find other jobs in new
information-intensive industries as the structure of
the economy evolves, but for others there will be a
very uncomfortable period of disruption.
As well as structural change, there is a great
deal of change in the nature of employment. Many
jobs are quite simply becoming more informationintensive – that is, they require workers to spend a
greater proportion of their day processing information and working with information technology.
This information-intensive way of working
brings both benefits and disadvantages. Working
arrangements become more flexible: for many it is
even possible to spend part of the time working at
home. But the price of this is a considerable blurring
of the boundary between work and home life.
Employers also want more flexibility and greater
power to hire and fire their employees as the nature
of their business changes. This is introducing a much
higher level of insecurity into the labour market. The
technology makes it easier for staff to keep in contact
with their workplace – notably through mobile communications – but many are becoming concerned
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about the level of stress that comes with never being
offline. It will take a long time for us all to adjust to
the changes that are taking place in the way we work.
M e t h o d o l o g i c a l i s s u e s : d e fi n i n g a n d
measuring the information society
It is proving very difficult to define and describe in
quantitative terms information societies. We have
seen that it is possible to identify some common
characteristics of information societies, but it is not
at all easy to go beyond generalized definitions, such
as: an information society is one in which information is used intensively as an aspect of economic,
social, cultural and political life. This presents a
major problem for statisticians who have to collect
the data that governments need for economic management. The question they face is quite simple: if it
is not possible to define and to measure the information sector, which we know is such an important
contributor to the economy, how can we really
know what is happening in our economy? The question is simple but the answer is far from obvious.
It is possible to define the information sector of
the economy. Broadly it consists of the organizations, in both the private and public sector, that create the information content, or intellectual property;
those that provide the facilities to deliver the information to the consumers; and those that produce the
hardware and software that enable us to process
information. It is more difficult, however, to define
and measure the information activity that takes place
within organizations outside the information sector.
The matter is further complicated by the intangible nature of information. It is a good that does not
easily fit into the economists’ scheme of things. Its
value can vary widely, particularly over time, which
makes it very difficult for accountants to value it for
company balance sheets. Also, the value of information, unlike most other goods, does not decrease as it
is consumed; indeed, the value may increase as one
piece of information is added to others. It has other
interesting economic characteristics: for example, the
cost of creating information is usually very high, but
the cost of reproducing an extra copy is very low –
an encyclopedia or a dictionary costs a great deal to
compile but an extra copy on a compact disc costs
less than a meal in a Paris brasserie.
The globalization of the information sector
poses further problems. Someone working in Africa
can use the Internet to obtain information about a
firm operating in Europe that has been compiled by
an American-owned information company based
in Switzerland using a database that was compiled
by Eurostat, the statistical arm of the European
Commission. Who regulates the information? Under
which set of laws is it collected, compiled, delivered
and consumed (see Chapter 26)? If the user has to
pay for the information, where does the revenue go?
Which governments are entitled to levy a sales tax on
the information? To which set of national accounts
should the financial transactions be credited? It is
possible to arrive at answers to most of these questions, but in doing so we raise further questions
about the ability of our economic and statistical systems to cope with the changes that are taking place.
A major effort is needed to bring these economic and
statistical systems up to date.
The emerging information industries
A defining characteristic of an information society is
an emerging or developing information industry. A
few countries rely on external organizations to supply all the information systems and services that are
required, but such cases are rare. Most countries are
actively encouraging the development of an indigenous information industry to meet the country’s
needs and, in many cases, to enable the country to
participate in the rapidly expanding international
information market.
It is useful, when considering the development
of the information sector, to divide it into three distinct segments: the first concerned with the creation
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of information – the content sector; the second concerned with the delivery of the information; and the
third concerned with information processing.
The information-content industry
The information-content segment comprises the
organizations in both the public and private sectors
that produce and develop intellectual property. The
information originates from writers, composers,
artists and photographers, assisted by editors, filmmakers, television producers, animators and a host
of allied occupations. These information creators sell
their work to publishers, broadcasters, distributors
and production companies that take the raw intellectual property and process it in different ways so that
it can be distributed and sold to the information consumers.
In the past, the work of creation and publication took place in quite separate organizations.
Authors worked with publishers and rarely had
much contact with video- or film-makers. But now
that it is possible to present the different types of
information in a common digital format, the boundaries are breaking down and it is possible to identify
multimedia companies that bring written, audio and
visual material together in the same information
package (see Chapters 16 and 21).
In addition to this genuinely creative information, a large part of the information-content segment
is concerned not so much with the creation as with
the compilation of information: the compilers of reference works, databases, statistical series and ‘realtime’ information services that supply constant
flows of information about things like share and
commodity prices. These information providers
account for a very significant proportion of the total
revenues of the information-content sector. It is here
that the public sector plays a key role. Governments
of all kinds are major collectors and compilers of
information. They hold, use and in some cases publish large amounts of information. In recent years a
number of countries have encouraged the private
sector information providers to exploit this information, partly to stimulate the dissemination of the
information itself but also as a means of supporting
the development of the information sector.
Linking all this is an important subset of the
information-content segment that is concerned with
the management of and trading in intellectual property rights. This part of the information-content
industry is considered in some detail in Chapter 26.
The information-delivery industry
The second part of the information industry is concerned with delivery, that is the creation and management of the communication and dissemination
networks through which we communicate information. This includes the telecommunication companies, many of which are still state-owned enterprises;
companies that provide cable television networks;
and satellite broadcasters, cellular telecommunication companies, and radio and television stations.
This segment of the industry is considered in greater
depth in Chapters 17 and 21.
Allied to these organizations is another set that
is concerned with the use of these and other channels
to distribute the information content. This is where
we find the booksellers, libraries, broadcasting companies and the providers of what are known as valueadded network services – these are services provided
through the telecommunication networks, but which
offer more than basic voice telephony: anything
from information about the weather to traffic news.
The information-processing industry
This segment of the information industry can be
conveniently divided into two parts: hardware producers and software producers.
The hardware producers design, develop, manufacture and market computers, telecommunications
equipment and consumer electronics. They tend to
be concentrated in the United States and East Asia,
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deal in very high volumes and are operating in a market where unit prices have been falling steadily for
over twenty years.
The software producers provide us with operating systems like UNIX, DOS or Windows, applications packages like spreadsheets and wordprocessors, and increasingly computer games. In recent
years most of the software industry has been concerned with producing software for mass consumption. There is still, however, a significant element
that produces custom-built software systems for use
in individual organizations.
Convergence and consolidation
The three segments of the information industry –
content, delivery and processing – are about the
same size in Europe, although in the United States
the information-content segment is estimated to be
larger (Table 1).
Table 1. The size of the information industry in Europe
and the United States (all figures are for 1994 and are in
US$ billions)1
Information-industry segment
European
Union
United
States
Information content
186
255
Information delivery
165
160
Information processing
193
151
Total
544
566
1. Size is measured in terms of sales within the European Union and the
United States.
Source: European Commission.
While the lack of reliable statistics makes it
difficult to reach firm conclusions, it does appear that
the information-content segment is growing in value
and economic importance. One way to look at this is
to consider the value chain, or where value is added
in the process of bringing an information product to
the market. Work by the European Commission
suggests that the value chain for information prod-
ucts is as follows: creation, development and packaging adds 48% to value and is growing; distribution
adds 38% to value and is declining, and user access
adds 14% to value and is stable. The ITU, in a similar analysis, estimates the value added by the telecommunication companies at the distribution stage
to be as low as 20%.
The growing appreciation of the significance of
the information-content segment accounts for much
of the restructuring that is taking place in the information industries. The 1990s have seen a dramatic
series of mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures as
companies try to reposition themselves along the
value chain. It is likely that this flurry of activity will
continue for several years until a new pattern of corporate ownership emerges. What does seem certain
is that the holders of intellectual property rights will
be in a stronger and stronger position.
The impact on the information
professions
The technological changes and the wider developments in the information industries are having a big
impact on the information professions: librarians,
information scientists, archivists and publishers.
These professions are facing two complementary
pressures. First, the technology of information work
is vastly extending the scope of their work. It is now
possible to gain access to and process much greater
quantities of information than was possible only five
years ago. Second, user expectations are rising constantly, creating a demand for ever more sophisticated, high-quality information services.
These pressures call for more highly qualified
professionals who not only understand the underlying principles of information work but also possess
the technical skills needed to exploit the full potential of the technology. The result is a demand for
high-level, initial-qualification courses, usually at the
Master’s level. But initial education is not enough. It
needs to be supplemented throughout a professional
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career with continuing education and training that
enable professionals to develop and refine their
skills.
In the 1960s professional education was largely
provided on the job and was controlled by professional associations. Perhaps as a consequence, the
education tended to focus on the development of
practical skills. In the 1970s and 1980s responsibility
for initial education passed to academic institutions. The link with professional associations became
weaker and emphasis shifted from skills towards a
theoretical understanding of information work.
In the 1990s these initial academic qualifications
now are being complemented by a wide range of
training courses. Technical skills are once again
important and much of the training takes place while
people are at work. The focus is on high-level conceptual ability as a foundation for the rapid acquisition of a changing set of skills, aiming for flexible
competency.
The convergence of technologies and in particular the widespread use of digital information are
blurring the distinctions between subgroups within
the information professions. It is becoming increasingly feasible, for example, for authors to become their
own publishers; indeed, many organizations now use
desktop publishing facilities to produce a wide range
of publications. The new technologies are also creating demands for people with new sets of skills. Very
many organizations, for example, have developed a
presence on the Internet by creating their own pages
on the World Wide Web. This alone has generated a
need for a group of information professionals who
possess a combination of skills and understanding
that was not previously thought necessary.
Information as an organizational resource
Information is now seen as a valuable resource within organizations, a resource that if properly managed
and used can stimulate innovation, speed product
development, raise levels of productivity, ensure
consistent standards of quality and, through all these
means, raise the relative level of competitiveness.
The private sector
Much of the interest in the use of information as a
resource is concentrated in the private sector, where
productivity and competitiveness can determine the
success or failure of individual companies. It can also
determine the overall health of a country’s economy.
In manufacturing industry, information can
make a contribution to economic success in a number of different ways. It is an important element in
the process of research and innovation. For many
years companies have recognized the need for their
R&D departments to have access to the most up-todata information. Good products alone, however,
will not ensure a company’s success. They need to be
developed and designed to meet the requirements of
the market. This implies a high level of market intelligence and an understanding of the ways in which
consumers respond to different products. The
market-research industry has grown dramatically in
recent years in an attempt to meet these needs (see
Chapter 22). Information also makes a significant
contribution to the management of manufacturing
processes. Indeed, many modern approaches to
manufacturing – just-in-time production, for example – depend on the processing and communication
of substantial flows of information.
All this calls for a strategic approach to the
management of information in manufacturing industry, and many have argued that to achieve significant
productivity gains in industries like car manufacturing it is necessary first to develop a radically different
approach to the management of information.
The impact of information on the commercial
part of the private sector is possibly even greater
than in manufacturing. Commerce generates large
quantities of clerical and administrative work, and
it is this work that is most open to automation.
The introduction of automated reservation systems
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revolutionized the airline industry, and in so doing
created a set of global systems that now makes it
easy and cheap to book air travel, car hire and hotel
accommodation. Similarly, the electronic transfer of
money is transforming retailing and the banking system. In both these cases, the introduction of automated systems has dramatically reduced costs and
caused the loss of many thousands of clerical and
administrative jobs. In retailing, for example, information systems are being used to improve stock control. Information is collected when goods are sold,
the shop’s inventory is automatically updated and,
when the level of stock becomes low, additional
stocks can be ordered from suppliers. Some highly
efficient retailers have developed these stock-control
systems to the point where they no longer need
warehouses – stock is delivered directly from the
suppliers to the shops where it is sold.
Information systems are also making it much
easier for companies to balance supply and demand.
Ticketing systems on airlines, for example, monitor
the rate at which seats are sold on each flight and
adjust the number of discounted tickets made available to travel agents. Similarly, many car-hire firms
no longer have published hire rates: the rate is constantly adjusted to ensure that the supply of cars
always balances demand.
In other areas, decision-support systems are
used to reduce risk. An application for a loan used to
be considered by a middle manager in a bank or
financial institution who would review a range of
factors before deciding whether or not to lend the
money. Now this is all done automatically by computers that construct what is known as a credit score.
Applicants who score above a certain level receive the loan. Systems also exist to monitor credit
card use, alerting the credit card company to
any significant changes in the behaviour of the cardholder. By adopting these systems, financial institutions can greatly reduce the level of risk in their
business.
Extensive use is made of information in marketing. Shops and supermarkets provide customers
with discount cards or their own credit cards. This
enables retailers to monitor the customer’s shopping
habits and to build this into their marketing strategy.
Some use the information to promote different products for different kinds of customers.
The long-term success of many commercial
organizations will be determined by their capacity to
use and manage information to reduce costs, to
extend their range of services, to reduce risk and to
become more sensitive to customer demands.
Information is even making an impact on
the traditional professions like law and medicine.
Lawyers now have access to sophisticated legal
information systems and they make extensive use of
computers to monitor their work and to account for
their time. Similarly doctors are now able to keep
much closer track of their patients through sophisticated records management systems.
The public sector
Information is having a similar impact on the public
sector. Public authorities at national and local levels
are beginning to find that information can change
quite dramatically the way they work. At one level it
enables them to improve their general efficiency in
ways similar to those used in commercial organizations: through the automation of clerical and administrative tasks, through the use of decision-support
systems and through the development of electronic
payment systems. Some are also beginning to develop electronic transactions services so that people can
access departments, filling in forms and processing
claims electronically.
We have yet to see the full impact on democracy and participation. There have been a number of
experiments, usually at a local level, where the local
authority has set up electronic voting systems and
explored the scope for public participation in decision-making. The results are inconclusive. It seems
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difficult to retain sufficient levels of public interest in
the issues, and politicians are understandably wary
about opening the door to a form of participation that
might ultimately undermine the very democratic
institutions it sought originally to support. There
does seem to be greater potential, however, for using
cable television to generate more interest and participation in local community affairs. It is now possible
to allocate broadcasting channels for use by quite
small communities, and in this way it becomes possible to broadcast live events like school governors’
meetings. Where this has been done a surprisingly
high level of interest has been shown by members of
the public.
One of the features of information societies is
their emphasis on education. A recent report on
the information society in Europe has emphasized
the need to create a learning society. UNESCO’s
report from the International Commission on
Education for the Twenty-first Century (Learning:
The Treasure Within) underlines the impact of the
information society on education and studies some
of its consequences. Certainly, technology has revolutionized our ability to deliver education in ways
that were not previously possible. A wide range of
training courses is already available in the form of
multimedia CD-ROMs, and schools and universities
are experimenting with the electronic delivery of distance learning courses. Such developments are likely
to make a real impact on rural areas, very specialized
courses and adult learners.
Health is the other public service likely to be
greatly affected by information. Indeed, advances in
the provision of health information are likely to raise
the level of public health considerably. They will do
so in three ways. First, doctors and other medical
staff will simply be better informed. They will know
more about their patients and they will have ready
access to much more information about diseases and
their treatments. They will also be able to gain access
to medical specialists in other towns or even other
countries, consulting them on unusual cases. Second,
there will be much better systems for epidemiology
– the science of tracking diseases – so that we shall be
able to trace many of the environmental causes of
disease more easily. Improved medical records will
also make it much easier to track and monitor
patients, alerting them, for example, to new treatments as they become available. Finally, improved
consumer health information will enable us all to
take better care of our own health. There is now
much more information available on the causes of
heart diseases and illnesses like lung cancer. This,
allied to better provision of information about the
content of foods, the tar levels in cigarettes and pollution levels, etc., enables us to adjust our patterns of
behaviour so that we avoid many of the things that
make us ill. This could be the next major breakthrough in public health care.
The evolving demand for information
services
All these developments are generating new demands
for information in organizations. In most organizations, whether in the public or private sector, the initial focus tends to be on information technology, and
often this has resulted in a great deal of expenditure
for only modest results. There is now a growing
awareness that before investing in the technology it
is first necessary to understand information flows
and requirements.
Many of the organizations that are successfully
using information as a resource began by analysing
the ways in which information could contribute to
business. From this it becomes possible to develop
an information strategy which sets out how the
information will contribute to the achievement of
business goals. It is then possible to develop an
information systems strategy that specifies the ways
in which information will be collected and processed
and how it will flow around the organization. Only
then does it become possible to define an informa-
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tion technology strategy which sets the framework
for the acquisition and use of the technology.
There is also a growing recognition that technology alone is seldom the answer. Effective management of information calls for people who understand
information, how it can be collected, processed and
used for different purposes. This is leading in many
organizations to the redefinition of company
libraries and information services, many of which
were originally established to serve a research and
development department. It is also causing a
reassessment of the organization’s archives and
records management functions (see Chapter 24).
An interesting development is the emergence
of a new category of information professional –
researchers and information analysts. Their task is to
work with managers and others, collecting and processing information on particular topics, analysing it
and producing a synthesis that can be understood
easily by someone who would otherwise be too busy
to undertake the task. Such positions are now common in many organizations and reflect a general
desire to make more constructive use of information
as a corporate resource.
Information and citizenship
As well as using information when we are at work or
studying, we all use information as part of our daily
lives. We use information as consumers of products
and services, whether provided by the private or the
public sector. We also use information in our roles as
citizens. Here we use information when we are exercising our rights and responsibilities.
Consumer information
At a very basic level people need information so that
they can choose which products and services to consume. Most of us live in market economies and those
markets only function effectively if consumers are
well informed. People need to know about the full
range of products and services that are available so
they can allocate their resources wisely. Many governments have begun to introduce the consumer
principle into the provision of public services. In the
United Kingdom, for example, schools are required
to publish their examination results so that parents
can make an informed choice about schools for their
children.
As well as simple consumer choice, people need
information so that they can exercise their rights and
entitlements to services. This is particularly important in countries that have well-developed welfare
systems. In such cases individuals are entitled to a
wide range of benefits and, consequently, need to be
well informed if they are to claim what is due them.
Information can also help people take charge of
their own lives. As was mentioned above, health
information helps us all take more control over our
lives.
In many countries people are considered to be
more than just passive consumers of goods and services produced by the public or private sector.
Consumer groups have developed the notion of
active consumption, where consumers hold producers and service providers to account for their products. Information plays an important part in this.
Whether it is a company being forced to publish
information about its pollution record, or nutritional
information listed on a tub of margarine, it is all
information that helps to make producers accountable to the people who consume their products.
Citizens’ access to information
As citizens we possess a range of rights, although the
range varies from society to society. We have basic
human rights: to be treated as a human being with
intrinsic worth. We have civil rights: freedom of
speech, assembly, religion and the right to justice. We
have political rights: the right to vote. We also have a
range of social rights, usually interpreted as the right
to a minimum standard of life. We also play a role as
members of a community and as citizens of a nation-
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state. In some parts of the world individuals are
beginning to develop a further set of citizenship
rights and responsibilities as members of a regional
grouping of nation-states, like the European Union
or the Association of South-East Asian Nations
(ASEAN).
But there is a great deal of difference between
having a right and being able to exercise it. Poorly
informed people are often denied their rights
because they lack the power to exercise them.
Because of this, some have argued that we can define
a further set of rights – the right to information and
advice. If we had this additional right, then we
would be in a much stronger position to exercise all
the other rights. This is the rationale that underlies
the concept of freedom of information. Freedom of
information legislation gives citizens the right of
access to information about what is happening in
government so that they can make better judgements
about those who govern them. This principle of freedom of information is deeply embedded in some
national constitutions, notably those in France,
Sweden and the United States. In other cases the
principle has been adopted more recently, while in
yet others it is still a matter of considerable debate.
The need for citizenship information, however,
extends beyond a right of access to government
information. It should include access to all the information that people need to exercise their right as citizens. They should not be denied, for example, access
to information about the legal system because, if
they are, they cannot fully exercise their legal rights.
And this right of access should not be dependent on
an individual’s ability to pay, language skills, level of
literacy or on any other factor that can impair an
individual’s ability to obtain information.
The problems of access
The list of factors that can reduce an individual’s
access to information is long. There is growing concern that in creating our information societies we
may be creating a further division in society: the
divide between those who have access to information and the ability to use it and those who do not.
More particularly, the concern is that such a division
would deepen other divisions that exist in most societies: the division between rich and poor; between
the educated and the inarticulate; between the majority and minority ethnic, linguistic or religious
groups; and between the physically and mentally
able and disabled people.
All these factors place barriers in the way of
gaining access to information, and slowly people are
beginning to recognize the need to develop services
that will overcome these barriers. In some cases we
need to raise basic levels of literacy and numeracy,
and this can only be tackled successfully through
educational programmes. In other cases it is necessary to provide information and advice services that
meet the particular needs of specific groups within
the community.
Public libraries have traditionally provided
access to information for a wide range of people, and
in many countries efforts have been made to meet the
needs of particular minority groups. But general
information services alone are insufficient. Disabled
people, for example, have particular needs that
require special provision. First, they need information on particular subjects that relate to their disability. Second, they have particular access problems that
call for special provision. Third, many would argue
that for the information and advice to be fully effective it should be delivered by someone who has personal experience of what it is to be disabled. These
arguments could be applied to almost any minority
group.
We need also to recognize that information
alone is not enough. Life is increasingly complex.
None of us can expect to understand fully all the
information we need to manage our lives in these
complex societies. We need to be able to turn to specialist advisers who can interpret information and
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relate it to our individual circumstances. This is not a
new idea – people who could afford it have always
turned to lawyers, accountants and other advisers to
help them through the intricacies of life. Many countries now recognize that they need to make access to
advice accessible to everyone.
The problem, of course, is one of cost. Acceptance of the arguments for a public information and
advice service implies also acceptance of the principle of information being free at the point of use. And
that implies public expenditure at a time when, in
many countries, there is pressure to reduce government expenditures in general, including public
libraries and information services.
It is possible, however, to make a strong case
for public information. The citizenship argument
suggests that access to information is a right to
which we are entitled like justice, and that in common with other public services it should be provided
free. The efficiency argument reasons simply that
society functions better when everyone is well
informed. The equity argument is based on the fact
that an effective public information and advice service is unlikely ever to be fully provided by the private sector and, because a significant majority lacks
the resources to buy it, it should be provided at public cost.
All these arguments point to the fact that a
basic element within an information society should
be the provision of a comprehensive public information and advice service.
The policy framework
The last five years have seen a sudden burst of
policy-making related to the creation of information societies. This is unusual. Seldom does a social
development stimulate such an obvious process of
policy development. The need for policy is not,
however, universally acknowledged. Let us consider
the examples of Singapore and Hong Kong. In
Singapore developments are shaped by a strong, all-
encompassing framework of information policies,
whereas in Hong Kong there are almost no formal
policies; instead developments are shaped by market
forces alone.
Most countries fall between these two
extremes. Broadly, the aim is to make use of the
power of market forces but to do so within a framework of policies. There are a number of reasons for
this. First, the magnitude of the changes is considerable, involving major industrial, economic, social
and, possibly, political upheaval. Faced with this, few
governments are prepared to hand over responsibility to market forces alone. Second, the levels of
investment required are huge. In developed countries it may be possible to contemplate delegating
investment to the private sector, but when it is necessary to build an infrastructure from scratch, then a
government must usually be prepared to commit
public funds. Third, the scale of the social impact
is becoming apparent: it could strengthen social
cohesion or destroy it. Again, few governments are
prepared to stand aside and simply observe what
happens. Finally, there are the possible consequences
of failure. If a country gets it wrong it could suffer
long-term damage.
All these factors have led to a wave of policymaking, most of it focused on the development of
the information infrastructure and, as such, covered
in greater detail in Chapter 21. Here it is simply
worth noting that such policies are being created in
developed countries like the United States, Canada,
Australia and Japan, as well as in regional groupings
like the European Union, culminating in the policy
adopted in 1995 by the G7 group of nations. It is
also a characteristic of many newly industrialized
countries, particularly those in East Asia, such as
Malaysia, the Republic of Korea, Singapore and
Thailand. A concern for information policy can also
be seen in developing countries like China, South
Africa and Viet Nam. While most of these policy
frameworks originate in a concern to develop the
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information infrastructure, they are becoming increasingly focused on the social implications of this
infrastructure. Governments are recognizing the
need for policies to shape the development of information societies.
T h e i n fl u e n c e o f U N E S C O
UNESCO has played an important role in laying the
foundations for the development of information
policies. The work of its General Information
Programme was built upon the twin foundations of
the NATional Information Systems (NATIS) and
UNISIST, both of which in the 1970s actively
encouraged the development of information policies
at the national and international levels.
The present concern about the social impact of
the information society means that in the next ten
years there will be a steadily growing demand for an
organization like UNESCO to contribute to the
development of policies that ensure that we all
obtain the maximum benefit from the shift towards
information.
Further reading
The relative newness of the concept of information
societies means that there are relatively few
general texts available. One very good source of
up-to-date information is provided by the Information Society Project Office of the European
Commission. It can be found on the Internet at
http://www.ispo.cec.be. A publication from the
Office, Information Society Trends, provides a valuable source of up-to-date information on developments worldwide. The European Commission has
established a High Level Group of Experts on the
Information Society, whose interim report, Building
the European Information Society for Us All: First
Reflections, is an excellent review of many of the
issues involved in the creation of information
societies.
Information about the terms of reference of the
Group and copies of its reports can be found at
http://www.ispo.cec.be/hleg.html.
Many countries have policy statements that
describe how they intend to reconstitute themselves
into information societies. An overall perspective
is provided by the policy framework adopted by
the G-7 countries following their Summit on the
Information Society, held in Brussels in February
1995. The report of the summit and other useful documents, including the background papers leading up
to it, can be found at http://www.ispo.cec.be/g7/
g7main/html.
For educational issues, see International Commission on Education for the Twenty-first Century,
Learning: The Treasure Within, Paris, UNESCO,
1996, 266 pp. ■■
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Nick Moore is a Senior Research
Fellow at the Policy Studies Institute
in London where he established the
programme of research on information
policy. He has just spent two years
assisting the British Council in the development of
their information work in East Asia and, as part of
this, monitored the development of information
societies in the region. Before joining the Policy
Studies Institute, Nick Moore was Professor of
Information Management at Birmingham Polytechnic.
He is the author of two UNESCO publications:
Guidelines for Information Workforce Surveys (1986)
and Measuring the Performance of Public Libraries
(1990).
Nick Moore
Senior Fellow
Policy Studies Institute
100 Park Village East
London NW1 3SR
United Kingdom
Tel: (171) 468 0468
Fax: (171) 388 0914
E-mail: [email protected]
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Chapter 21
Information
highways
Mary Dykstra Lynch
Dalhousie University,
Canada
Definition and first initiatives
The term ‘information highway’ gained prominence
as a political vision. Credit for it must be given to Al
Gore, Vice-President of the United States, who popularized it in the 1992 presidential campaign. The
metaphor was a natural one for Gore, whose father,
as a United States Senator thirty years earlier, initiated the legislation which established the American interstate highway system.
Steps to establish the National Information
Infrastructure (NII), defined as ‘a system to deliver
to all Americans the information they need when
they want it and where they want it – at an affordable
price’, took place in Gore’s first term of office. The
focus was the United States Government’s Agenda
for Action on the National Information Infrastructure (NII), published in September 1993 (see
http://sunsite.unc.edu/nii/NII-Executive-Summary.html;http://sunsite.unc.edu/nii/NII-Agendafor-Action.html).
In the few years since the Clinton/Gore initiative, major information highway activity has taken
place around the world: NII has become GII (Global
Information Infrastructure).
The information highway is not simply a matter of political will, however. In many ways the
political will has been a bandwagon effort to tip
national scales in favour of competing most successfully for the increasingly obvious and potent economic benefits of a whole range of groundbreaking,
technological R&D which has taken place over several decades. Basically, the information highway may
be defined as the convergence of computer and communication technologies. Not surprisingly, given its
complex array of components and transformative
power, perceptions of what constitutes the information highway differ, often according to vested
interests. Academics, for example, tend to think of
the information highway and the Internet as synonymous. Various perspectives have been described
( Johnston et al., 1995) as follows:
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Some use the term ‘information highway’ as a catch-all to
ceive and capitalize upon the economic benefits to be
describe the technological revolution, the transformative
gained from the development of an IT-based infrastruc-
process that is sweeping most of the globe. For others, the
ture. The incentives were strong: upon achieving self-rule
words ‘information highway’ identify the individual tech-
in 1959, Singapore was saddled with severe poverty and
nological innovations that affect our everyday life: most
chronic unemployment of its poorly educated population.
prominently, the Internet, interactive television and elec-
From 1965 Singapore switched to a development strategy
tronic banking. Yet others view it as a massive infrastruc-
of export production, first in the industrial and manufac-
ture, constituting a ‘seamless and transparent network of
turing sector and then in technological diversification, a
networks’ capable of transmitting a full range of interac-
strategy which met with exceptional success.
tive, audio, video, and data services.
No matter which component is emphasized, the
phenomenon of the information highway is massive,
transformative and inevitable, given the enabling
power of the technologies involved. As Al Gore
(1995) has stated:
New technologies that enhance the ability to create and
understand information have always led to dramatic
changes in civilization. . . . There is no longer any doubt
that [these new] machines will reshape human civilization
even more quickly and more thoroughly than did the
printing press.
International government action and
advisory groups
Although the ‘information highway’ initiative was
given its name in the United States, the phenomenon
was recognized simultaneously in many places in
the world. Developmental stages differ, however.
Furthermore, there have been differences of emphasis: the role adopted by governments in the West (the
United States, Canada and the European Union) is
to encourage and facilitate market forces in the private sector to build the information highway, whereas the countries of East Asia – eager to enhance their
already strong levels of economic growth enjoyed as
a result of well-formed public policies – envision a
much more significant role for the state (see Chapter
20). As Bercuson et al. (1995) say:
Singapore was one of the first countries worldwide to per-
This remarkable result of high-tech leading to information highway development can be attributed to
the activist policies of the government in creating
macro-economic stability (low inflation, positive
real interest rates, sound fiscal management) and
above all a liberal foreign trade environment.
Europe, in the early stages of forming itself as
a world trading block, had reasons similar to
Singapore’s to seize upon the economic opportunities provided by the emerging information technologies. Seeking to bolster private sector growth, it did
this particularly in terms of research and development. From the mid-1980s, the European Strategic
Programme for Research in Information Technology
(ESPRIT) has been a remarkable source of R&D
funding. Convinced that information technology
would be a large factor not only in the successful
formation of the European Union itself but also in
its effectiveness in global trade, the European
Commission established the first ESPRIT programme with the aim of strengthening an already
growing information technology industry. Now in
its Fourth Framework, the focus of the ESPRIT programme has moved away from the information technology industry itself (http://www.cordis.Lu/esprit/
home.html):
The new focus of IT RTD under the Fourth Framework
programme is the emerging information infrastructure,
which will provide the basis of the global information
society of the future. The programme is in consequence to
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a greater extent led by the needs of users and the market.
The overall objective is to contribute to the healthy
growth of the information infrastructure so as to improve
the competitiveness of all industry in Europe, not just the
IT industry, and to help enhance the quality of life.
Similar to the shift in emphasis in Singapore from
industry to societal impact, this broader, more
mature outlook is reflected in the EC’s (1993) White
Paper on Growth, Competitiveness, Employment –
The Challenges and Ways Forward into the 21st
Century. Outlining plans for the Common
European Information Area, it provided the impetus
for the establishment at the 1993 Brussels Summit of
a group of prominent persons to prepare a report on
the information society with concrete recommendations for action. Although this High-Level Group
on the Information Society, chaired by Martin
Bangemann, was not charged to advise on the information highway per se, nearly all of the recommendations (and all of the suggested applications) of the
subsequent report (issued in May 1994) relate to its
development. Overriding the specific recommendations of the Bangemann Report concerning competition rules, protection of intellectual property, interconnection, interoperability and other information
highway issues is the urge for the European Union
‘to put its faith in market mechanisms as the motive
power to carry us into the Information Age’. The
report continues: ‘This means that actions must be
taken at the European level and by Member States to
strike down entrenched positions which put Europe
at a competitive disadvantage.’ This should be done
by fostering an entrepreneurial mentality and developing a common regulatory approach rather than
using more public money, financial assistance, subsidies, dirigisme, or protectionism. The Group also
proposed an action plan of concrete initiatives based
on a partnership between the private and public sectors to carry Europe forward into the information
society.
The Bangeman Report, presented at the Corfu
Summit, gave way in July 1994 to a European Commission Action Plan (1994) which urged activity
in the following four areas: the required regulatory and legal framework for trans-European networks; basic services and content applications;
social, societal and cultural aspects; and the promotion of the Information Society.
Within the European Union itself, several
member countries have undertaken their own initiatives regarding national information highway development and related policies. France, in fact, can
rightly be called the pre-information highway ‘pioneer’ with the development of Minitel by France
Telecom in the early 1980s. Minitel, now an integral
part of daily life for French people, both at home and
at work, currently offers a wide range of electronic
directories including the International Minitel
Directory covering over 200 million telephone subscribers in Europe (Belgium, Germany, Portugal,
Spain, Switzerland) and the United States. In addition to its directories, popular Minitel electronic services have expanded to include banking, transport
information, mail-order selling, tourist information,
weather reports, classified advertisements, radio and
television information, and various business services.
With over fourteen years of online service experience, France Telecom made its approximately 25,000
Minitel services available on the Internet in May
1996 and is moving into multimedia applications.
In February 1994 Gérard Théry, father of Minitel
and former Directeur Général des Telecommunications, was appointed to analyse and report on measures for the development of information highways
in France. The Théry report, completed in October
1994, recommended four major actions (Stiel, 1995):
the deployment of fibre-optic networks; the launching of platforms for experimentation similar to those
in the United States; the promotion of applications
software and content; and the acceleration of highspeed transmissions on the network.
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Other countries in Europe which have proceeded with government policies for information
highway development at the national level include
Denmark, Finland, Norway and Spain. In the
United Kingdom, the House of Lords Select
Committee on Science and Technology, SubCommittee I – Information Superhighway: Applications in Society, is reaching the final stages of its
deliberations.
The United States, meanwhile, was the first
government to call for action and advice focused
specifically on the information highway. An
Information Infrastructure Task Force (IITF) was
established by the White House Office of Science
and Technology Policy and by the National
Economic Council as part of the NII Agenda for
Action initiative. Chaired by the Secretary of
Commerce, the IITF was given the mandate to
‘articulate and implement the Administration’s
vision for the NII’ (see the NII homepage at
http://sunsite.unc.edu/nii/NII-Task-Force.html).
Thus key representatives of the United States
Government were to work with the private sector to
develop ‘comprehensive telecommunications and
information policies that best meet the needs of both
the agencies and the country’. Part of the task of the
IITF Chair was to appoint twenty-five members
from the various ‘infrastructure stakeholder’ communities – industry, labour, academia, public interest
groups, and state and local government – to a highlevel United States Advisory Council on the
National Information Infrastructure. The Council
was established by Executive Order 12864 in
September 1993 to advise the IITF. Major issues for
the Council were: the appropriate roles of the private
and public sectors in NII development; a vision for
the evolution of the NII and its public and commercial applications; the impact of current and proposed
regulatory regimes on the evolution of the NII; privacy, security and copyright issues; national strategies for maximizing interconnection and interoper-
ability of communications networks; and universal
access (see NII homepage at http://sunsite.unc.edu/
nii/NII-Advisory-Council.html).
In April 1994 the Council organized itself into
three MegaProject Working Groups to explore: the
vision and goals for the information superhighway;
access to the superhighway; and intellectual property, privacy and security issues. The purpose of the
MegaProjects was to frame discussion and draft recommendations to facilitate the full Council’s ability
to reach consensus in these areas. The Council met
across the United States from February 1994 to the
end of 1995, receiving voluminous public comment.
In March 1995 it published its emerging framework,
an articulation of basic principles, the first of which
addressed five areas: universal access and service,
privacy and security, intellectual property, education
and lifelong learning, and electronic commerce.
The Council concluded that the most efficient
way to develop the information highway (‘superhighway’) in the United States was through community effort. Its KickStart Initiatives document offered
guidelines for achieving universal access by connecting the nation’s schools, libraries and community
centres. The Final Report of the United States
Advisory Council of the National Information
Infrastructure (1996), with policy recommendations
to the President, Vice-President, and Secretary
of Commerce, was submitted in January 1996
(the Executive Summary can be found at http://
www.benton.org/KickStart/nation.home.html).
In Canada, the Final Report of the Information
Highway Advisory Council (IHAC), produced in
September 1995, addresses many of the issues mandated to the United States Council. It also echoes to
a large extent the policy stance recommended by the
Bangemann Report. Established by the Minister of
Industry Canada in May 1994, with McGill University Professor David Johnston as Chair, IHAC was a
high-level group of twenty-nine Canadians from the
private sector (telecommunication, cable television,
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computer and networking technologies), government, education, and other interested groups such as
consumers, labour and libraries. IHAC was charged
to advise the Canadian Government specifically on
fifteen issues, including competitiveness, culture,
access to learning, and research and development.
The Council’s deliberations were guided by three
objectives: to create jobs through innovation and
investment in Canada; to reinforce Canadian sovereignty and cultural identity; and to ensure universal
access at reasonable cost. The Council also established five principles: an interconnected and interoperable network of networks; collaborative publicand private-sector development; competition in
facilities, products and services; privacy protection
and network security; and lifelong learning as a key
design element of the information highway.
The IHAC members formed five Working
Groups: Competitiveness and Job Creation;
Canadian Content and Culture; Access and Social
Impacts; Learning and Training; and R&D, Applications and Market Development. Working over fifteen months in monthly meetings which included
various Cabinet ministers and the Prime Minister,
IHAC brought over 300 recommendations to the
Government of Canada. In late 1995 the Industry
Minister reconvened IHAC for a further year, to
pursue a broad mandate aimed at promoting public
awareness, facilitating partnerships and innovations,
and acting as a sounding board for the government.
Following the release in May 1996 of the Canadian
Government’s official response to the IHAC recommendations, an action plan was agreed upon by
seven Cabinet ministers, and IHAC Phase II held its
first meeting in June.
In Asia, despite recent progress in China, the
Republic of Korea, Malaysia and Thailand, no country compares with front-runner Singapore in information highway development. However, it is also
important to note the progress of Japan. Despite its
history as one of the most ‘informatized’ societies of
the world, Japan was in fact slower than the United
States to progress toward formalizing its information highway development. This was due partly to
the proliferation of government departments and
other agencies which claimed responsibility, including the Ministry of International Trade and
Industry (MITI), the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (MPT), Nippon Telephone and
Telegraph (NTT), numerous cable television companies, telecommunication equipment suppliers and
media owners. In June 1993 the Information Industry Subcommittee of MITI’s Industrial Structure
Council published a report on improving the social
infrastructure for the information society. Later in
1993 NTT announced its grand plan, at a cost of
US$400 billion, to install optical fibre throughout
Japan by the year 2015. Also in 1993 the MPT was
framing new regulatory policies for infrastructure
development. According to the EC (Longhorn,
1994–95):
Compared to Europe, Japan should in fact have been in the
communications vanguard, having privatized NTT in
1985, only two years after the AT&T break-up in the
USA. Markets were liberalized to allow more competition.
But Japan lost ground compared to the American model,
for example, falling far behind in cable television. . . . NTT
was late in introducing new telephone and data services.
Monopoly control of key markets by NTT and KDD
increased the cost of everything from microwave transmission to database hook-ups. . . .
In response to industry criticism, MPT proposed a
policy focused on developing new services, restructuring the industry and expanding the total market
size. It also drew up a plan to unite fragmented cable
television operations into a nationwide network
which could provide a full range of multimedia services. A new vision for an advanced information
society, with Japan taking the lead in Asia in the
multimedia industry, was announced in September
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1994 by Prime Minister Murayama’s Advanced
Information and Telecommunications Society
Promotion Headquarters.
In recent years the ministerial meetings and
conferences of the G-7 member countries have
provided a focal point for global information highway development by the industrialized nations.
Following the Bangemann Report, the central theme
of the G-7 Ministerial Conference in Brussels on
24–26 February 1995 was the information society
transforming the quality of life for a growing number of peoples around the world. Global interconnection was discussed, with recommendations for
worldwide co-operation, especially for the less
developed countries. The outcome of this conference
was the designation of eleven specific projects in
selected theme areas. The themes, which offer a
glimpse of the already incredible sweep and breadth
of the information highway phenomenon, are: creation of a global inventory of information relevant to
the development of the global information society;
global interoperability for broadband networks;
cross-cultural training and education; electronic
libraries; electronic museums and galleries; environment and natural resources management; global
emergency management; global health-care application; governments online; a global market-place for
small and medium enterprises (SMEs); and maritime
information systems. The projects were assigned to
the various G-7 countries.
A progress report on the projects was delivered
at the G-7 Summit in Halifax, Canada, in June 1995.
Further concentrated discussion around the theme
of global information highway development took
place at the South Africa Information Society and
Development (ISAD) Conference on 13–15 May
1996.
UNESCO
The Organization’s programmes in this area are
designed to assist all Member States to respond to
the new challenges of the information society. More
particularly, they aim to ensure that all sectors of
society benefit from the potential of information and
communication technologies to support development processes.
At the centre of the challenges posed by the
emerging information society is the concept of universal access and how a ‘right to communicate’ will
evolve in an increasingly digital world. Access in this
context involves not only physical availability and
cost, but also ensuring that the user can benefit from
the services concerned, with a minimum level of
‘digital literacy’. In the increasingly competitive and
commercial world of information and communication, the risks of excluding disadvantaged populations are substantial, both within and among societies as well as among developed and developing
countries.
An important facet of the ‘right to communicate’ concerns access to telematics facilities at affordable cost by the ‘intellectual’ sectors – education, science, culture, media, libraries and archives – which
have a crucial role to play in the development of
national information infrastructures.
Another important issue is the maintenance of
linguistic and cultural diversity in the information
society. Technology-induced globalization is seen by
many as a threat to local customs, values and beliefs,
as exemplified by the fact that, today, a large majority of the data on the Internet is in English.
Increased access to interconnected networks
and databases raises major ethical and legal issues.
These include: privacy of information and the right
of individuals to check data pertaining to themselves;
regulation for the content of information circulating
through information highways; computer piracy and
other informatics crimes; and copyright, where
efforts are required to extend legitimate intellectual
property protection while maintaining access to
information (see Chapter 26).
At the twenty-eighth session of the UNESCO
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General Conference (1995), a joint meeting of the
Programme Commissions discussed the ‘educational, scientific and cultural challenges of the new communication and information technologies’. The
results of this discussion formed the basis for a position paper now available for distribution under the
title UNESCO and an Information Society for all
(UNESCO, 1996).
The General Conference also adopted 28C/
Resolution VII.15, which stressed the societal problems of information technologies and potential dangers of information highways to developing nations
(see box, p. 298).
UNESCO has undertaken a wide range of activities which may be described under three headings:
•
Overall societal impact, at the global level, of
new information and communication technologies. Co-operative links have been established
with the International Telecommunications
Union (ITU) and other IGOs and NGOs; and
various meetings have been or are being organized: Copyright in the Information Society
(1996); Education and Informatics (1996); and
Ethical, Legal and Societal Aspects of Digital
Information (1997). In 1994, in the framework
of their Joint Programme on Promotion of
Telematics for Development, ITU and
UNESCO completed a study entitled The Right
to Communicate – At What Price: Economic
Constraints to the Effective Use of Telecommunications in Education, Science, Culture and
in the Circulation of Information. This defined
a new strategy for ensuring access to modern
telematics facilities at affordable cost for users
in UNESCO’s fields of competence in the
developing countries.
•
National policies and regional strategies. A
series of meetings initiated by the African
Regional Symposium on Telematics for Development (1995) will assist developing countries
in formulating national policies and regional
•
strategies. In the Commonwealth of Independent States, a three-year joint UNESCO –
European Union Project started in June 1996.
In Africa, as a result of the above-mentioned symposium, the High-Level Working
Group on Information and Communication
Technologies in Africa was created. This group
prepared a long-term framework for a regional
telematics policy called ‘Africa’s Information
Society Initiative’ (AISI), which was approved
by the European Commission for Africa
(ECA) Conference of Ministers in Addis
Ababa, 3–7 May 1996, and supported by the
Regional African Telecommunication Development Conference (Abidjan, 6–10 May 1996).
AISI deals with challenges and opportunities for Africa’s development in an information
age. It specifically addresses the role of information, communication and knowledge in
shaping an African information society to
accelerate socio-economic development, and
targets decision-makers and leaders in all sectors, including in particular those responsible
for planning, information, telecommunication,
economic development, laws and regulations,
health, education, trade, tourism, the environment and transport.
More recently, a United Nations systemwide Special Initiative on Africa was launched
– ‘Harnessing Information Technology for
Development’ – for which ECA, the World
Bank, UNESCO, the ITU and UNCTAD are
identified as the lead agencies. This project
foresees a budget of at least US$11.5 million to
help twenty African countries build telematics
policies, networks and applications to support
their development priorities.
Applications and pilot projects. A large number
of projects are under way, in many areas related
to new information technologies and information highways. Examples are the linking of
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African countries to the Internet, improved
access to telematics services in the Caribbean,
the application of electronic information technologies to distance education, safeguarding
Internet use by journalists and the media, and
the Memory of the World Programme (see box,
p. 336).
The telecommunication infrastructure
The essence of the information highway revolution
lies in the convergence of information processing
and telecommunication technologies, examined in
Chapter 17. This has eroded the traditional distinction in communication between carrier and content,
resulting in several profoundly new challenges, not
least of which is regulatory turmoil. Already in 1990
the outcome was described as akin to the aftermath
of an earthquake in which ‘the tectonic plates of
national sovereignty and power have begun to shift’
(Dunderstadt, 1990).
Clearly, the technological issues related to the
development of the information highway infrastructure are complex, the costs are immense, and with
convergence the stakes for the major carriers are
extremely high. It has already been noted that governments have taken differing stances in determining
their roles.
Whereas the governments of Singapore and
others in East Asia have intervened strongly to ensure the benefits of a strong infrastructure for their
countries, Western governments have attempted to
stimulate private sector development. As Bangemann (1996) stresses, ‘government and the public
authorities cannot legislate the information society
into existence, nor can they simply build it out of
public funds’. However, his voice is added to those
who currently feel that government (Europe particularly) is not doing enough. He continues:
The first countries to enter the information society will
reap the greatest rewards. They will set the agenda for all
who must follow. By contrast, countries who temporize,
or favour half-hearted solutions, could, in less than a
decade, face disastrous declines in investment and a
squeeze on jobs. . . . Governments, for example, must
keep up and accelerate the momentum towards telecommunications deregulation. Otherwise we have lost the
game before it has begun.
In the countries of the West, where the private sector
is expected to drive information highway development, deregulation currently holds centre stage.
There is widespread agreement (and consternation)
that the United States has taken the lead, beginning
with the break-up of the AT&T monopoly in 1984
and culminating to date in the signing by President
Clinton of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
In one sweep, the new Act ends United States
Government regulations that have maintained barriers between local and long-distance telephone
services, cable television, broadcasting and wireless
services. In the age of digital communications,
those regulations have become anachronistic. The
microchip is placing all forms of communication –
from satellite-television images and long-distance
telephone calls to e-mail and World Wide Web pages
– on the same footing.
Europe, although not yet at this stage is moving
in the same direction. Finland, Sweden and the
United Kingdom have already at least partially
opened their markets to carrier competition. Fifteen
European Union countries together with Switzerland and Norway, face a deadline to do this formally
on 1 January 1998. In anticipation, new players are
already investing many millions of dollars in networking and building alliances; for example, Olivetti
of Italy has a joint venture with Bell Atlantic
Corporation, with plans to team up with France
Telecom and Deutsche Telekom to challenge the
monopoly of Telecom Italia. Meanwhile, amid fears
that the 1998 liberalization agreement will be a case
of ‘too little too late’, new competitors in Europe
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will be permitted as of July 1996 to lease telephone
lines from cable companies, railways and utilities,
bypassing the monopoly of national operators and
paving the way for a billion-dollar trans-European
backbone network.
None of this activity, however, rivals the frenzied free-for-all unleashed in the United States. Key
points in the new Telecommunications Act are that,
except for limits on foreign ownership, all markets
are open to everyone (that is, no restrictions on telephone or cable companies entering any market of
their choice), and the relaxation of cross-ownership
restrictions (paving the way for myriad mergers,
partnerships, alliances, etc., between and among carriers). These set the stage for a completely realigned
industry.
A recent example of United States telecommunication realignment is the merger of SBC
Communications and Pacific America, two big local
companies (or ‘Baby Bells’), to create a new giant
worth $45 billion. Some of the other five Baby Bells,
Nynex and Bell Atlantic in particular, are discussing
mergers. Many of the merge/alliance activities,
examples of which are given in the next section,
enable new content delivery. Taken together, they
introduce an extremely challenging and volatile
array of new opportunities for business, entertainment, health care, education, culture and consumers
– in a word, the information society.
Meanwhile, liberalization of trade in basic
telecommunication services is currently being negotiated at the international level through the General
Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS).
In the midst of all this activity, encouragement
of standards becomes a crucial governmental role.
The key to an effective and efficient global information highway, for competition as well as for society
as a whole, is interoperability. Most obviously, open
(as opposed to proprietary) technical standards are
required for the infrastructure, but because of digitization this infrastructure increasingly includes con-
tent as well as the carriers. Accordingly, international
content/carrier standards are necessary for digital
compression, data transmission protocols, software,
consumer equipment, etc. The development of international standards in such a fast-moving area of
activity is not without risks; at best, flexibility is
required to avoid the costly mistakes of going down
wrong developmental paths, technical myopia and
monopolistic pressures.
Focus on content: the era of multimedia
Because development of content and applications on
the information highway depends upon the infrastructure, this latter aspect initially captured attention. However, the question soon becomes: What
is the information highway without information?
Japan, as noted, has already positioned itself as the
Asian leader in multimedia production. In North
America and Europe, too, content and applications
have come more sharply into focus – both through
reoriented, newly-allied carriers and through the
new multimedia players.
In the United States, the most spectacular of
the recent megamergers aimed at providing content
on the information highway has been by the
entertainment giants: Disney’s purchase of Capital
Cities/ABC, and the bid by Time Warner for Turner
Broadcasting. In February 1996, US West announced
a $10.8 billion bid for Continental Cablevision,
America’s third-largest cable operator. The giant
AT&T, too, is repositioning itself to optimize multimedia opportunities. This dealmaking will produce a
new crop of supercarriers – companies that either on
their own or through alliances will offer a full menu
of electronic communications, with everything from
video phones to Internet services, using a single
number that subscribers will take with them wherever they go. Such ‘number portability’ is now a key
issue for the carriers as they merge for multimedia
delivery.
As of early 1996 the integrated multimedia
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activities of the Lagardère Group subsidiary, Grolier
Interactive, had reached a frontline position in the
online as well as the offline publishing markets.
Begun two years earlier in anticipation of integrated
multimedia growth internationally, Grolier Interactive now boasts successful joint European–United
States ventures such as Hachette Filipacci Grolier
(for the press), Hachette Livre Grolier (in publishing), Europe Grolier (for audiovisual creations),
and for its worldwide marketing and distribution
Hachette Multimedia Distribution.
Within Europe, the INFO2000 initiative illustrates the push for multimedia production growth.
In a Communication to the European Parliament
and Council in 1995 the European Commission
defines the content industry as involving the creation, development, packaging and distribution of
content-based products and services, and describes
the different segments of the industry as follows:
•
Print publishing (newspapers, books, magazines, corporate publishing).
•
Electronic publishing (online databases; videotex, audiotex, fax- and CD-based services;
video games).
•
The audiovisual industry (television, video,
radio, audio and cinema).
The INFO2000 initiative has three action lines to
facilitate the transition by the private sector to electronic publishing and interactive multimedia: stimulating demand and raising awareness; exploiting
Europe’s public sector information; and triggering
European multimedia potential. At 30% to 40% and
33% to 45% respectively, the first and third action
lines are targeted for the highest percentages of programme expenditure.
According to the Communication mentioned
above, INFO2000 complements other Community programmes under the ESPRIT Fourth Framework Programme (especially IT, ACTS and
TELEMATICS) and those addressing the cultural
(RAPHAEL), small and medium enterprise (SMEs)
(Integrated Programme in favour of SMEs and
the Craft Sector) and education and training
(SOCRATES, LEONARDO) domains. The Communication states: ‘The content industry is the single
most important sector, both in terms of market value
and employment, within the information industry at
large.’ This point is made in an earlier EC document,
Information Market Observatory (1994), as follows:
The content industry now has a great deal to live up to.
The expectations of users have been raised. . . . ICT industries look to the information and entertainment services
sectors to provide content for running on the . . . networks
which are now being developed. Governments around the
world are looking at the information industries as a whole
to generate employment and stimulate economic growth.
Just what are consumer expectations, and in what
key areas is the content industry positioning itself
for such vigorous growth? One background report
prepared for the Canadian Information Highway
Advisory Council (Lee and Potter, 1995) elaborates:
At such an early stage, it is impossible to say with precision which products and services will ultimately succeed
the test of the market. . . . In general, the [information
highway] will be driven by the content carried over the
network
–
services,
applications
and
information.
According to consumer surveys, likely areas for success
are: entertainment, including a broad variety of interactive,
user-driven arts, music, video and games; information
sharing, such as news groups and bulletin boards; medical
databases and consultation; interpersonal communication,
such as voice, video, fax and electronic mail; news gathering and research; educational applications; banking, insurance and securities trading; and monitoring services,
including home security, fire protection and home environment regulation. Although many of these products are
not new, to succeed, the new mode of delivery over the
[information highway] must provide additional value to
the consumer.
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While many carriers have targeted entertainment,
video-on-demand in particular, as the top choice of
consumers, recent surveys reveal different priorities.
Four key areas of consumer demand for content
and new services have been identified in order of
priority as: education and training; health care;
leisure and entertainment; and government information.
Education is clearly an area where traditional
structures are crumbling. To begin with, ‘facilitated
by the power of information technology, classroom
learning now extends beyond a single campus to distant sites across the country’ (Twigg, 1995). Beyond
that, dramatic changes in student demographics, the
current knowledge explosion, new tools for accessing, creating, displaying and assessing information,
and many other factors, are transforming the nature
of the learning process itself.
Enabled by government funding initiatives like
SOCRATES, LEONARDO and INFO2000 in the
European Union, similar programmes in the United
States (together with the KickStart initiative recommendation of the United States Advisory Council on
the NII), SCHOOLNET and CANARIE in
Canada, and the various Asian programmes, myriad
private sector companies throughout the world are
targeting the vast new education and training multimedia market. Educational software and CD-based
products abound, as do videoconferencing, audiotex
and other technologies for distance delivery.
The drive for multimedia products extends to
all ages and levels of education, from preschoolers to
pensioners. Huge markets exist for courseware and
other curriculum delivery products for students
from primary schools to universities. In addition,
there is growing demand for training packages in the
workplace to increase skills, and for upgrading and
retraining programmes for workers displaced by
redundancies, early retirements, etc. The Information Workstation Group in the United States, for
example, expects education and training applications
to generate multimedia-attributable revenues of
US$3.3 billion by 1998.
Closely tied to the rising need for multimedia
learning products for schools and the workplace is
the demand for these products at home. Indeed, as in
all areas of life affected by the information highway,
the ability to access these products from home has
exacerbated the loss of boundaries between home
and work and school (and allied institutions such as
libraries), transforming the consumer’s living room
into a ‘virtual’ school, office or library as required.
This blurring of distinctions profoundly increases
the overlaps between education and entertainment,
between work and play.
Much of the current market for home-based
learning and training involves cable vendors and/or
the Internet, causing direct competition in the
United States, for example, between current online
service providers, America Online and Prodigy, and
new consortia, such as the linkage of Comcast with
Hewlett-Packard, to lease cable modems to companies intending to start their own Internet services.
Tele-communications Inc., another United States
cable giant, has announced plans for a trial next year
of its home online service, and Netcom, the largest
American Internet access provider, has plans to meet
Bell Canada’s new Sympatico Internet service headon. Meanwhile, Le Groupe Videotron, a Canadianbased cable company, already has an operational
home service available by subscription in Montreal
and in the United Kingdom, offering an array of services on cable television including banking, videoon-demand, and fast food ordering; the only additional equipment required is an IBM-designed
modem and a card swiping device for payment.
The growth of electronic payment systems is a
concomitant feature of the new content services –
indeed, all forms of commerce – on the information
highway. The shift to electronic ‘cash’ is a further
instance of the general transition from paper to electronic documentation. Sophisticated financial trans-
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action systems based on direct payment, payroll,
electronic data exchange and credit card transactions
are being developed (Lee and Potter, 1995). The
development of payment/credit systems for electronic commerce on the information highway, secure
against counterfeiting and fraud, is big business
in itself. Currently Visa and MasterCard are at a
standoff, Visa working with Microsoft to develop
a Secure Transaction Technology Protocol and
MasterCard working with Netscape and other vendors on a Secure Electronic Payment Protocol.
Beyond matters of payment, however, is the development of smartcards that include a wealth of personal data that can be used in transactions ranging
from user verification to insurance purchase to
health care. For example, Motorola, the world’s leading supplier for smartcards, has recently announced
major contracts with two new European government health and social security projects. Spain will
take delivery of 7 million card chips as part of an
eventual countrywide social-security-linked smartcard programme; and the Czech Republic will take
10,000 chips for a pilot scheme as part of a countrywide health project to reach 10 million people and
provide vital health-care information.
Health care on the information highway is an
explosive development area, with services from distance diagnostics to consumer health information.
Telemedicine is appearing in areas of the world
where distance is a factor; in Canada, for example, a
system links rural doctors in Alberta with specialists
in the city of Calgary. Still in early stages of delivery,
this system is estimated to have significantly
decreased health-care costs, including the wear-andtear, travel and accommodation costs of patients.
Soaring health-care expenditures, driving the trend
to hospital closures and increased emphasis on community care, have made the potential benefits of
telemedicine particularly attractive. Coupled with
the smartcard phenomenon that enables patients to
access their entire medical records, the possibilities
(and pitfalls) for electronic health-care delivery are
still in their infancy.
It is evident that, along with convergence and
restructuring on a massive scale in the information
technology industries, the new content industries
(multimedia, imaging, etc.) are bringing about the
global de-institutionalization of schools and hospitals. Sweeping changes are being brought about by
the information highway revolution in other institutions, too. ‘One of the first pieces of evidence that
this is a “big one”, as far as revolutions go, is that
three of the oldest institutions of human civilization
– schools, hospitals and libraries – are undergoing
this sort of fundamental, structural change’
(Dykstra, 1995). Indeed, the concept ‘library’, difficult enough to define in the traditional sense, has
become almost impossible to define today.
It has been a long time since a library was
merely a collection of books. For centuries libraries
were essentially archives for the storage and preservation of recorded thought. Not until the early
twentieth century, in fact, did libraries emerge as distinct from archives, with an emphasis upon information retrieval and use. In other words, although the
revolution brought about by the invention of the
printing press had a direct and profound impact
upon libraries, its ramifications were slow to develop
fully. In contrast, the impact of the current information revolution is happening with breathtaking
speed. It has been said that, increasingly, new nurses
are getting jobs not in hospitals, but as partners in
health-care delivery. The same can be said for librarians who, as libraries close, are beginning to be placed
more strategically as knowledge workers within
organizations. There is a vast array of opportunities
for librarians, who adopt new names like data analysts, information managers, information consultants and the like, in today’s knowledge-intensive
organizations (for example, consulting firms, software companies and other SMEs). In the public sector, the Freenet phenomenon in North America has
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opened possibilities for the ‘wired’ public library.
Some librarians, not yet grasping the speed of the
transformation, still mount their catalogues on the
Internet so that people will come to the library. With
remote access to library catalogues, electronic publication and document delivery, that walk to the
library is becoming irrelevant. The virtual library is
in the consumers’ offices, classrooms and homes.
Consider, for example, the mind-boggling amount of
information and documentation already available
on the Internet; ‘Huge Collection of Telecom-links’
is just one access point of immediate relevance
(http://galaxy.einet.net.galaxy?Business-andCommerce/Industry-Sectors/Telecommunications.html). There are thousands of others.
As electronic communication grows, the need
for the traditional intermediary skills of librarians
lessens. Long the facilitators between people and
information, today’s librarians face not just the
crumbling of their institutions but the more positive
cognitive task of seeing themselves as information
highway ‘content people’. In other words, their professional future lies within the multimedia and content provision industry as a whole. Preserving and
providing access to ‘the cultural memory’ in today’s
global village is at least as important as it has been in
centuries past; the stakes for all content providers –
librarians and archivists included – are as high as the
opportunities.
The race toward global interconnectivity and
content delivery brings with it the important issue of
cultural sovereignty. It is an aspect missing from discussions in the United States, but very much present
in Canada (ever mindful of its superpower neighbour), the countries of Asia and various member
countries of the European Union, who fear that
increasing globalization will erode their national and
cultural distinctiveness.
The issue of cultural distinctiveness was
addressed in the Theme Paper of the G-7 Ministerial
Conference on the Information Society in Brus-
sels in January 1995 (http://www.ispo.cec.be/g7/
Keydoes/themepap.html):
Cultural and linguistic aspects of the information society
are of particular relevance. The nature and operation of the
global information infrastructure must respect cultural and
linguistic diversities. The content of new networked applications, especially in the sphere of education and entertainment, is likely to become as essential as the traditional
media as a vehicle for shaping cultural values.
Audiovisual programmes are a key component of
content. Encouraging the circulation of diversified
content is highly desirable in order to promote
mutual understanding and cultural enrichment.
However, it is also very important to preserve and
promote cultural and linguistic specificity, whose
importance as an objective is justified by the contribution diversity makes to human progress and
mutual enrichment. Cultural diversity and the
appropriate presence of indigenous cultural products
and services will be facilitated by the impressive
potential of low cost delivery of multimedia content
over the information infrastructure. The Chair’s
Conclusions of the Brussels G-7 Ministerial
Conference include a commitment by the G-7
partners to ‘serve cultural enrichment for all citizens through diversity of content’. (See also box on
page 298.)
The ‘culture’ issue is complicated by the fact
that, in the words of André Malraux concerning a
country’s film output, ‘Le cinéma, c’est un art, mais
c’est aussi une industrie’ (Mattelart, 1995). This
brings the issue into the arena of trade between
nations (including the thorny problem of protective
subsidies), and explains why cultural products were
debated so strongly in recent trade negotiations,
including GATT and the North America Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA), to which Canada, Mexico and
the United States are signatories. At the GATT
negotiations in 1993, for example, France argued
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New information
and communication
technologies:
extract from
Resolution VII.15
adopted by
the UNESCO General
Conference at its
twenty-eighth session
(1995)
Recalling that the intellectual and ethical
mission of UNESCO concerns all its fields of
competence,
[. . .]
Invites the Director-General:
(a)
to ensure that in the final version of the
Medium-Term Strategy for 1996–2001
attention is drawn to the rapid
development of the new communication
technologies in such a way as to prompt
interdisciplinary and intersectoral
The General Conference,
reflection on these technologies as a
factor of development, and to revise
[. . .]
Stressing the importance of the societal
document 28 C/5 accordingly;
(b)
to initiate in parallel therewith a wide-
problems posed by these new technologies,
ranging discussion of the consequences of
which relate both to the isolation of individuals
the development of such technologies for
and to the threats to the maintenance of
UNESCO’s programmes in order to ensure
cultural and linguistic diversity and the widening
that the Organization is able to anticipate
of the gaps between the industrialized and the
and adapt to these changes for 1996–97
developing countries,
on the basis of regional consultations;
(c)
to promote a deontological approach
Mindful that the report of the Communication,
which is in keeping with UNESCO’s ethical
Information and Information Sector (CII)
mission and which is aimed at achieving
Working Group on the Medium-Term Strategy of
harmonious development of these
UNESCO (1996–2001) makes very critical
technologies while ensuring respect for
observations in paragraph 9 about the potential
linguistic and cultural pluralism and for
dangers of an ‘information superhighway’ to
developing nations,
the right to privacy;
(d)
to take steps, beginning in the current
biennium, to elaborate, together with the
Stressing further the potential inherent in such
various partners concerned, specific and
technologies for the development of educational
carefully monitored projects, in particular
methods, the flow of data and the expansion of
in the fields of distance education and
intercultural exchanges,
virtual libraries.
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forcefully for ‘exception culturelle’, that is, the continued protection in the global marketplace of its
film and other cultural product industries. In May
1995, Canada’s IHAC endorsed the Convergence
Report of the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (1995), which, while
recommending an accelerated regulatory transition
to sustainable competition among the carriers, suggests new ways of maintaining strong Canadian programming. The IHAC Final Report states:
. . . Canadian broadcasting policies have inspired Canadian
talent to remain at home, while giving Canadian consumers the benefit of the widest possible choice of any
country in the world. By any standard, the range is astonishing. Simply stated, this wide range of choice would not
have occurred without the support of strong broadcasting
and cultural policies and programs. Canadian cultural policy must be reaffirmed and strengthened in relation to the
new information infrastructure. The challenge now is to
ensure that these policies are sufficiently flexible to accommodate unforeseeable changes, yet strong enough to continue to provide Canada some stability in an unstable
world.
Linguistic minorities find themselves especially vulnerable in a world increasingly connected by information in the English language. Strong public cultural policies have become extremely important in
non-English-speaking or bilingual countries.
Equally important are the legal and ethical
aspects of electronic content control, the most vexing (and unresolved) of which have to do with intellectual property, privacy and security. In the age of
digital documents, for example, how is each version,
edition, part or iteration on the screen of an interactive multimedia product verified, authenticated, catalogued, indexed, accessed or preserved? Who owns
the intellectual rights to software – employees who
design it or employers who market it? (see Chapter
26).
‘Browsing’ is a particular thorny copyright
issue: authors, on the one hand, fear loss of control
over their works in an electronic environment, and
on the other hand consumers, readers especially, fear
loss of their traditional right to browse through a
document (book, newspaper, etc.) before photocopying, borrowing or buying it. The latter has
become especially critical in the light of at least one
recent court decision, in the United States, that the
act of browsing a work in a digital environment (that
is, viewing it on a computer screen) constitutes an act
of reproduction (see Chapter 26).
The twin issues of privacy (confidentiality) and
security (protection, authentication and verification)
of data are significant enough to have spurred the
growth of entire new industries. Privacy is of deep
personal concern to consumers, particularly with the
advancement of smartcards. Data security is crucial
for today’s individuals and organizations wholly
dependent upon electronic databases for accurate
(often sensitive) information free from the threat of
‘computer crime’ such as tampering or ‘hacking’,
fraud and unauthorized deletion.
Interconnection of networks is dramatically
increasing the number of electronic transactions,
credit ratings, financial accounts, education records,
medical and driving records, etc., that can be
amassed in individual or company profiles. These
masses of data cross national boundaries (an aspect
of the disturbing issue of transborder data flow), and
are often resold, re-used or integrated with other
databases – often without knowledge, consent or
remuneration. Databases of health information and
credit card spending habits, two areas of most concern to individuals, are of considerable commercial
value to insurance companies, etc., and ‘the incentive
to sell such information is high’ (Johnston et al.,
1995). With few exceptions, the current privacy
laws of countries are underdeveloped, out-of-date or
otherwise ineffective.
Because data encryption technologies devel-
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oped by the private sector (for example, the ‘Clipper
Chip’ in the United States) put global interoperability at risk, commitment by all countries to the 1992
OECD Security Guidelines is considered important.
An important part of guaranteeing security on the
information highway will be the development of a
Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). It is likely that
broad-based security will be achieved through several PKIs, to be built by different public and private
entities. But an unfragmented ‘electronic market’ on
the information highway, offering maximum consumer choice, will be possible only if PKI interoperability standards issues are fully dealt with.
Societal implications: the global village
Though the ‘information highway’ metaphor works
well, it breaks down at the point of fullest impact.
There the two words ‘information’ and ‘highway’,
descriptive as they have been for the current phenomenon, collapse as a deeper, richer meaning
emerges. Canada’s IHAC captured this meaning in
its Progress Report in 1994:
The Information Highway, in our view, is not so much
about information as it is about communication. . . . It is
not a cold and barren highway with exits and entrances
that carry traffic, but a series of culturally rich and dynamically intersecting communities, large and small, north and
south, east and west, populated by creative thinking people who reach out and enrich one another. Rather than a
highway, it is a personalized village square where people
eliminate the barriers of time and distance and interact in a
kaleidoscope of different ways.
Along the route to the new dynamic village square,
however, there are detours, dislocations and other
disruptions major enough to cause extreme stress in
the lives of many people. There are some, in fact,
who are unlikely to arrive.
To begin with, there are new juxtapositions
among nations. These go beyond current concerns
about the ‘information-poor’ developing nations of
the world versus the ‘information-rich’ industrialized countries, significant though these concerns are.
Thabo Mbeki, Vice-President of South Africa,
brought these disparities home when he told the
Brussels G-7 Summit delegates (EU Telecoms Aid,
1995): ‘Over half of humankind has never dialled a
phone number. There are more telephone lines in
Manhattan than in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa.’
‘Teledensity’, or number of telephone lines per 100
inhabitants, stands at forty-four in the European
Union, but less than five in Africa. However, ‘The
disparities are just as striking between developing
countries, and between rural and urban areas in the
same country. To cite two examples: the teledensity
for Argentina is 11, compared with 2 in Botswana,
and 90% of phone lines in India are in urban areas’
(EU Telecoms Aid . . . , 1995).
There are pockets of intense catch-up activity
in parts of Eastern Europe, for example, the Baltic
Information Infrastructure Pilot initiated in May
1994. In the Mediterranean region, Algeria, Egypt,
Jordan, Lebanon, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya,
Morocco, Syria and Tunisia lag far behind their
neighbours, Cyprus, Israel and Malta. Latin America
is mixed, its most advanced countries (with some of
the fastest growing economies in the world) surging
ahead. Aiming for a strong telecommunications
infrastructure, the Republic of Korea Information
Industry Task Force has identified a range of public
sector applications to stimulate growth and use,
including electronic government services, remote
medical care, distance education and electronic
libraries. Malaysia has created a Multimedia Development Corporation to operate from the Prime
Minister’s Department. China, like some of its Asian
neighbours, is emphasizing basic infrastructure construction (there being little to upgrade). It is taking
advantage, however, of an opportunity to leap-frog
technologies and to install systems that make full use
of the most recent technology.
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Meanwhile, there are surprising disparities in
the most developed of countries. United States census data for 1990 revealed (Doctor, 1992) that of 240
million Americans, the following (overlapping) populations are potentially among the informationpoor:
•
The 64.8 million who live in rural areas (27%).
•
The 32.4 million who are below the poverty
level (14%).
•
The 58.4 million who are in school (24%).
•
The 31 million who are over 65 (12.5%, or one
in eight Americans).
•
The 27 million over 16 who are disabled (11%).
The Gross Domestic Product per capita in Hong
Kong, Japan, the Republic of Korea and Singapore
already exceeds that of the United Kingdom, and
Malaysia and Thailand are catching up very quickly.
China is set to become the world’s largest economy
in the relatively near future, posing serious consequences for economic prosperity and social cohesion
in Western countries.
In the United Kingdom there are many signs
that the country’s position vis-à-vis the Information
Revolution is far different from the one it enjoyed in
the Industrial Revolution, as the nineteenth-century
world’s economic, political and technological leader.
Industrialization, particularly electrification, helped
the United States rise to its global superpower status
in the twentieth century. Positioning among nations
today has to do with which will rise to the top – with
all the concomitant societal benefits for their citizens
– in the century about to begin.
Along with states, the private sector is heavily
involved in global positioning. The stakes are
extremely high, not only for the multinational conglomerates with more capital than any country, but
also for whole information technology sectors (for
example, telephone versus cable television) and for
millions of SMEs worldwide that have gambled on
niches in the new multimedia industries. For each
Chairman of the Board who suffers stress, there are
hundreds or thousands of workers in companies
worldwide who have experienced redundancies, job
transfers, the need to retrain, and/or other major dislocations that have personally affected them and
their families. Relentlessly and with astonishing
speed, giant plants have closed or downsized, ‘company towns’ have lost their companies, employment
lifestyles (such as fishing) have disappeared for
whole communities. Although Western governments
have pinned their hopes for job creation on information technology and the information highway,
unemployment persists. In this especially volatile
time ‘the traditional correlation between unemployment and economic growth has broken down’. Lee
and Potter (1995) continue:
In a market economy, the processes of job acquisition, creation and loss are dynamic phenomena with fundamental
human implications. Jobs are generally acquired by individuals who possess the requisite skills, knowledge, and
experience. In the private sector, jobs are created as new
firms emerge and existing firms grow. There are innumerable factors which influence both the supply side and the
demand side of the employment equation. The development and use of the [information highway] is a key factor
that can have a profound effect on both sides of the equation.
Consumers, as noted, are an important force driving
the development of multimedia and the new content
applications. Anticipated consumer demand has
shaped market strategies and, in this frenzied transitionary time, has determined niches for the new
players. If anything, the role of consumers in the era
of the information highway will become even more
important. Several factors contribute to this empowerment, the most radical being the changed nature of
the economy itself (Dykstra, 1995):
When you buy a steel beam or a hat or a lawnmower from
me, I no longer have that object; it is now yours. In other
words, this transaction is characterized by a transfer in
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ownership. . . . When a limited amount of each product
References
was created in the first place . . . [this] introduces the element of scarcity. . . . Information as a product does not
behave this way. When you buy information from me, the
result is that we both have it. Information is a non-rival
commodity, in that you and I don’t rival for its ownership.
Here, then, is the first of the challenges for the new market
environment – how to handle a fundamentally different
product.
Other important factors are dramatically lower
transaction costs on the information highway (time
and money costs of going by car to video stores, for
example, compared with video-on-demand service at
home), elimination of the ‘middleperson’, increased
access to pre-purchase product information, speed of
customer feedback (also among consumers) and far
fewer geographical limitations.
All of these factors challenge the traditional
market power of producers (making things even
more risky for the private sector), while playing
directly into the hands of consumers.
Times of transition have pluses and minuses for
everyone. In the current global revolution, involvement is worldwide and the scale of change for countries, industries and society is enormous. For the
world’s people, on the one hand, there is now cheaplabour data input and other electronic piecework in
developing countries, teleworking from home, shortterm employment contracts without benefits, and
many another forms of real or potential exploitation.
On the other hand, telemedicine, electronic communication systems, ‘smart’ appliances and monitoring
devices for the home, and other aspects of the information highway offer new hope to those with both
ordinary and special needs. Above all, those members of society, wherever they live, who possess
knowledge and skills and the wherewithal to engage
in lifelong learning will be the ones best positioned
to survive the current transition and participate in
the new global village with confidence. ■■
BANGEMANN, M. 1996. The Revolution that Needs
Government to Join it at the Barricades. Telecom
Brief, Vol. 1, No. 1, p. 20.
BERCUSON, K.; CARLING, G., et al. 1995. Singapore: A
Case Study in Rapid Development. Washington,
D.C., IMF. 19 pp. (International Monetary Fund
Occasional Paper 119.)
CANADIAN RADIO-TELEVISION AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION. 1995. Competition and Culture
on Canada’s Information Highway: Managing the
Realities of Transition. Ottawa. 48 pp.
COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES. 1993.
Growth, Competitiveness, Employment: The
Challenges and Ways Forward into the 21st Century.
Luxembourg, Office of Official Publications of the
EC. 30 pp.
——. 1994. Europe’s Way to the Information Society: An
Action Plan (COM 94). Brussels. 14 pp.
DOCTOR, R. D. 1992. Social Equity and Information
Technologies:
Moving
toward
Information
Democracy. Annual Review of Information Science
and Technology, Vol. 27, pp. 43–96.
DUNDERSTADT, J. J. 1990. Challenges of a Knowledge
Society. Address given at the School of Information
and Library Studies, University of Michigan, 4
October 1990. Ann Arbor, Mich. 12 pp.
DYKSTRA, M. 1995. Hanging Together or Hanging
Separately: Survival through Collaboration. Unpublished paper presented at the Canadian Association for Information Science Annual Conference,
Edmonton, June 1995.
EU Telecoms Aid to the ACP States: All Aboard for the
Superhighway. 1995. I&T Magazine, No. 18, pp.
2–5.
EUROPEAN COMMISSION. 1994. Information Market
Observatory (IMO): the Main Events and
Developments in the Information Market. Draft
Annual Report, 1993. Luxembourg. 129 pp.
GORE, A. 1995. Infrastructure for the Global Village.
Scientific American (Special Issue), pp. 156–9.
HIGH-LEVEL GROUP ON THE INFORMATION SOCIETY.
1994. Europe and the Global Information Society:
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Recommendations to the European Council.
Brussels. 35 pp.
INFORMATION HIGHWAY ADVISORY COUNCIL. 1994.
Canada’s Information Highway: Building Canada’s
Information and Communications Infrastructure.
Progress Report. Ottawa, Industry Canada. 40 pp.
——. 1995. Connection, Community, Content: The
Challenge of the Information Highway. Final
Report. Ottawa, Industry Canada. 227 pp.
JOHNSTON, D.; JOHNSTON, D.; HANDA, S. 1995. Getting
Canada Online: Understanding the Information
Highway. Toronto, Stoddart. 278 pp.
LEE, M.; POTTER, M. 1995. Economic Impacts of the
Information Highway. Ottawa, Information
Highway Advisory Council Secretariat. 31 pp.
LONGHORN, R. 1994–95. The Information Society:
Comparisons in the Trio of Europe, North America
and Japan. I&T Magazine, No. 16, pp. 5–9.
MATTELART, A. 1995. Exception ou spécificité culturelle:
les enjeux du GATT. In: Universalis 1995: la politique, les connaissances, la culture en 1994, pp.
138–43. Paris, Encyclopaedia Universalis.
MOORE, N. n.d. The Information Policy Agenda in East
Asia. London, Policy Studies Institute. 15 pp.
(Unpublished.)
STIEL, N. 1995. Multimedia: la nouvelle frontière. In:
Universalia 1995: les connaissances, la culture en
1994, pp. 144–9. Paris, Encyclopaedia Universalis.
TWIGG, C. A. 1995. The Need for a National Learning
Infrastructure. Educom Review, Vol. 29, No. 5, pp.
16–20.
UNESCO. 1996. UNESCO and an Information Society
for All. A Position Paper. Paris, UNESCO. 12 pp.
Mary Dykstra Lynch is Professor
and former Director at the School of
Library and Information Studies,
Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova
Scotia, Canada. Her Ph.D. is from the
University of Sheffield. She represents the
library/information studies community and the
province of Nova Scotia on the national Information
Highway Advisory Council of Canada, established in
1994 and extended to 1997. She serves on the Board of
Canarie, Canada’s national broadband network for
research, industry and education. Recent consultancies
include the Art and Architecture Thesaurus Project of
the J. P. Getty Trust in the United States. Her
involvement with the British Library’s PRECIS Index
System in the 1980s included its publication of her
Precis: A Primer. At the National Film Board of
Canada, Montreal, she was responsible for the
development of a bilingual information system for
Canada’s film and video productions.
Mary Dykstra Lynch
School of Library and Information Studies
Faculty of Management
Dalhousie University
Halifax
Nova Scotia B3H 3J5
Canada
Tel: 902-494-2743
Fax: 902-494-2451
E-mail: [email protected]
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Chapter 22
Economic
intelligence
Philippe Clerc
Université de Paris-II,
France
T
he fall of the Berlin Wall marked a radical
change in the world for both governments
and enterprises. The end of the Cold War
bipolarity created a new kind of economic geography, with two major consequences. The first consequence has been the emergence of a plurality of
chessboards, so to speak: the global trade board on
which the giant multinational corporations confront
one another; the three major world economic
boards, that is, North America, Europe and the
Asia-Pacific zone; the boards of the national
economies of different industrial states; and finally
regional boards. Against this backdrop new forms of
power and state confrontations are developing,
based on control over multiple information networks, that induce the various economic players to
seek alliances with their competitors. For example,
worldwide alliances are being created between the
Americans and the Japanese in the area of advanced
technologies (information, pharmaceuticals, automobiles) despite the bitter competition between
these two powers (Caduc and Polycarpe, 1994).
The second consequence, affecting the developing countries, is that the end of the confrontation
between the Eastern and Western blocs has led to the
dislocation of their respective zones of influence in
the countries of the South. As a consequence, the
North–South divide is widening and the hierarchies
of economic dependence are becoming more acute.
The developing countries have been the major losers
in the growing trend towards globalization, but a
hierarchical dependency can also be discerned in the
commercial, technological and financial interdependences of the economies of developed countries.
All these changes are undermining previously
accepted concepts of sovereignty and are limiting the
choices open to both enterprises and governments.
Furthermore, this system of dependence also brings
with it a serious risk that national identities will be
diluted.
Against this background, competitiveness and
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development processes depend on the ability of both
public and private economic actors to ensure their
integration into industrial, financial and trade networks, thereby tilting the balance of power more
effectively in their favour. They are obliged to formulate their strategies for these shifting and uncertain conditions, and to understand and interpret
these new conditions accordingly. The effectiveness
of these strategies rests on the deployment of economic intelligence techniques; these techniques hold
the key to control over the content and flow of
information.
This chapter will first define economic intelligence and then examine how it is applied by enterprises and states, considering the various techniques
that can be used. The organization of selected
national economic intelligence systems will then be
described and some comparisons drawn between
them.
Economic intelligence defined
Economic intelligence is not easy to define. On the
one hand, it is a well-established concept drawing on
the techniques and methods formalized initially by
large American and British enterprises to establish
their competitive strategies; on the other hand, it
is gradually taking shape also as a concept implemented by states, some of which have adopted it as a
national policy. In the following definition, we shall
try to synthesize the different approaches that have
emerged over time in the context of widely differing
information cultures.
The French Commissariat Général du Plan
(1994) defines economic intelligence as encompassing all the co-ordinated measures of information collection, processing, distribution and protection
which are of value to economic players and that are
achievable by legal means. Its ultimate objective is to
provide decision-makers in enterprises or government with the knowledge to understand their environment and adjust their individual or collective
strategies accordingly. Economic intelligence is
therefore an extension of the various ‘watch’ techniques (scientific, technological, trading, competition-oriented, financial, legal, regulatory, etc.) and of
techniques to protect key assets, taking fully into
account influential actions that can be taken by governments or enterprises when formulating strategies,
as well as information and disinformation campaigns.
Three main features emerge from this definition. First, economic intelligence is based on the
exploitation of publicly available sources. Experts
maintain that 80% to 90% of all information
required is available from public sources (Combs
and Moorhead, 1992). It is the expert processing and
analysis of this available data, therefore, that provide
the value-addedness. Second, economic intelligence
differs clearly from economic espionage in that it
makes use of legal means to acquire information.
Third, the pursuit of economic intelligence is bound
up, at the enterprise or organization levels, as well as
at the industry and state ones, with the collective culture for exchanging and sharing information and
knowledge. This suggests that new methods of organization may be required that place emphasis on networking and synergy between people and institutions, and on the control of the know-how required
to accomplish this task.
At an operational level, economic intelligence
can be thought of as both a product and a process.
The product of economic intelligence is workable
information and knowledge, and the process of economic intelligence is the systematic acquisition, evaluation and production of that usable information
and knowledge.
The information cycle
The information process or cycle begins with a precise definition of user needs and their compatibility
with strategic plans as set forth by the user. These
needs and strategic factors will govern the effective-
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ness of the entire process and, in the first instance,
the organization of the research process and the way
in which information will be collected. There are
two kinds of sources: the substantial body of published data (reviews, statistics, indexes, government
documents, online databases, etc.) and human
sources, that is information originating from experts,
such as reports with a ‘surprise’ effect that are playing an increasingly important role.
The second phase of the process involves processing and analysing the collected information. This
function consists in transforming the raw data into
workable information and then into knowledge;
they must be given meaning through processing and
analysis, that is by regrouping and correlating different key elements that might be technological, financial, biographical, etc. (Fuld, 1995). This plays a
major role in the economic intelligence process at a
time when uncertainty in a changing environment
coincides with an overabundance of information (the
volume of information is doubling every four years).
The third phase of the information cycle
involves the dissemination of the workable information to the client, who will employ it to make timely
decisions, to formulate new needs and to decide
upon new strategic plans. The intelligence system
operation, therefore, is best described as a closedloop cycle.
A final phase in the cycle is to ensure the security of information at every stage in the process. All
searches for and dissemination of information leave
tracks of the original user’s own projects and intentions, as well as revealing any financial, technological, social or organizational weaknesses. Every organization must try to protect its own assets and specific expertise.
Functions and characteristics
Economic intelligence has four main functions: to
control (defend and promote) scientific and technological expertise in a particular activity area; to detect
threats and opportunities in domestic and external
markets; to define more effectively individual or
concerted collective strategies; and to help define
‘influencing’ strategies that will support actions.
It therefore becomes a tool in its own right that
constantly can be used to understand the environments, techniques and thought processes both of
competitors and of partners, their cultures and intentions as well as their ability to implement these
intentions.
It is important to note that economic intelligence may take a number of forms which are both
competitive and co-operative. It involves all the economic actors at the national, multinational and global levels, and is especially important for developing
countries. Although the latter are excluded from the
globalization process, nevertheless they do have
access to markets in developed countries, in particular by using techniques for information transfer that
are becoming increasingly commonplace. For example, the Mexican ‘Woman to Woman’ group used the
Internet to obtain information about an American
textile company that was setting up an operation in
Mexico. Working with sympathizers in California,
the group was able to gather sufficient data to negotiate more effectively with the American corporation
(Panas, 1996).
The economic intelligence process keeps a close
watch on all kinds of indicators and, in particular,
those that are of a cultural or social nature. It imposes a knowledge process that seeks to understand the
world of economics but not merely by using in a
very narrow sense only indicators concerning economic competitiveness. The economic intelligence
process tries to identify, at a detailed level, any vital
links which may exist between individuals, events,
cultures and strategies, and it does so by interpreting
all available signals and indices. The meticulous
analysis of evidence concerning the national market (share acquisitions, establishment of research
centres, scientific co-operation, etc.), for instance,
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enables the competitive intentions of a foreign company to be reconstructed and interpreted so that a
suitable response can then be carefully planned.
The value of this cognitive approach to understanding shifting and unpredictable environments is
self-evident at a time when planning processes are
fraught with uncertainty and require more and more
current, processed information. Many experts, following in the footsteps of pioneers such as Harold
Wilensky (1967), now lay stress on the cognitive
skills which organizations must develop. Emphasis
should be placed on the process of understanding
rather than the mere accumulation of ‘knowledge’.
The development of national intelligence capabilities should therefore be directed towards the skills
needed to interpret information and make sense of
it (Baumard, 1996).
The ‘non-market’ environment requires increasingly careful attention (geopolitical data, local politics, culture, society, etc.) if we are to adapt to the
new conditions under which competition is taking
place. This enlargement of the operational field of
economic intelligence, in particular, facilitates the
development of strategies to use information as a
competitive weapon or to exert political pressure: to
influence, destabilize, manipulate and disinform. No
methodology focusing on competition alone will
enable these means of leverage to be analysed correctly and a response to them found.
Economic intelligence derives its meaning and
practical significance from the new world geo-economic order. It is practised by companies, banks,
states, government agencies and regional bodies, and
even by communities of states, such as the European
Union. First, it will be considered from the viewpoint of enterprises, and then from the viewpoint of
states.
Enterprises and business intelligence
An analysis of economic intelligence as practised at
the enterprise level will enable its different meanings
to be clarified and related practices defined, as well as
illustrating its goals and usefulness.
The term was first developed in large corporations in the Anglo-American world – the United
Kingdom and, above all, the United States. They created marketing intelligence departments in the 1960s,
influenced by the military intelligence model originating in the Second World War and early Cold War
years. Competitive intelligence developed gradually,
especially between 1970 and 1980 in corporations
such as Motorola or IBM, and today is a discipline
widely practised and taught as competitive or business intelligence. Interestingly enough, these terms
gained a foothold in the United States in the context
of a bitter competitive confrontation between major
American corporations in their own home market.
Both the concepts of marketing intelligence and
competitive or business intelligence share the need to
interpret the way in which market players operate,
but in terms of objectives they differ.
Marketing intelligence
Marketing intelligence is based on market research.
Its goal is to market as effectively as possible the corporate products and services. It focuses on an analysis of specific activities: product launches, creation of
new distribution circuits, comparative price analyses, prospective customer needs, and even analyses
of specific promotional campaigns run by industrial
competitors, or the perception of competitors’ products by their customers.
Competitive and economic intelligence
Enterprises engage in competitive and economic
intelligence with the clearly stated goals of assisting
decision-making and strategic planning. They systematically monitor their competitors’ strategies
(Bernhard, 1994): what are their competitor’s objectives and comparative strengths and weaknesses,
how has the competitor performed to date and what
is its current strategy?
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Competitive and economic intelligence is
therefore characterized by the systematic monitoring of many facets of the enterprise’s external
environment – economic, sociocultural, political,
legal and competitive (particularly the plans, intentions and capabilities of its main competitors)
– including the development of strategic supply
markets, technological and other innovative change,
and patent activities. Economic and competitive
intelligence, then, supports marketing intelligence as
well as assisting in the broader role of strategic finetuning.
American corporations historically have created competitive intelligence units with independent,
country by country, coverage. However, the inefficiency of this method slowly has been appreciated,
leading as it does to duplication of effort and lack of
data integration. The onset of globalization, and
especially the creation of the single European market
in 1992, accentuated the trend towards the creation
of centralized competitive or business intelligence
units with an effective mission to gather and process
international data.
Confronted with drastic competition, large
American high-technology corporations have recently established marketing intelligence structures
to manage their globalized markets, which are truly
‘knowledge infrastructures’. IBM, Hewlett-Packard
and Dow Chemicals are networking their sales
forces worldwide and making available to them in
real time processed information about their competitors, their technologies and their customers’ behaviour. Using electronic data interchange, a HewlettPackard representative in Tokyo, for example,
can describe to his client Hewlett-Packard’s worldwide dealings with the client’s company. Dow
Chemicals has set up a technology centre to give its
personnel worldwide access to the company’s
knowledge base into which they themselves can feed
data and which enables them to respond to customers’ needs: as Baumard (1996) puts it: ‘The whole
organization is transformed into a knowledge-generation node’.
In support of their economic and competitive
intelligence approaches, American experts have
designed methods which are intended to enrich their
analysis capabilities. Benchmarking, for instance, is
defined as the ‘continuous, systematic process of
evaluating the products, services, distribution and
work processes of competing organizations that are
recognized as employing best practices, this being
undertaken in order to activate organizational
improvements (Sulzberger and Berlage, 1995). Such
a comparative approach uses both quantitative and
qualitative data. Criteria for comparison are defined
and enable the discrepancies between ‘best’ practice
and actual practice to be identified, such an analysis
then leading to strategic and organizational changes.
Conceptualized in the United States in the 1960s,
this method was only widely introduced in Europe
in the early 1990s.
Scientific and technical watch and
economic intelligence
The control of the relevant technologies and associated know-how is a key factor in any corporate
development. It is especially important for enterprises in developing countries, which must gain access to
these technologies in order to counter ever widening
inequalities brought about by technical progress
itself. Technology watch is therefore a critical function for all enterprises and an essential pillar of their
competitive as well as co-operative strategies.
A distinction can be made between two complementary approaches to science and technology
watch, that is scanning and monitoring. Scanning
involves an ongoing examination of a broad spectrum of information and events that facilitates the
identification of technological trends and changes
which have an important bearing on the enterprise.
Monitoring, in contrast, involves an ongoing process
of information gathering and interpretation in care-
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fully targeted technical and scientific domains. It is
an ‘alert’ mode that permits key pointers to technological change to be immediately identified (Ashton
and Stacy, 1995).
In terms of innovation, enterprises use ‘outsourcing’, mobilizing teams to search external markets for appropriate niches for their own innovations, and also to seek out innovations made
by competitors that may constitute technological
breakthroughs and thus reduce the enterprise’s
competitive advantage. When companies are in a
co-operation-competition relationship in different
segments of the international markets, technology
watch and its promise of early recognition of these
breakthroughs becomes essential.
Technological and strategic watch is increasingly based on the use of computerized tools to gather,
format and store information, although it would not
be appropriate to refer to a real ‘computer-assisted
watch’. Computing technology is greatly improving
research possibilities, in particular through online
databases, the Internet and CD-ROMs. It facilitates
the essential storage of information through techniques such as remote loading and scanning.
However, getting to grips with database contents
and indexes, the majority in English, presents an
obstacle to widespread information access, notably
for a great many countries of the South (see a discussion of this topic on the World Wide Web at
http://www.oneworld.org/panos).
Despite these technological advances, human
expertise remains essential in identifying the areas
for surveillance, searching for pertinent information
in networks of expertise, validating the gathered
information and undertaking its interpretation and
analysis. Human beings alone have the intuition
needed to accomplish these tasks.
States and economic intelligence
Today, governments have elevated economic intelligence to the status of a national policy: France, for
example, has created a Committee for Competitiveness and Economic Security, and the United
States a National Economic Council (see below).
Led by France, the community of states that constitutes the European Union also has designated economic intelligence as one of the priorities for
European policy on industrial competitiveness and
innovation. On the one hand, these trends confirm
the competitive/confrontational roles of states at the
international level and significantly qualify analyses
which refer to the dilution of the state’s ability to act
in global markets (Reich, 1991). On the contrary,
strategies of national interest are becoming increasingly strong. Preservation of national identities is
based on control of information and on technological and organizational expertise. It is a yardstick by
which the collective ability to cope with change is
judged. On the other hand, these trends also confirm
the accuracy of vision of experts such as Steven
Dedijer (1979) who, at a very early stage, formulated
the concepts of an intelligence community or a
national economic intelligence system.
National economic intelligence system
A national economic intelligence system may be
defined as the set of practices and strategies for the
interpretation of usable information and knowledge,
developed and shared between the different organizational levels of a country: state, governmental
agencies, local authorities, enterprises, educational
systems, professional associations, trade unions and
so forth.
Three broad aims are typical of a national system of economic intelligence:
•
The development of interpretation and comprehension capabilities of the economic and
social environments among the different economic players within the country. This only
properly exists when a body of knowledge
(procedures and methods) has been created that
is widely shared and in particular is based upon
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specific teaching programmes, an organized
profession and a recorded set of relevant practices.
•
The generation of a shared knowledge base
oriented towards the definition of concerted
actions to meet the challenges of globalization.
•
The implementation of influence strategies
which promote in international markets the
national model for economic and social development.
More than ever before, Gross National Product
(GNP) or Gross Domestic Product (GDP) are insufficient measures of economic performance on the
world scale. It is equally necessary to take into
account the influence on international decision-making that is wielded by countries and enterprises, that
is, to evaluate their negotiating power within the
international balance of power.
The struggle for economic domination between
developed countries or zones, like the struggle of
the developing countries to participate in wealthgenerating global networks, follows a logic of interdependence. Each player is now obliged to form
alliances with its competitors that will yield economic and technological power. In this constant
search for a new balance of power, familiarity with
national economic intelligence systems is becoming a
priority.
Comparative analysis of national economic
intelligence systems reveals a link between economic
efficiency and the existence of a collective information culture, that is, one guided by exchange and
sharing. Such analysis has been developed by
Swedish experts (Dedijer, 1979), and French expertise is improving (Harbulot, 1993).
Each national system must be understood and
interpreted in the light of its culture and history.
Both the Japanese and German models have a long
history and have been established through a process
of constant adaptation to major changes in the world
economy.
Japan
The Japanese economic intelligence system has been
progressively developed since the nineteenth century
(Meiji era), when the desire to preserve economic
independence in the face of pressure from the
Western powers enabled the Japanese élites to be
mobilized on economic issues. The Japanese model
has retained two characteristics. First, information is
used intensively in the service of an offensive industrial development policy. Access to knowledge produced by competitor countries has guided the organization of the Japanese system since the last century. Second, secrecy is managed as an ongoing policy
and permits the clear identification of elements
which must be protected because of their strategic
importance to the country, and those which can be
exchanged or shared.
Information in Japan (designated by the term
joho, which denotes all kinds of information) is more
than a mere product to be bought and sold. It is associated with a form of social behaviour: exchange of
information is a service rendered which testifies to
confidence between partners. This results in a collective national culture of exchange and sharing, as is
clearly illustrated by bonds of solidarity between
major groups.
On this cultural base, Japan established a system of economic intelligence at the end of the
Second World War. The state gave a vital impulse
here. It created for enterprises a national organization for the acquisition and dissemination of economic and technological business information, led
by the Scientific Information Centre (SIC) and the
Japanese External Trade Organization (JETRO) and
financed by the Ministry of International Trade and
Industry (MITI), as the major institution of this
dynamic offensive.
Today, the Japanese system is based on multiple
channels for exchanges between the state, major
industrial groups and banks, trading companies (sogo
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shosha), intermediate bodies and the universities.
They ensure the cohesion and ongoing evaluation of
national strategies. These are decided through a
process of consensus-building organized around
three focuses: the ministerial focus, which heads the
shingikai, consultative committees including the
state, industry and universities; the professional
focus, which comprises the various professional
associations that constitute hubs for informal information exchanges; and the scientific focus, which
brings together the various learned societies within
which company experts regularly present their work
to technical committees (iinkai). All the actors are
linked to a multitude of contacts worldwide who
gather information and knowledge. Relations
between the state and major groups (the kereitsu) are
gradually changing, however. The big Japanese companies, backed by international trading companies,
have developed their own economic intelligence network and are gradually becoming independent, in
particular from MITI.
Japan is the first power to have turned ‘influence’ into a primary asset in the achievement of its
economic and industrial success. Competitive confrontations are managed by extolling the benefits of
‘co-operation’. The development of the ‘Human
Frontiers’ programme in 1985 throws light on the
remarkable Japanese control over the levers of influence. After getting the West to concede that science
is a part of the human heritage, the Japanese are
demonstrating to the world their willingness to cooperate, while proposing an organization of the programme which enables them to share, through
progress reports, a significant body of scientific
information, for example, on the brain, memory and
the genome.
Germany
The German economic intelligence system also has a
long history. In the nineteenth century, when the
German state was created, Bismarck encouraged
bankers and industrialists to co-operate closely in
order to establish German economic credibility
against British trade supremacy. By doing so, he
helped to create the core of the modern German
industrial system, which works on the principle of a
strategic unity between the different decision-making centres: enterprises, banks, insurance companies,
regions (Länder) and the state. The network created
in this way shares a collective information culture
whose history dates back to the fourteenth century
and the successes of the merchants in the Hanseatic
League – the ancestors of modern international trading companies.
The German decision-making centre has to be
understood as a tight, relational network of decisionmakers, nourished by complex information flows
originating from a wide variety of actors (populations of German origin all over the world, trade
unions, foundations, international trading companies, etc.). The efficiency of this system is also based
on a strong collective perception of the national
interest. It works on the principle of ongoing coordination between social partners of economic
goals to be obtained, based on an aggressive cultivation of the commercial approach and the integration
of the German diaspora into the organization of
market strategies.
The German strategy in the Asian and Pacific
rim countries exemplifies the expertise and techniques used by Germany to wield influence.
For instance, following concerted discussion the
government drafted in 1994 guidelines setting out
German policy for this region. They explain the
underlying reasons and define the main lines of
action for co-operation, which are at one and the
same time political, economic, cultural and technological. The players concerned are named, and therefore each one can find within the guidelines those
parts that concern it. Such an analysis then provides
a clear vision of the German system of influence
as well as its objectives: the discreet export of the
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German model of the social market economy in
order to prepare the élites of the target countries for
co-operation (multiplication of cultural exchanges,
especially through German foundations, creation of
training institutes on the German model, university
exchanges, etc.).
United States
Compared with these two previous models, the
American system is more recent and, although powerful, until a few years ago was characterized by a
lack of collective efficiency; this is illustrated by the
absence of synergies between the state and the enterprises. American corporations have engaged in sharp
competition in their own domestic market at the
same time as they were developing methods of marketing, and later of competitive intelligence. This has
had two major consequences: first, the United States
has the world’s leading information market, but it is
inspired by goals of short-term economic profitability; and second, there is a strategic blindness to external competition, notably from Asia (Japan and the
newly industrialized countries).
The national debate on the loss of competitiveness of the American economy in the late 1980s led
to a major reorientation of the country’s economic
intelligence system. The foundations were laid for an
economic security policy, and the United States
administration resolutely directed its economic policy towards the service of American enterprises. This
strategy took shape when President Clinton created
the National Economic Council, responsible for
advising the President on all aspects of economic
security, that is, American economic interests in
domestic and world markets.
Political will is expressed through economic
diplomacy and influence networks that support
American enterprises. Both the National Export
Strategy and the overall orientation of technological
policy establish a link between economic security
and national security. The National Export Strategy
was launched in 1993. The basic principles that
underpin this strategy rest on a desire for increased
co-ordination between enterprise needs and the
actions of national, local and international administrations, putting at their disposal a network giving
permanent access to information.
Ten emerging markets have been targeted
and are now seen as ‘reserved economic zones’:
Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico,
Poland, the Republic of Korea, Turkey and South
Africa. At the heart of this system, and created by
the administration, lies an Advocacy Center or War
Room, where experts permanently monitor the 100
biggest calls for tender worldwide and offer enterprises the necessary information and diplomatic
assistance to submit competitive responses.
In the field of technology, the Presidential
Office of Science and Technology Policy regards the
regaining of technological leadership as a major challenge for national security. The objective is to create
opportunities for American companies through cooperation. Country strategies are evaluating potential markets and the kinds of co-operation that will
be capable of extending market shares. Access to
open foreign scientific knowledge is becoming a
major goal. At the same time, the United States
Government has set up national technology watch
programmes, seeking to gain a better understanding
of the technological level of its competitors and partners. The Japan Technical Literature Program, in
particular, gives access to grey literature. This new
move to serve enterprises has been reinforced by the
creation of a National Information Infrastructure
Program.
France
France would seem to be the first country to have
decided on the elevation of economic intelligence to
the status of a national priority, following the publication of studies by a group of experts meeting in the
Commissariat Général du Plan between 1992 and
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1994 on the theme of ‘Economic Intelligence and
Corporate Strategy’ (Commissariat Général du Plan,
1994). Comprising representatives of business, the
administration, trade unions, universities and information professions, the working party has identified
the strengths and weaknesses of the French system
on the basis of a detailed analysis of the economic
intelligence systems which offer the best performance.
France in fact has a rich heritage in this area,
and the state has always played a powerful role, at
one and the same time creating economic and technical information networks (the French administrative
tradition, the historical role of the Chambers of
Commerce and Industry, etc.) and creating supporting structures for technical progress (the foundation
by Napoleon of the Society for the Promotion of
National Industry). In the nineteenth century, banks
and companies designed information structures suitable to support dynamic international strategies.
However, this know-how was not subsequently
retained, conveyed or adapted, in contrast to the situation in Germany. Despite the central role of the
state and its privileged links with the major industrial groups during the Second World War, the French
system remained for a long time embryonic and
fragmented. The predominance of public economic,
scientific and technical information networks and
the limited information culture in enterprises explain
the weakness of the private information market. The
volumes of public information made available have
proved ill-adapted to new needs that often have been
inadequately formulated by companies, and in particular by small and medium-sized businesses and
industries which are becoming increasingly international.
At the corporate level, economic intelligence
know-how resides essentially with big companies or
innovative small and medium-sized enterprises in
the advanced technology sectors. On a broader scale,
expertise remains concentrated on ‘watch’ activities
and measures to ensure the security of existing
assets. This reflects an incomplete concept of economic intelligence, in turn resulting in a failure collectively to adjust fully to the multiple facets of the
world economy.
This being the case, the French public authorities decided in 1995 to create by decree (Decree No.
95-350 of 1.04.95, Journal Officiel de la République
Française, 4 April 1995) a Committee for Competitiveness and Economic Security that would form the
heart of the French economic intelligence system.
Chaired originally by the Prime Minister, who has
for the present time delegated this responsibility to
the Minister of Economic and Financial Affairs, this
committee has seven members drawn from the
worlds of industry, finance and research, and its secretariat is provided by the Secretariat General for
National Defence, a government department which
reports to the Prime Minister. The mission of this
committee is to enlighten the Prime Minister,
through its opinions, on matters of competitiveness
and economic security. It advises him on the design
and implementation of the policy to be pursued in
this area by the public authorities. Interestingly
enough, the Report to the President of the Republic,
published with the decree, highlights the role of
information as a ‘strategic raw material’ and the
‘determination of the state to mobilize all its energies
around the great national challenge of economic
intelligence.’ This movement has now been given
practical content through clearly established and
shared priorities:
•
Ongoing attention to the needs of enterprises,
especially small and medium-sized enterprises,
for open information and the consequent
requirement to redirect public data-gathering
and processing facilities.
•
Promotion of interaction on economic intelligence matters between public and private
authorities in order to establish co-ordination
and information exchange networks.
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•
Development of a community of practice
through the widespread dissemination of an
economic intelligence approach. In this context, educational courses are now being developed in universities and business schools.
Moreover, a regional dynamic is being developed by creating a number of awareness-creation and training programmes for small and
medium-sized enterprises/industries in the area
of economic intelligence. The first experimental
initiative on a national scale was launched in
October 1995 for a one-year period in the Paris
region and covered a sample of 300 companies.
European Union
The European Union is the first community of states
to have introduced economic intelligence as an
important factor in its industrial competitiveness
policy. It has drawn heavily on French experience in
this area and is taking part in the thinking on the
purpose of economic intelligence as a lever for the
controlled readjustment of the world economic balance of power.
In 1994, the European Commission published a
communication entitled A Policy of Industrial
Competitiveness for the European Union, in which it
proposed to ‘make full use of the assets of the
European Union for the exploitation of the new
concept of economic intelligence, one of the major
aspects of the information society’. The European
Executive, under the impetus of Commissioners
Edith Cresson and Martin Bangemann, went further
in its Green Paper on Innovation (1995) which
defines economic intelligence as a corollary of the
global approach to innovation and a strategic tool
for decision-making in the context of world trade.
Proposed actions include recommendations for the
development of technology watch and forecasting as
well as economic intelligence. In this area, the
authors propose the development of broad programmes of awareness-creation and training for
small and medium-sized enterprises/industries, and
the networking of European innovation relay centres headed by the Technology Forecasting Institute
of Seville, Spain. The creation in March 1995 of a
Competitiveness Advisory Group under the
President of the European Commission should
ensure the necessary co-ordination of these actions
at the highest level of the European Commission.
China
China is one of the few Asian countries where we
have a description of certain facets of its national
economic intelligence system, thanks to the work of
Qihao Miao (1996). In the mid-1950s the field of scientific and technical information became a discipline
within the Academy of Sciences. In 1956, the government created an organization to head a network
of scientific and technical documentation centres: the
Institute of Scientific and Technological Information
of China (ISTIC). By 1958, there were thirty-three
state institutes and thirty-five regional institutes in
this network, and currently some 60,000 persons are
working in it. The dynamism of this system can be
explained by the substantial need of the state for
information because of its strong commitment to an
open policy and participation in the world economy.
This explains the evolution of the concept of qing
bao, meaning both data and open information. In
1986, the Director of the Academy of Science decided that the activity of qing bao was ‘open and
above board’.
Today, practices and methods have evolved to
serve the goals of government policy in the areas of
management and technology transfer. Chinese companies and governmental authorities are developing
practices such as the consolidation of information,
benchmarking, database watch and reverse engineering. The governmental system is no longer the sole
source of information. Direct collection and analysis
capabilities in enterprises with foreign partners and
competitors are developing more widely. In particu-
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lar, a new type of information supply agency is
emerging and many private information suppliers
are setting up in the industrial centres. It seems
reasonable to assume the gradual development and
wide dissemination of these methods. In April 1995,
the Society of Competitive Intelligence of China
(SCIC), headed by the China Science Association,
was established with the purpose of organizing university research, publishing works on economic
intelligence and infusing energy into corporate practices.
South-East Asia
In Asia, economic intelligence is developing under
the influence of American and Australian expertise
in marketing and competitive intelligence, and also
more informally through exposure to information
management. Little information as yet is available
about national economic intelligence systems in this
region.
In general, access to information is difficult to
obtain: information gathering and processing expertise, therefore, are particularly valuable and provide
important competitive advantages. An example of
this can be found in Singapore, where the WYWY
company gathers and processes very substantial volumes of data obtained from customers and distributors of the high-technology products which it sells, so
as to determine their exact position in the markets.
Taiwan has an excellent system for scientific
and technical information-gathering about world
markets and competition. It has well-organized
sources of public or semi-public information and is
able, for instance, to supply international data on
technologies and management projects.
Very little information is available on the
Indonesian economic intelligence system. However,
the creation of the Indonesian Muslim Intellectual
Association (ICMI) in 1990 is an interesting step, its
role being to bring together élites around a collective
awareness of the importance of human resources as a
major factor for development. In 1993, ICMI established the Centre for Information and Development
Studies (CIDES), which is a think-tank with several
responsibilities: to undertake studies, to disseminate
information, to create databases, to organize seminars and to monitor the promotion of a development policy, particularly in the scientific and technical fields. Partly financed by the Indonesian
Government, CIDES also receives support from
organizations based in Canada, Germany, Malaysia,
Singapore and the United States, to facilitate its entry
into world development networks.
Viet Nam, an emerging country, has designed a
national development project in which access to
information is defined as a priority goal. In 1993, the
government fixed priorities for the development of
information technologies: access to foreign technologies, training of individuals, development of
‘open systems’, and the introduction of these technologies into the sphere of socio-economic activities
in order to enhance the quality and effectiveness of
management. The government wishes to set up a
data system suitable for use by both the state and
economic players, and open to international networks. The ultimate intention is to disseminate ‘culture and information’ and join in the developing
information society.
Conclusions
The introduction of economic intelligence systems is
clearly a matter of vital importance to developing
countries. This subject was dealt with in detail by
experts in the late 1970s, but did not generate any
special dynamic at the time. It is true that the
approach is complex because full account must be
taken of development disparities between different
countries, the existence or otherwise of concrete
national development projects and, above all, of local
information cultures. Innovation is vital in this area,
but without the oversimplistic transfer of models
designed in the North.
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This debate has become vital. Disparities in
access to global trade are widening, and industrial
and technological inequalities are aggravated by
information inequalities. This twofold phenomenon
emphasizes both the dependence on knowledge and
the exclusion of the poorer countries. ‘Production
systems based on information will increasingly marginalize developing countries and consequently
exclude them from advanced manufacturing processes and world trade, so effectively increasing their
poverty,’ concluded the Zambian Information
Development Centre. Systems to gather and process
information, if they exist at all, remain unreliable,
particularly in relation to local environments. The
lack of data adapted to economic and technical realities and hence to the real needs of these countries
results in erroneous, and therefore costly, strategic
decisions.
Economic intelligence is a lever which will
enable the countries of the South gradually to restore
the balance of their negotiating power in the context
of the overall world economic balance of power. A
central theme in relations between the countries of
the South and North is undoubtedly their respective
understanding of their information cultures, as a way
to a new form of co-operation. After all, that was
one of the goals established by governments when
founding UNESCO. ■■
References
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Paris, Economica. 225 pp.
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Philippe Clerc is currently head of
the taskforce on economic security and
competitiveness at the Secrétariat
Général de la Défense Nationale, an
administration under the authority of
the French Prime Minister. He holds degrees in
political science, law and organizational science and a
degree from the European College. He has worked in
a private legal office and directed two firms
specializing in development and international trade in
Asia. As member of the French Planning Office, he
was responsible for the report Intelligence économique
et stratégie des entreprises [Economic Intelligence and
Corporate Strategy] published in 1994, and for the
Working Group whose report Politique de concurrence
et politique industrielle au sein de l’Union Européenne
[Competitive and Industrial Policies within the
European Union] was published in 1996. He has
written or edited papers on international anticounterfeiting, international trade and economic
intelligence. He participates in think-tanks, expert
committees and speaks in France and abroad on these
topics. A member of the scientific committee of the
first French specialized Master in Economic
Intelligence, Mr Clerc will start teaching on this topic
in 1997 at the Université de Poitiers.
Philippe Clerc
Chargé d’enseignement
Institut Supérieur des Affaires de Défense (ISAD)
Université Panthéon-Assas, Paris II
23 bis, rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs
75006 Paris
France
Tel: (1) 43 54 64 03
Fax: (1) 40 46 02 31
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Chapter 23
Book publishing
Philip Altbach
Bellagio Publishing Network,
United States
B
ooks remain a primary means of communicating knowledge. They are central to providing information, entertainment, analysis
and education to millions throughout the world. In
1991, UNESCO statistics – which give only a very
rough impression of the real situation – indicate that
863,000 separate titles were published worldwide.
There are, in addition, more than 9,000 daily newspapers and at least 50,000 periodicals that focus on
science and scholarship. Despite the advent of new
technologies for knowledge distribution, such as the
Internet and other computer-based innovations, traditional books and newspapers are the primary
source of information. Indeed, the number of titles
published continues to increase steadily. This essay
focuses primarily on book publishing and will discuss the nature of the publishing enterprise as well as
current challenges facing publishing worldwide.
Although fairly insignificant in terms of economic
impact, publishing is of central importance to the
cultural, intellectual and educational life of a nation.
The development and dissemination of knowledge
products is a matter of the utmost importance for
any civilization.
Technological change is having an impact on
publishing that is unrivalled since the Industrial
Revolution in the nineteenth century affected the
composition and printing of books and permitted a
mass market for books to emerge. Simultaneously in
Europe and North America rates of literacy rose and
incomes increased to create an unprecedented market for books. The strengthening of copyright, and
the expansion of bookstores and public libraries,
resulted from this important combination of factors.
It can be argued that the end of the twentieth
century is seeing a similarly profound transformation of publishing. A combination of technological
factors, linked in different ways to the computer as
well as to new developments in reprography, is
changing the industry. Economic changes, including
the multinationalization of major publishing firms
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and the linking of publishing to other knowledge
and entertainment industries, are also altering the
landscape of books and publishing (see Chapters 20
and 21).
Books are the oldest communication technology, dating back to Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of
movable type in 1455 (Gutenberg is generally credited with this invention which made modern printing
possible, but movable type first appeared in China
around 1100 and then in Korea a half-century before
it was invented in Europe, although there seems to
be no relationship between these inventions). Books
have many advantages: they are portable and do not
require sophisticated technology for use. The technologies needed to produce books, such as printing
presses and composing equipment, are widely available, not very expensive and within the reach of most
countries. Similarly, paper and other raw materials
needed for book production in general are readily
available, although the price for the quality of paper
needed for printing books tends to fluctuate greatly.
New technological innovations, such as computerassisted desktop publishing and reprography, have
reduced the cost of producing books in areas where
these technologies are available. Books are also distributed fairly easily, and infrastructures for book
distribution – through bookstores, direct mail, educational institutions and the like – exist in the industrialized world, although distribution problems
remain in the developing nations. While book production requires some capital, the investment needed
is relatively modest and it is possible for small publishers to get established and survive. Because of the
relatively modest investment needed for book production it is possible for limited editions to be published and small audiences to be served, although
publishing for limited markets inherently is not very
profitable. Book publishing is feasible, although not
usually very profitable, in languages used by small
populations and in scripts that are not widely
employed. The traditional book is a unique product
that has withstood the test of time and will remain,
despite the challenge of the new technologies, a primary means of communication into the future.
Our concern here is with publishing – the
process of co-ordinating the various processes needed to bring a book from an idea in the mind of the
author to a printed product available for distribution
to the relevant audience. We do not deal in detail
with printing, the paper industry, legal aspects of
copyright (see Chapter 26) or the technical aspects of
the new computer-based innovations in composing
books. Publishing, at its heart, is the co-ordination
of the multitude of activities needed to produce
books. Publishers seldom own printing presses,
bookshops or distribution agencies. Their expertise
is in the selection and editing of manuscripts, and
planning and supervising the process of transforming the manuscript into a book, and then ensuring
that this product reaches its intended market.
Marketing and sales are an essential part of the ‘publishing chain’.
Publishing faces significant challenges at the
end of the twentieth century. New technologies have
transformed many of the processes of book publishing and distribution. This is true not only for composition and printing, but also for knowledge transmission itself. The Internet, for example, is being
used in many different ways for publishing. Changes
in the commercial underpinnings of publishing have
significantly altered the traditional economics of the
industry, especially through the consolidation of
firms and the entry into publishing of multimedia
corporations (see Chapter 21). Publishing has also
become more international, not only through the
export of knowledge products, but also in terms of
multinational ownership of firms. We shall focus on
some of the dramatic changes in publishing which
are transforming the underpinnings of what was a
traditional industry – a ‘profession of gentlemen’ –
into the highly competitive, commercial and technological environment of the twenty-first century.
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In economic terms, publishing is of limited
importance. The total turnover of the publishing
industries of major industrial nations ranks below
many consumer-based industries, such as, for example, breakfast cereals. Yet publishing is of immense
cultural and educational importance. It is also a central element in the emerging nexus of knowledge
industries that are so important to post-industrial
societies. It is not surprising, therefore, that the
international regulation of knowledge industries was
an important and controversial part of the recently
concluded negotiations that led to the formation of
the World Trade Organization (WTO). Issues relating to the piracy of knowledge products, including
books, were at the heart of a highly visible trade dispute between China and the United States (see
Chapter 21).
The creation and ownership of knowledge
products are of increasing importance because of the
centrality of information and knowledge to postindustrial economies. The concept of copyright,
originally intended to protect authors and publishers
of books, has broadened to include other knowledge
products such as computer programs and films (see
Chapter 26). Copyright has emerged as one of the
most important means of regulating the international
flow of ideas and knowledge-based products, and
will be a central instrument for the knowledge
industries of the twenty-first century. Those who
control copyright have a significant advantage in the
emerging, knowledge-based global economy. The
fact is that copyright ownership is largely in the
hands of the major industrialized nations and of the
major multimedia corporations placing low per capita income countries as well as smaller economies at a
significant disadvantage.
Centres and peripheries in the knowledge
system
Books and publishing are not equally distributed
throughout the world. A small number of countries
and languages dominate world publishing, creating
patterns of considerable inequality in world publishing. France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom
and the United States are among the top publishing
countries. These nations, joined by China, Egypt,
India, the Russian Federation, Spain and several
others are responsible for a significant proportion of
the world’s book production. A few smaller countries produce large numbers of book titles when
compared to their populations. Denmark, Iceland
and Israel, for example, produce more titles per
capita than such major publishing nations as the
United States or France. The United States, United
Kingdom, France and, to some extent, Spain are
especially important in world publishing, since they
publish in languages used internationally, and the
majority of the major multinational publishers are
based in these countries. They constitute the main
international centres of publishing and have considerable influence beyond their borders.
A second rank of countries have active and
in some cases powerful publishing industries.
Germany, Italy and Japan, for example, are major
publishing nations, ranking in the top ten in terms of
annual title production; all three have major multinational publishers with a global reach. The largest
publisher in the United States is German-owned
Bertelsmann Verlag, which controls a number of
major American publishers. The Italian publisher,
Mondadori, is an important influence in Spanish and
Latin American publishing, and such Japanese publishers as Kodansha have an international reach. The
export potential for books in German, Italian and
Japanese, however, is limited. These three countries
have fully independent and autonomous publishing
industries, although they are affected by some trends
from the major world centres of publishing (for
example, best-sellers from the United States often
appear on the lists of these countries but rarely does
this influence work in the opposite direction).
A third category of publishing nations is made
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up of several large, relatively low-income producers
of books. These countries tend to be more dependent on the major industrialized publishing nations,
and in some cases serve as regional centres with
strong ties abroad. China, India, Egypt, Mexico and
Argentina fall into this category. All have strong
local publishing industries and infrastructures of
book production – publishers, printers, paper supplies, etc. All except China have strong markets for
their books beyond their borders: Egypt, Mexico
and Argentina are especially important as regional
centres and have strong export markets. Egypt, for
example, is the dominant publisher of books in
Arabic, and the rest of the Arabic-speaking world
depends on Egyptian books. Similarly, Mexico and
Argentina dominate Latin American publishing in
Spanish. These three countries serve as links between
publishing in their respective languages and the
world centres. China and India provide further variations on the theme. Their huge internal markets
make them major book publishing nations. Both also
have modest export markets; India, especially,
exports books to other developing nations and is a
major publisher of books in English (ranking third
in this category after the United States and the
United Kingdom) as well as in India’s fifteen indigenous languages. These countries rely to some extent
on the major world centres of publishing for books
to translate, and sometimes for investment capital
and other resources.
Much of the rest of the world is peripheral to
the major centres of publishing. Most of Africa, for
example, has only limited publishing capacity.
Francophone Africa, especially, depends largely on
France for books of all kinds, and there are only a
few local publishers. With the exception of South
Africa, and to a lesser extent Nigeria and Kenya,
African nations produce few books and their publishing industries are largely limited to textbooks for
schools. The situation is similar but not as desperate
in smaller and quite low per capita income Asian and
Latin American countries such as the Lao People’s
Democratic Republic, Myanmar, Bolivia and El
Salvador. For a significant part of the globe the term
‘book hunger’, coined in the early 1970s to dramatize the situation in much of the developing world,
remains valid. Low literacy rates, lack of capital for
investment and the absence of the basic infrastructures for publishing all inhibit the development of a
successful book industry.
Smaller industrialized nations also find themselves dependent in terms of publishing, since local
markets are so small that many kinds of books cannot be economically published. Wealth and high literacy rates do not guarantee a successful book industry. Even countries such as Denmark and Sweden,
that have a fairly strong local publishing industry,
import many books from abroad. The Netherlands,
which not only has a significant domestic publishing
industry but is the headquarters for several successful multinational publishers, depends on foreign
books to a significant extent.
The publishing industry must be seen in the
context of a worldwide knowledge system that
is characterized by considerable inequality.
Population, literacy rates, the use of a ‘world language’, income levels, the existence of publishing
infrastructures and a history of active publishing all
contribute to determining the strength of a publishing industry. Patterns of worldwide ownership of
publishing and other knowledge-based firms, government policy and flows of international trade may
also contribute to the success of the publishing
enterprise in a country. Centres and peripheries exist
in publishing, and these relationships help to determine the place of a nation in the world of knowledge
creation, distribution and use.
Current issues
Publishing faces a range of contemporary challenges
that have a profound impact on the nature of the
industry, and indirectly on the ways that books are
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produced and distributed. This section focuses on
the most important issues affecting publishing today.
The impact of new technologies
Two basic technological developments are affecting
publishing. The first is the reprographic revolution
initiated by photo-reproduction technology. This
technology has stimulated not only the ubiquitous
photocopy machine, bringing challenges to copyright, but has introduced innovations in printing.
Computers have profoundly affected publishing in
book production, distribution and, perhaps most
important in the long run, the storage and retrieval
of knowledge.
The reprographic revolution started several
decades ago. At first, photocopying permitted individual readers easily to make copies of printed materials. This was followed by commercial enterprises
making unauthorized copies of published material.
The cost of photocopying machines and the cost of
making copies declined and such machines became
increasingly affordable. Reprographic technology
was soon harnessed to printing. This permitted significant economies in printing costs, especially for
limited press runs. Suddenly, it was economically
feasible to print small numbers of books for specialized audiences. It became possible to print books in
languages spoken by small populations. Recent
reprographic advances, linked to computer composition, permit even greater economies in the production of printed materials. Presses based on advanced
photocopy technology can print small numbers of
books very quickly and inexpensively. It is even possible to print single copies for individual users
through this technological application. This has
assisted publishers in countries and regions, and in
languages, which have only small markets.
At first seen as a challenge to traditional publishing, the reprographic revolution was successfully
exploited by publishers. Problems remain, but overall the publishing industry has accommodated to
new developments. Reprographic technology has
been linked to printing to reduce costs. The challenges to the copyright system, however, were, and
remain, considerable (see Chapter 26).
Of greater importance to publishing than
reprography is the revolution based on the computer. Traditional composition technologies have,
in much of the world, been replaced entirely by
computer-based composition and book design. This
has revolutionized the physical design of books and
led to the development of desktop publishing, a term
that refers to the creation of composed text through
the use of personal computers. Sophisticated software programs exist for book preparation and
design. Many languages using their own unique
scripts have benefited from computer-based typesetting. Computerized book design and preparation
has dramatically lowered the cost of composition,
and has also decentralized it. Publishers or authors
now have the capacity to carry a book through from
manuscript to ‘camera-ready copy’ prepared for
printing.
The computer has also changed business procedures relating to inventory control, billing and tracing trends in the sale of specific titles. Software programs permit publishers to reduce the cost of the
business processes of publishing, allowing tasks that
in earlier periods constituted a significant expense
now to be performed quickly in-house. This application of computer technology has also enabled small
publishers to operate efficiently in ways that in earlier times could only be done by large firms through
economies of scale. Computer technology has also
permitted the effective use of targeted mailing lists,
specialized publicity campaigns and the like.
A final and tremendously important use of
computer technology is for the delivery of printed
material to readers. This application of technology,
linking computers via the Internet as well as other
alternative means of document delivery, has profound implications for publishers. This aspect of
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computer-based technology is in a relatively early
stage of use, but it will soon have widespread consequences for publishers, libraries and bookstores. It is
possible to deliver documents through the Internet,
and publishers are developing the technologies to
supply materials this way. Some scientific journals
are already distributed exclusively on the Internet,
and publishers are increasingly using the World
Wide Web and other electronic means to publicize
books and journals (see Chapter 18).
Aside from the technological challenges, a
range of other problems are associated with this
technology. The impact on copyright of Internet
transmission remains both controversial and unclear.
The means of obtaining payment are not yet fully
defined. The use of library and other networks for
distributing published material raises copyright and
economic challenges for publishers. The problems
that the new technologies create regarding copyright
and financing are complex but the information
industry is currently developing solutions that will
permit new means of access to published material
(see Chapter 26).
The traditional role of the publisher in this new
technological universe may change, as the definition
of the book is altered and the means of distributing
knowledge is linked to new technologies. Without
question, the technological innovations are of profound importance to publishers and to the book
industry.
The control of publishing
Publishing is undergoing unprecedented economic
change. There is a clear trend toward consolidation
in the publishing industry as large publishing firms
acquire smaller ones and as media corporations
move into publishing. Large publishers in the major
industrialized countries have in the past two decades
become giant multinational firms. Bertelsmann
Verlag of Germany now owns publishers in most
European nations and in the United States; Hachette
in France, Mondadori in Italy, Reed in the United
Kingdom, and Elsevier and Kluwer in the
Netherlands are other examples of publishers that
have a worldwide presence. In the United States, for
example, there were 573 mergers and acquisitions in
the publishing industry between 1960 and 1989, and
over half the market share is held by the top fifteen
firms. Other major industrialized nations show similar trends.
The multinational publishers have also moved
into smaller book markets, purchasing firms and
establishing branches. These firms, because of their
economic and staff resources, and their global reach,
can dominate publishing in many developing countries. For example, French publishers have traditionally held a powerful position in francophone Africa,
and British firms are re-entering some of the anglophone African markets that they abandoned in the
years following the end of colonialism.
At the same time, new technologies, the development of ‘niche markets’ that had been abandoned
by the large firms, and increasing specialization in
the book industry have permitted small firms to survive and even prosper in a market increasingly dominated by giant multinational companies. The small
publishers can make use of desktop technology,
computer-based direct marketing and new printing
arrangements that permit economical limited printing. This situation also has potential for publishers in
small markets and in developing countries, although
limited access to the new technologies hinders success in developing areas.
Copyright
A more detailed analysis of current copyright issues
is presented in Chapter 26, but it is important to note
here that copyright has special importance for book
publishing at this time. While traditional copyright is
more widely accepted than ever internationally, and
the piracy of books is, comparatively speaking, at a
lower level, technology and the multinationalization
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of publishing have created significant challenges for
copyright. While books continue to be pirated in a
small number of developing countries without significant publishing industries, virtually all countries
have signed the main international copyright agreements, and generally observe copyright. Nations
such as India, which at one time were critics of traditional copyright and engaged in some book piracy,
now support copyright, in part because a local publishing industry has developed that benefits from
copyright protection. Among major publishing
nations, it seems that only in China is there significant book piracy, and even there compliance is
increasing.
Copyright, of course, protects the owners of
intellectual property and sometimes makes it difficult for people in countries that have limited purchasing power and few publishing resources to
obtain access to books. Copyright, in this respect,
reinforces a system of knowledge inequality and creates a kind of monopoly dominated by the owners of
knowledge. The copyright system works against
those who have least to spend on books and other
knowledge products, and those who are consumers
rather than producers.
We have seen a strengthening of the copyright
system. Publishers in the industrialized nations are
increasingly insistent on protecting their rights and
their economic benefits. There is little willingness to
give ‘have not’ nations special access to books, and
the recent negotiations that established WTO provided special protection to knowledge products and
further strengthened copyright.
The varieties of publishing
It is very difficult to generalize about book publishing as it is an industry characterized by major variations. Publishers differ in size, scope, focus and orientation. However, it is worth briefly discussing several of the major types of publishing. In most countries, textbooks constitute the largest and in many
cases the dominant segment of publishing. In developing countries, textbooks form the economic basis
of the entire industry, and without this market publishers would find it difficult to survive. Indeed, textbooks and other materials published for schools and
other educational institutions constitute the large
majority of books published. Publishers in industrialized nations are less dependent on the educational
market, although textbooks are important worldwide as an economic mainstay of the publishing
industry.
Reference and scientific, technical and medical
(STM) publishing is also a major sector of publishing. Publishing in these areas is important not only
because it constitutes a major segment of the market
but because these books contribute to science, scholarship and knowledge. Unlike textbooks, which are
in general published for use within one country, reference and STM books have a wide export market.
Publishing in these areas is heavily dominated by the
major industrial nations which produce most of the
scientific research and which also constitute the
major markets. In some countries, university presses
are involved in publishing in these areas while in
others private specialized publishers dominate.
The publication of general books – fiction, current events, poetry, political analysis, and the like,
the kinds of books sold in most bookstores, in fact –
constitutes a small segment of the book market in
most countries although it tends to be the most prestigious and visible. These books are important
because they contribute one way or another to the
cultural life of any society. There are many other
segments of the book market. Publishing for children, for example, has a significant market in many
countries. Here design and artwork are important,
and public libraries constitute a significant source of
sales. Children’s book publishing offers special characteristics from the economic, design, distribution
and printing points of view. Other genres, including
art books, ‘self help’ volumes and religious books,
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constitute ‘niche markets’ which have unique characteristics that require specific publishing expertise.
There are many types of publishing, each facing specific conditions and all currently experiencing significant change owing to the factors discussed earlier.
Patterns of ownership of publishers also vary.
It has been noted that there is a trend toward consolidation in the industry, and toward the emergence of
large multinational firms. There is an increasing
involvement of multimedia, conglomerate corporations in publishing. Critics of this trend have pointed
out that the personal element in publishing is being
lost. There are also many small and specialized publishers in the industrialized countries, some of
which, as we have seen earlier, are very successful in
serving ‘niche’ markets. In developing countries,
publishers tend to be small, undercapitalized, and
less specialized since the book market is small and
fewer niches are available. Many publishers were
established as family firms, and in developing countries remain family-owned. The financial control of
publishing firms determines the nature, direction
and ethos of the firm. These patterns are in the
process of significant change.
The future of the book
Publishers face a future in which the traditional definition of the book is changing. They will have to
adapt to the new realities if they are to survive.
Books will remain an important product and a central means of imparting knowledge and entertainment. At the same time, the means of producing, distributing and even editing books are changing.
Economics, technology and the increasing interweaving of the world economy are all affecting
books and publishing.
Publishers must inevitably be more international in their outlook. More books are being translated, although by and large books are being translated from the major metropolitan languages to languages spoken by smaller populations, and there is
relatively little translation in the other direction. The
ownership of publishing firms shows similar characteristics. Major firms in the large industrialized
nations expand into other parts of the world. In
Africa, for example, not only are major European
publishers entering the market, but better established firms with more capital from South Africa are
expanding into other sub-Saharan African nations.
At the same time, there is considerable scope for
indigenous publishing because local publishers and
entrepreneurs have the advantage of knowing
national realities and are able quickly to adapt to
changing circumstances. There is, without question,
a rapidly changing pattern of ownership and entrepreneurship in publishing worldwide.
The book is often linked to other media products, and this will have an impact on what is published and the nature of books, perhaps even changing the definition of books in the long run. Links
between books and films, for example, are common,
and books are often related to computer applications
or CD-ROM products. Books are increasingly
issued in other forms, especially CD-ROMs, adding
an entirely new dimension to publishing. Publishers
in the United States, Europe and Japan are occasionally bypassing the traditional book in favour of alternative high-tech formats, a trend that is likely to
grow.
Many feel that the extension of the concept of
the book brings ‘knowledge industries’ to a new
level of technological sophistication, and that this
will have a positive impact on access to knowledge
products of all kinds. This extension does provide a
more sophisticated means of delivering knowledge
and entertainment. Encyclopedias issued on CDROM, for example, have multimedia capabilities that
permit the ‘reader’ to have a different experience
than was possible with the traditional printed version. At the same time, the price of such electronic
encyclopedias has dropped (although some of the
costs in producing such multimedia products are
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higher). These innovations, however, may have negative implications for those without access to the new
technologies or without the resources to produce
expensive multimedia products.
It is likely that we shall see diversification and
differentiation as well as economic concentration in
the publishing industry. The impact of the multinational multimedia corporations will continue, and
there is likely to be increasing concentration of ownership internationally. Economic realities, the high
cost of producing media products and the impact of
WTO and other trade agreements all point in the
direction of concentration. At the same time, there is
scope for smaller, locally owned firms that can occupy niche markets. In this way, indigenous publishing will be able to survive in an increasingly difficult
market-place.
Publishers face an increasingly complex and
competitive environment. They are forced to lower
their costs. Editing, for example, is often done on a
freelance basis, and publishers in some cases are
unable to provide the editorial services once considered standard. More and more of the responsibility
for book production is devolved to the author.
Computer composition makes this possible, as
authors are often asked to produce their books ready
for printing.
The book will be secure in the changing economy of knowledge production in the early twentyfirst century. Along with the traditional book, however, will be a variety of products based on the book
but utilizing the new technologies for presentation
as well as for production and distribution.
Conclusions
Publishing, because it is absolutely essential to the
cultural, scientific and educational life of nations, has
an importance beyond its limited economic role.
While it may be appropriate to import textiles or
even computers, the production of books that directly reflect the culture, history and concerns of a
nation or people is something that cannot be left to
others. Societies cannot afford to lose the ability to
publish books of social and cultural importance. It is
a vital part of a culture. In this respect it is different
and deserves special consideration.
Book publishing is a small but complex industry. It faces significant challenges from changing patterns of ownership, from changing markets and from
the implications of new technologies. It is unlikely,
as some have argued, that the book will become
obsolete in an era dominated by computers and the
Internet. Books are simply too convenient and too
affordable. Books permit easy access to information.
And in many parts of the world, there is little or no
access to the new means of communication. The
book as a cultural icon and as a knowledge product
is here to stay. ■■
Further reading
ALTBACH, P. G. (ed.). 1992. Publishing and Development
in the Third World. London, Hans Zell. 438 pp.
——. 1993. Publishing in Africa and the Third World.
Chestnut Hill, Mass., Bellagio. 212 pp.
——. 1995. Copyright and Development: Inequality in the
Information Age. Chestnut Hill, Mass., Bellagio. 109
pp.
ALTBACH, P. G.; CHOI, H. 1993. Bibliography on
Publishing and Book Development in the Third
World, 1980–1993. Norwood, N.J., Ablex. 152 pp.
ALTBACH, P. G.; HOSHINO, E. S. (eds.). 1995. International
Book Publishing: An Encyclopaedia. New York,
Garland. 736 pp.
BARKER, R.; ESCARPIT, R. (eds.). 1973. The Book Hunger.
Paris, UNESCO. 155 pp.
CHAKAVA, H. 1996. Publishing in Africa: One Man’s
Perspective. Nairobi, East African Educational
Publishers. 182 pp.
DORSCH, P. E.: TECKENTRUP, K. H. (eds.). 1981. Buch
und Lesen International. Gütersloh, Verlag für
Buchmarkt und Medien Forschung. 737 pp.
ESTIVALS, R. (ed.). 1993. Les sciences de l’écrit: encyclopédie
internationale de bibliologie. Paris, Retz. 576 pp.
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ng
GRAHAM, G. 1994. As I Was Saying: Essays on the
International Book Business. London, Hans Zell.
255 pp.
HOROWITZ, I. L. 1991. Communicating Ideas: The Politics
of Scholarly Publishing. New Brunswick, N.J.,
Transaction. 311 pp.
KUMAR, N.; GHAI, S. K. (eds.). 1992. Afro-Asian
Publishing: Contemporary Trends. New Delhi,
Institute of Book Publishing. 189 pp.
PLOMAN, E. W.; HAMILTON, L. C. 1980. Copyright:
Intellectual Property in the Information Age.
London, Routledge & Kegan Paul. 248 pp.
SMITH, D. C., Jr. 1989. A Guide to Book Publishing.
Seattle, Wash., University of Washington. 268 pp.
TAUBERT, S.; WEIDHAAS, P. (eds.). 1981. The Book Trade of
the World. Munich, Saur. 3 vols.
ZELL, H. M.; LOMER, C. 1996. Publishing and Book
Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Annotated
Bibliography. London, Hans Zell. 409 pp.
Philip Altbach is Professor of Higher
Education and Director of the
International Center for Jesuit Higher
Education at Boston College,
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. He is
also responsible for the Research and Information
Center of the Bellagio Publishing Network, an
organization devoted to assisting publishing in
developing countries. He is author of The Knowledge
Context and Publishing in India: An Analysis, editor
of Publishing and Development in the Third World,
and author/editor of several other books on publishing
and book development.
Philip Altbach
Director and Professor
Center for International Higher Education
School of Education, Campion Hall 207
Boston College
140 Commonwealth Avenue
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts 02167-3813
United States
Tel: 617-552-4236
Fax: 617-739-3638
E-mail: [email protected]
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Chapter 24
Access to archival
holdings and unique
library materials
Michael Cook
University of Liverpool,
United Kingdom
T
he period from 1988 to 1994 has been one of
dramatic change and rapid but uneven development. The growth and spread of consensus
on the general principles of access to archival and
primary documentary materials have been remarkable. In contrast, the state of affairs in different countries and regions varies significantly, and there are
enormous resource problems to be faced. Nevertheless, the outlines, or at least the principles, of a generally agreed system for access to primary documentation and the dissemination of information from it are
now beginning to emerge. Technological change and
the emergence of international electronic highways
have begun to affect the way we see the situation, but
from a worldwide point of view have not yet begun
to influence seriously the way access to archival and
manuscript material is provided. The potential for
change here is very great, and will probably be the
most obvious development during the next decade.
Appraisal of archival documents
All archival and unique documents are, and always
have been, subject to some kind of appraisal, and this
appraisal process has, of course, been fundamental in
determining what information would survive and
what would be provided for use (see also Chapter
14). In the past, much appraisal has been haphazard
and completely or substantially a matter of chance
or, in some cases, subject to political control.
From the beginning, archivists have sought to
establish a general set of rules by which appraisal
should be carried out. At times this has been seen as
an attempt to delineate a science of appraisal.
Probably few would still make the claim that selection procedures can be so objective and so exactly
based on an analysis of the information world that
they can be regarded as scientific in the full sense.
Nevertheless, there is a consensus, expressed in most
new archival legislation, that general lines of
approach can be laid down. Features of this consensus are:
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•
That the total production of documentation by
modern administration is so large that the great
bulk of it must be destroyed – appraisal is the
process whereby this destruction should be
carried out in an objective way.
•
That a wide spectrum of human activity is worthy of being included in appraisal at the national or international levels – hence the documentation of areas such as literature and scholarship
(the work of individual authors), politics (personal, central and local), government (central,
regional, municipal), science and medicine
(research and implementation), banking, insurance and commercial activities generally, and
manufacturing industry are all to be included in
appraisal and collection programmes.
One result of this understanding is that the process
of appraisal is no longer seen as being essentially the
preserve of government agencies or of large corporate bodies.
Although no longer claimed as a science, the
principles on which appraisal is conducted have been
developed in important new ways over the last
decade or so. Traditional ways of approaching the
task of appraisal were centred upon structural analysis: archivists would examine the surviving documentation and apply tests to it. These tests were to
establish the value of the material in terms of its evidential or informational quality. More recently there
has been a tendency to include appraisal tests based
upon functional analysis. Here the archivists would
be attempting to judge whether the documentation
available did or did not present a true overall picture
of the relevant field of activity; where it did not, they
would seek to fill in the missing bits by alternative
means. Another development of increasing importance has been the tendency of archivists to take into
consideration the costs (both financial and in terms
of informational value) of retention or disposal of
the material being appraised.
These changes in the principles of appraisal
have not yet been disseminated to all parts of the
world, nor are they universally accepted, as yet, by
the archival profession; but they are well established
in the most advanced areas. Overall, it is probably
true that everywhere in the world it is accepted that
appraisal and collection policies should cover a very
wide range of activities. The effective implementation of this perception varies greatly, of course, from
country to country.
Legal framework and standards for
collecting, preserving and access
In 1995–96 the International Council on Archives
(ICA) published the text of recent new archival legislation in two volumes of its main journal,
Archivum. This reveals that in the period 1981–94,
ninety-seven countries introduced new laws, or revisions of earlier laws, on the management of archives,
and at least ten international, quasi-governmental
institutions did so too. The weight of this legislation
varied considerably, but there is no doubt that most
of it incorporated generally agreed international
principles of archival operation. Differences mostly
concentrated upon the degree of centralization within a state structure and on the detailed control of
government materials.
Several features are worth reporting. New laws
in Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and the
United States show the application of new principles, advancing to new levels of activity and new
quality standards. The most advanced of the new
laws (for example those of Canada) explicitly define
the right of citizens to access materials held in
archival institutions, redefine the range of materials
that fall within the purview of these services, and
make provision for systematic appraisal.
The most striking changes were in the legislation introduced by states created by the break-up
of former imperial groupings. The most important
of these were the republics of the former USSR.
During the communist period, the archival system
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of the USSR had been extremely centralized.
By 1994 the central structure (Glavarkiv) had been
dismantled and replaced by new controlling authorities at the level of the constituent republics, and
in some cases at lower levels as well. The reconstitution of the central archival training facility as
a new University of the Humanities will doubtless have an effect on user services and on access
to archives generally. The Russian Federation, under
its own new legislation, is in the process of giving
up the central control of archival services; the
new legislation in Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania and
Ukraine provides these countries with their own
national legal framework. The states of the former
Yugoslav federation show a rather similar situation. New laws in Albania, Croatia, the Czech
Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia
are all intended to bring their respective national
systems in line with accepted international standards
by allowing clearly defined rights of access not only
to their own citizens but also to researchers from
abroad.
The new archival law in Germany reflects the
union of the country after 1989, and provides for a
centrally organized federal archives service, with
state archives services in each of the Länder, within
which a network of city and specialized archives and
libraries exists. The changes that have made this possible involved an enormous upheaval in established
practices and services on both sides of the former
dividing line, but have been carried out with professionalism and thoroughness.
The official policy of the old regimes in all the
former communist countries had allowed access to
archival sources for approved researchers but there
had been no clear delineation of the principle on
which access was based, nor on what finding aids
should be open. The new legislation has sought
to change this. Most countries now seem to have
adopted some variant of the thirty-year rule (the
delay between the storage of archival material and
its accessibility to the public), which now can be
regarded as an international norm (see Chapter 12).
Interesting new developments in archival regulation can also be seen in South Africa, where the
regime established after the fall of the apartheid system has begun organizing the archives to support its
attempt to resolve past enmities and open its society.
This has led to the re-establishment, in professional
terms, of the country’s leadership of the Central and
Southern Africa region, a leadership that had been
impossible to exercise during the apartheid years (see
Chapter 11).
Bibliographic control, finding aids and
descriptive standards
It is clear that whatever the law may say, users cannot have access to either archival or unique library
materials unless there are adequate finding aids, and
unless these finding aids are openly available. It is,
and always has been, a difficult and slow job to provide these aids, and it is probable that completely
satisfactory finding aids will never be available for all
the documentation that has to be covered. Even in
countries and sites where archivists and librarians
have been steadily working at the completion of catalogues, there remain substantial backlogs, and there
are cases, sometimes notorious, where access cannot
be given because lists are not ready or not divulged.
These cases are not always confined to countries that have suffered from political control. A
notable example is provided by the papers of Eamon
De Valera, founding President of Ireland, which are
nominally open to access but in practice are largely
closed because of the lack of finding aids. As an
example of the reverse situation, the papers of Dr
Salazar, former President of Portugal, have been catalogued and released for research access in Portugal.
Archivists and librarians continue everywhere to
work at backlogs, and there are signs that eventually
a substantial investment in computer equipment may
improve the rate of progress.
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There is a particular problem in the countries
of the former USSR, and to a lesser extent in the
countries of the former Eastern bloc in Europe.
Under the previous regimes finding aids were either
secret or restricted to internal use. Under the liberalized regimes that have been established since 1989,
these internal lists are now being progressively
released for use by researchers, but their coverage
and adequacy as catalogues have often been questioned. In these countries, enormous quantities of
new archival materials, previously secret, have now
been transferred to the archives services or have been
released for consultation. It is clear that the task of
drawing up adequate finding aids for all this documentation is so massive that even if there were no
resourcing difficulties, the job would take a very
long time. Microfilming and other external projects
do little to attack the main core of the problem. An
additional problem is that government bodies are
tempted to sell access rights to their archive materials, or even the materials themselves, in order to
obtain hard currency. This has led to a patchwork of
uncoordinated releases, often through American
universities.
ICA, with funding from UNESCO, has begun
to follow the example set many years ago by the
International Federation of Library Associations
and Institutions (IFLA) for the library community,
in establishing description standards for the international exchange of data about archival holdings. The
basic document is the International Standard
Archival Description ISAD(G), adopted by the
International Congress on Archives in Montreal in
1992. ISAD(G) has now been translated into French,
Italian, Japanese, Spanish and probably other languages. Training courses and workshops in its use
have also been held in different parts of the world.
The standard is minimal, but is serving as a skeleton
upon which national or subject-based finding aids
can be structured. For many countries and traditions
this is an innovation, the first such standard that has
had any degree of penetration from the outside
world.
ICA is now working on the development of a
standard for authority files covering the names of
creators of archival holdings, whether official or corporate bodies, private individuals or families. This
standard is not as yet fully accepted by the archival
community – it will be debated at the International
Congress on Archives in Beijing in 1996 – but it also
follows in the footsteps of the library community.
Another standard for the description of
archives and manuscripts was developed in North
America in the early 1980s: the Archives and
Manuscripts Control (AMC) version of the longestablished Machine-Readable Record (MARC) bibliographic exchange format. AMC became wellestablished in the United States because it was a
required format for the large public online catalogue
systems, Online Computer Library Center (OCLC)
and Research Libraries Information Network
(RLIN), both of which have extensive but partial
outreach capabilities in other parts of the world. It
has since become more important because of its use
in the project to catalogue the Vatican Secret
Archives, undertaken by the University of Michigan
in 1988. The opening of the Vatican Archives almost
coincided with the opening of the Communist Party
archives in the former USSR and its satellites. The
Vatican case has a broader and more technical significance, however, because of its use of the MARC
AMC standard: this standard has allowed the great
mass of this historic archive to be structured and
managed in a way that conforms to best modern
practice. Significantly, this also marked the first
international use of a previously purely American
standard.
A standard for the archival use of SGML
(Standard Generalized Markup Language) is being
developed at the University of California. If successfully completed and adopted by the archival community this standard will be of great use in under-
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pinning the use of the Internet for archival interchange (see Chapter 18).
There will probably continue to be a need for
international data exchange for two categories of
archival and unique library materials: full text (in
which the content of the documents can be displayed) and bibliographic (giving information about
the existence and whereabouts of archival holdings).
There have been interesting innovations in both
these areas.
Full-text interchange
The imaging project at the Archivo de Indias in
Seville, Spain, is making available the images of original documents from the Spanish discovery and
administration of America from 1492 onwards.
Some 10% of the holdings of this major archive are
covered by the project. The images are retrieved by a
separate but linked indexing system, and can be
accessed remotely (although this aspect of the project still remains for the most part unexecuted). In
the United Kingdom, large databases containing full
abstracts of the personal papers of the first Duke of
Wellington (a general in the Napoleonic wars and
subsequently Prime Minister of Britain in the early
nineteenth century) and the personal papers of Lord
Mountbatten (Commander-in-Chief Pacific during
the Second World War, and Viceroy of India) have
both been made available electronically, giving access
to full or almost full text. British universities also
have provided bibliographic descriptions of other
archives. Unfortunately, none of these have been
based upon any descriptive standard or format, nor
have they yet been assimilated into the new formats
required by the Internet.
Bibliographic interchange
The wide-area bibliographic networks, OCLC and
RLIN, both hold large quantities of bibliographic
descriptions of archival and unique library materials.
Although based in the United States, these databases
also contain materials relating to other countries and,
of course, can be accessed from anywhere in the
world. Since American universities and other institutions hold much important material relating to other
regions, the ability of users to consult them is an
important enlargement of the world’s information
resources. During the late 1980s it appeared likely
that these databases, or others like them, would
expand to include comparable materials from other
countries. This promise has not, for the most part,
been realized. The failure of these projects to expand
fully over the world was probably caused by a lack
of resources, but also by the development of alternative, and less restrictive, media of communication,
and more generally by the backlog of descriptions
that could be made available.
Access to documents for research,
information and private needs
The idea that archives and unique documents are
kept primarily so that users may have access to them
spread only slowly through the world. Certain
countries, such as Sweden and France, accepted early
the principle of public access (subject to broad
restrictions) to materials held in archival or library
institutions. By the middle of the twentieth century a
consensus had developed that there should be statutorily supported rights of (or at least facilities for)
access. The spread of this principle received an enormous boost in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when
most countries, in all parts of the world, set about
revising the relevant legislation. Practical implementation of the new approach has been slower and less
predictable than the acceptance of the principle.
However, it is probably true that researchers now
expect to be able to gain access to a wide range of
documentation, and there is a growing body of literature that reports on the success or failure of such
expectations.
Several nations that can be regarded as being in
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the vanguard of the modern information movement
have enacted Freedom of Information legislation.
These laws give the public rights of access to government documents, irrespective of date or of whether
they have been transferred to archival institutions.
The most notable of these countries are Sweden
(where the legislation has historic roots), the United
States, Canada, Australia and the Netherlands. The
subject was discussed by the International Archive
Round Table Conference held at Austin, Texas, in
1985, and one of the recommendations from that
meeting was that archivists should be professionally
charged with the duty of advising their governments
on questions of freedom of information and of privacy.
Since then, although the principle of freedom
of information is still gaining ground (especially, of
course, in the countries of the former communist
bloc), the privacy side of the equation has come into
more prominence. At the Austin meeting the areas in
which privacy should be ensured were set out: personal registration details (birth, marriage, death); the
health of individuals; income; criminal proceedings;
professional life; political, religious or philosophical
opinions; the basic documents providing statistical
information (for example, census returns); questions
of family honour; police matters; and information
gained under promise of confidentiality. Methods
used to ensure privacy include control both by regulating the transfer of relevant documents to the
archives and by the operation of a phased closed
period. Most countries now have data protection
legislation that applies these principles to databases
held on computer systems.
Important principles are involved. One is that
under data protection legislation it is usual to give
subjects the right to insist that erroneous information about themselves should be changed. Archivists,
however, must argue that there is a broader historical
interest: data that are erroneous in terms of the current situation are not necessarily erroneous as a his-
torical record. In some notorious cases a conflict of
interest has come to the fore, for example, where
persons who have changed sex during their lifetime have demanded the right to have their birth
certificates altered. Although desirable for their
current rights as citizens, it is clear that to alter the
certificate would be historically a falsification. It is
likely that there will be further controversy on these
issues in the future. Similarly, if personal information
is rendered anonymous in order to promote rapid
current use, this process damages its long-term
historical value. There is a need to ensure that information supplied under conditions of confidentiality
is preserved archivally without being rendered
anonymous. In some countries, for example
Australia, this question has become politically sensitive and has led to the destruction of important
census material.
The major event of the last decade must surely
be the actual and promised release of the enormous
and detailed archives previously closed because of
the nature for the regimes that generated them. The
release of this material has been accompanied by
important upheavals in the archival administrations
and library services of these countries. The attention
of the world has been drawn to these events, which
indeed have had considerable significance for everybody (see Chapter 12).
In Germany the process of unifying the two
previous republics into a federal structure included a
radical reorganization of the federal archival system.
The two archive administrations were brought
together, with a considerable change of senior personnel. The older archival holdings had been scattered by the occupation of Germany in 1945, and
these were now reassembled. The enormous archives
accumulated by the apparatus of state control of the
former German Democratic Republic, including
secret dossiers on large numbers of individuals, were
brought under archival administration and a start
made on making them available for consultation.
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The full effects of research and personal access to this
material have still not been realized; when the material is fully open, there may be significant effects on
society.
Similar results may be expected in other countries of the Eastern bloc. A particular problem in
these countries was what to do with the archives of
the Communist Party. Theoretically these belonged
to a private organization, but in practice they contained material relating to the entire range of government activity, and reached deeply into the affairs of
many citizens. For the most part, these archives have
now been brought under the control of the national
archives system, though the problems of creating
and making available the necessary finding aids
remain formidable. Interestingly, this resolution of
the question of the Party archives has brought into
relief the parallel problem of the archives of the
Church in these countries. While the state had taken
over from the churches the responsibility for civil
registration, church archives still contain important
demographic information, and access to them is a
subject of broad interest. One particular aspect of
this issue concerns the recovery of confiscated
Church property, the re-establishment of monastic
institutions and the specific ownership (as between
different ecclesiastical groups) of buildings.
There have been bilateral projects intended to
assist in the preservation and accessibility of archival
holdings in the former communist states. For example, the Hoover Institute at Stanford University
in the United States had an agreement between
1992 and 1995 to microfilm some of the state
archives in the Russian Federation. This project was
very controversial and recalls similar projects in the
past, such as that of Syracuse University and the
archives of Kenya in the 1960s. Though they help to
preserve and make accessible parts of the world’s
archival heritage, it is not clear that the best way to
achieve this is to remove control from the country of
origin.
China, echoing its importance in world affairs,
is now strengthening its impact on international
archival matters, and in 1996 assumed the presidency
of ICA. Despite the damage and setbacks of the
Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, the country has
made considerable new investment in the management of archives and unique documents, and has
begun to attack the problems posed by a tradition of
secretiveness. Archives for the period up to 1949
were opened by legislation in 1980, and there has
been increasing international co-operation in
archival training since then.
Human rights and rehabilitation
When discussing archive collections in terms of
human rights, the development of archival services in
international bodies and the coming together of
archival services in the countries of the European
Union are both significant. The latter has been
marked by a determination to recall the importance
of proper archives services for democratic regimes
and the rule of law, and to implement such services.
An important statement made by the countries of
the Council of Europe as a result of a conference in
Strasbourg in 1994 included plans for the computerization of finding aids and publications, microfilming, and improving access facilities as an underpinning to the concept of a common European heritage (see Chapter 25). A particular programme was
announced for the management and opening of the
archives of the Comintern (the Third Communist
International), and for aid to currently disadvantaged countries – a specific programme is proposed
for Albania.
This European statement applies principally to
archives held in traditional form. Similar problems
exist in connection with appraisal, preservation and
access to archival material in audiovisual form. These
have been the subject of international discussion and
agreement in specialist forums. An example of effective co-operation is provided by Germany, where
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the national film archive is the responsibility of the
Federal Archives (see Chapter 14).
Impact of new technologies
The importance of computers for library cataloguing
and for archive administration is clear, and several
projects and events have underlined this potential in
the world arena. The project for an extended international catalogue of eighteenth-century books has
now been virtually completed, and is another example of the effective use of agreed formats and cataloguing standards (see above). After long delays and
hesitations, the Manuscripts Division of the British
Library adopted a system for computer cataloguing
which has, in effect, eliminated the notorious thirtyyear backlog between the acquisition of materials
and the publication of the finding aids to them. This
achievement alone should give cause for optimism
that in the following decades similar backlogs can be
removed.
The arrival of the Internet has caused a flurry
of activity, and it is now possible to find on it
descriptions of archive and manuscript holdings in
many countries. One reason for the rush to put
homepages on the World Wide Web is that, once
access has been gained to the Internet by way of
a provider agency (usually the archive’s parent institution), archivists and librarians are not impeded
by the need to learn and adapt to detailed formats
and cataloguing rules. It is a simple matter to put
descriptions on the Web as free text, embellished
by graphics and digital images. Comparing the structure of MARC records with pages entered using
the standard Internet format, HTML, shows immediately how relatively quick and easy the latter
method is, both in the technicalities of data entry and
in the presentation of the material to users (see
Chapter 12). The Web is itself, moreover, directly a
user interface.
Nevertheless, it should be added that from a
worldwide point of view the computer age has hard-
ly begun for manuscripts and archives. In many of
the most important regions it is not easy for
archivists and librarians to get access to hardware or
software, or to keep their equipment maintained to a
reliable standard. When equipment is obtained, there
is a shortage of relevant training. Software may have
to be adapted to local conditions, and there is little or
no standardization in either the developed or developing world. In some developed countries, such as
Italy, Germany or the United Kingdom, archivists
and related communities have attempted to develop
specialized software, only to find that they do not
have the resources to compete with the constantly
upgraded commercial packages.
In less developed areas, UNESCO’s CDS/ISIS
software has been used to good effect, but here again
the absence of pre-designed applications or of general standards has prevented rapid development of
databases, and this despite the devoted efforts of a
few trainers to extend the body of expertise. In other
developed areas, for example Japan, archivists and
manuscript librarians have not yet generally come
into contact with computer systems. Even in the
most highly developed countries there are many
smaller, local, specialized or poorly supported
archives and manuscript collections that have not yet
seriously begun to use automated methods.
ICA is now actively establishing a presence on
the World Wide Web, and is supporting a project
under which the national archives of key countries in
the developing world will be enabled to join the
Internet community. There is still no explicit standard or model for using the medium, and this
remains an important training issue.
Appraising, preserving and giving access to
electronic records and data sets has been an increasing preoccupation in many countries. Most progress
towards a technological solution to these problems
has been made in North America, and from there the
expertise has been disseminated. In November 1994
an important conference in Australia, ‘Playing for
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Memory of the World
the overall implementation of the programme and
determines the award of the ‘Memory of the World’
Documentary heritage reflects the diversity of
languages, peoples and cultures. It is the mirror of the
world and its memory. But that memory is fragile.
Every day, fragments, if not entire sections, of the
documentary heritage disappear for ever.
To guard against collective amnesia, it must
label to the projects selected.
At the national level, a committee is responsible
for project selection and follow-up.
A world list of endangered library and archive
holdings will be a cornerstone of the programme.
Preservation by means of the most appropriate
remain our aim and hope to preserve manuscripts and
techniques, ease of access and wide dissemina