Volume 51, Issue 4

The digital divide is now a commonly recognised feature of information society. This article explores recent developments in the United Kingdom (UK) which attempt to address this issue, and examines national and local information policy, community networking, and public library policy. It assesses the claim, common in the UK public library community, that the wiring up of the public libraries will have a significant impact on disadvantage, poverty and social exclusion. In particular, it analyses the process of public library networking as it has unfolded since 1997, drawing upon the empirical findings of Open to All? The Public Library and Social Exclusion (Muddiman et al. 2000), a research project funded by the UK Library and Information Commission (now Resource). This research suggests that despite a rhetorical commitment to social inclusion, the technological transformation of UK public library services will result in little more than a modernisation of current services, with little change in overall strategy or user focus. Consequently, it is argued that if public libraries are to reach out to the excluded of the information society, they will need to move beyond a passive preoccupation with access and use technological change as a means towards more active engagement with local communities and disadvantaged users so that the public library will indeed be open to all.

This article discusses the institutional challenges and requirements involved in integrating online learning environments with digital and hybrid libraries within the framework of INSPIRAL's (INvestigating Portals for Information Resources And Learning) research. It concentrates on the key issues that were identified as being of institutional significance in the integration of new learning environments and digital library resources. Issues of institutional infrastructure and politics, inter-professional communication and collaboration, resources and funding, pedagogy, staff development, access and content are discussed in the light of INSPIRAL research. The article concludes that, interested parties view integration of online learning environments into digital library resources and services as an area of importance within the UK education sector. The prime barriers continue to be located within individual institutions and their approach and attitudes to integration. However, there is a general consensus that improved collaboration and communication at all professional levels with adequate training and staff development could be the answer to many of these problems.

This paper puts the contemporary situation of some Lebanese university libraries in a broader context. It introduces the country and outlines its higher education system, library science education, professional association and publishing activity. It reviews the varying situations in the libraries of three universities – the American University of Beirut, the Beirut Arab University and the Lebanese University – and contrasts them with other university libraries in the Arab world. It adds to the body of published knowledge about the current situation with respect to management, staffing, buildings, automation, information retrieval, bibliographic records, online and CD databases, and document delivery. The limited published information was supplemented by interviews with a number of staff to elicit their views on the current situation and a survey of students' experiences of using the libraries. With the exception of the American University of Beirut, the libraries' facilities and services are not comparable to best practice in other Arab countries or the western world. This work highlighted some of the difficulties encountered by the libraries and their users, perhaps not entirely the result of the civil war, but indicates that plans are in place to take the libraries to the next step of development.

We explain the barycentre method and show how to apply it in a practical situation. A country's mean centre of publication, or publication barycentre, is defined and its evolution is studied in the case of China's centre of publication. Data for this application are taken from the Chinese Science Citation Database (CSCD). It is shown that China's publication barycentre slowly moves to the south and that it approaches the population barycentre. Tentative explanations for this southward movement, based on economic and educational considerations, are given. It is observed that inequality in publication between administrative units (regions) decreases slowly.

Indigenous knowledge of underdeveloped countries or of underdeveloped peoples within developed or developing nations is a sought after commodity in today's marketplace. These commercialisation pressures will increase in the globalised climate of the new-world economic order. Since knowledge is intangible, legal protection of intangible knowledge is minimal. However, when the knowledge is expressed in a tangible form, societies have seen fit to offer protection under the rubric of intellectual property laws. In addition, these developments have emerged from a ‘Western’ or ‘developed’ legal tradition and are often inadequate to deal with the scenarios in which indigenous knowledge often resides. Several examples from patent, trademark, and copyright present these shortcomings. In addition, the cultural differences between concepts of developed versus indigenous property further highlight the problem of achieving a harmonised and universal set of legal protections. The result is a disparity of access to existing intellectual property of others by indigenous and developing peoples. More critical for the purpose of the present discussion is a second disparity in the inadequacy of existing intellectual property regimes to protect indigenous culture and knowledge from development, and often exploitation. In response to this, a discussion of ethical implications of the disparity is undertaken in an attempt to provide a moral basis upon which past practices and future protection mechanisms can be evaluated. In conclusion, a list of principles are forwarded identifying the moral-legal rights indigenous peoples have in their own knowledge and in their right to access the intellectual knowledge of others.