Volume 60, Issue 1

There appears to be an increasing interest within library and information studies (LIS) in so-called indigenous or traditional knowledge. Discussions on usefulness and applicability of indigenous knowledge in development seem to be motivating electronic documentation and the creation of databases. Often, definitions provided by international organisations are drawn on unquestioningly, while power structures embedded in descriptions provided by such organisations are ignored. This article aims at drawing attention to the ways in which international organisations define and talk about indigenous knowledge in relation to development. This is achieved by critical, close reading of six publications issued between 1998 and 2008 by the following organisations: WIPO, UNESCO, ICSU, UNDP, the World Bank, and IFLA. The critical reflections are also intended to shed light on how documentation practises can be understood as extensions of power. For this the authors draw on Foucauldian notions of power and discourse as well as on post-development and postcolonial perspectives. Relationships and discursive procedures for statements on science, development discourse and intellectual property rights, are shown to be influential in the creation of the concept indigenous knowledge. Relating indigenous knowledge to post-colonial and post-development studies reveals how indigenous knowledge is created and kept marginalized within the discursive structure of development. The analysis concludes by showing how knowledge named indigenous knowledge is trapped and created in a circular flow which legitimises international aid organizations, development discourse and the intellectual property rights system. The article concludes by demanding greater awareness among LIS researchers and practitioners regarding the culturally embedded character of knowledge practices and of the power of classifying and defining.

Independent community libraries have sprouted in Indonesian cities and villages since around 2001, with the Ministry of Education estimating that there are now at least 5,400 of them in operation. These libraries, called reading gardens ( Taman Bacaan ), offer books, magazines and, often, activities to promote reading and literacy. This paper discusses how such a large number of independent community libraries came into being, without much financial or organizational support from outside agencies. The methodology includes a survey of the historical literature on the development of libraries in Indonesia, archival searches of the most important newspapers to see articles they have written about community libraries since 2001, contacting a large number of academics and people involved with community libraries directly through e-mail, and also consulting blogs, mailing lists, and websites related to the Indonesian community libraries. The paper shows how the precursor for the modern reading gardens can be found in the early renting libraries set up by Chinese immigrants and the Balai Pustaka libraries set up by the Dutch colonial government, and traces the influence of these during the twentieth century, as the independent Indonesian government experiments with setting up village libraries. It then shows how a number of factors came together around 2001, shortly after the introduction of democracy in Indonesia, with the creative culture in Bandung, inspiring examples of “library heroes,” and the influence of networks, Islam and patriotism, to create a truly independent, grass-roots community library movement.

This study examines amateur genealogists' satisfaction with a variety of available resources, ranging from specialized library services to search engines. Surveys were placed in both State Historical Society of Iowa libraries and sent to reading room librarians to uncover what resources users most value and why. Questions were also posed to uncover unmet information needs and determine user suggestions for improvement across resources. Findings indicate that preferences were not only limited to the institution or website accessed, but the type of information and its format, which may help guide library collection development policies to better address user needs.

The relationship between physical resources and their usability has been measured quantitatively and qualitatively in evaluations of libraries abroad as well as in Korea, with the objectives of improving service levels and management results. As the techniques used by libraries and the items collected by libraries change over time, the criteria to select items for library evaluations should change accordingly. This study intends to enhance the significance of e-resources which have been increasingly purchased and used in the digital library environment but under-represented in library evaluations. To this end, the study identified items for evaluations, classified them, and verified them using experts and a pilot evaluation. First, the study verified three evaluation sectors, 11 indexes and 22 indicators with a Delphi method. Second, specialists were surveyed to determine the appropriate weight for each index and indicator. Third, by conducting a pilot evaluation on college libraries, the investigator identified evaluation scales. The findings of the study are expected to contribute to the world's library evaluation practices in the digital environment.

The rapid rise of Wikipedia as an information source has placed the traditional role of librarians as information gatekeepers and guardians under scrutiny with much of the professional literature suggesting that librarians are polarized over the issue of whether Wikipedia is a useful reference tool. This qualitative study examines the perceptions and behaviours of National Library Board (NLB) of Singapore librarians with regards to information seeking and usage of Wikipedia. It finds that instead of polarized attitudes, most librarians, although cautious about using Wikipedia in their professional capacity, hold a range of generally positive attitudes towards the online encyclopaedia, believing that it has a valid role to play in the information seeking of patrons today. This is heartening because it suggests the existence within the librarian population of attitudes that can be tapped to engage constructively with Wikipedia. Three of these in particular are briefly discussed at the end of the article: Wikipedia's ability to appeal to the socalled “digital natives,” its role as a source of non-Western information, and its potential to enable a revitalization of the role of librarians as public intellectuals contributing to a democratic information commons.

Blogging, though a relatively new phenomenon, has gained vast popularity, and blogs have become a central feature and an essential information channel in the Web 2.0 information world. The current research seeks to expand our understanding, and examine comments written by readers of LIS blogs. The researcher examined the comments assigned to the posts and the analysis was conducted in two phases: (1) statistical descriptive analysis and (2) content analysis. The primary research questions are: What type of language do comment writers use? What type of information is found in the comments? What is the content of the comments? Research findings indicate that the majority of comments were written in a personal style. Moreover, the research findings reflect the readers' moderate participation and low activity in the creation and dynamics of these blogs. However, comment writers deal with substantive issues which reflect their professional as well as their personal interests. Thus, comments' writers did not express only courtesy comments but they took advantage of the platform and expressed personal, impressive, advisory, as well as reflective comments. The research findings are relevant for librarians and information scientists as they cause them to better understand and explore the LIS blogosphere.

The article presents the results of a research aimed at identifying the level and character of the engagement of Polish academic libraries in creating, maintaining and offering online free bibliographic databases and full-text collections of e-prints written by the employees of their parent universities. The websites of the 20 main libraries of the top Polish universities in 2008 were carefully searched for such resources. The research conducted in March and April 2009 was aimed at identifying their status and contents as well as the searching possibilities offered by their designers. Furthermore, the accessibility of such resources from those library websites and their in-tegration with selected global tools designed for searching full-texts was checked. The research proved that Polish academic libraries are devoted to producing and providing bibliographic databases recording the scholarly output of their parent universities and, at the same time, they usually neglect to integrate such databases with any full-text resources and are not engaged in creating repositories for e-prints authored by the academic staff. The situation seems not to be caused by the lack of adequate software, hardware or skilled and trained personnel – more than 50% of the searched libraries take part in creating and maintaining digital libraries available on the Web. It is probably caused by a professional paradigm focused on preserving national heritage and multi-step access to information, insufficient support from decision makers and financing bodies, as well as by lack of interest and pressure from scholars.