U N E S C O
P u b l i s h i n g
r e p o r t 1 9 9 7 / 9 8
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
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,
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
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
Acknowledgements
10Introduction
Yves Courrier and Andrew Large 11
Part One: Information services worldwide
A. Libraries and information services
Chapter 1. East Asia and OceaniaJosephine 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. AsiaMaria 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 societyNick 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
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. ■■
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 decision-maker, a librarian, an archivist or a documentalist – all of these professionals and many others deal in some way with information. What makes a differ-ence is not the subject of their concern, informationper 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 informa-tion for these and all other kinds of informainforma-tion users. They identify, acquire and organize informa-tion (or the documents containing that informainforma-tion) 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
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 paper-back 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 informa-tion 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 organ-izing 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 acqui-sition, selection, organization, storage and dis-semination 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 con-struct 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 opera-tors 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 exag-geration 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
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 knowl-edge of their chosen topic, it is understandable that authors will have more familiarity with con-ditions 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 ser-vices. 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, special-ized library and information services, professional associations, and education and training pro-grammes 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 im-pressive 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 tele-communication technologies), budgets, education and training, and professional associations. Several authors discuss the related topic of records manage-ment. Chapter 14, in contrast, adopts a thematic rather than a geographic focus: issues concerning archival holdings of audiovisual rather than print-based 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 tech-nological tools. The World Information Report presents in three separate chapters state-of-the-art 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
computerization. Multimedia information sources are of growing importance. Chapter 16 on multi-media technologies discusses the technology required both to use multimedia sources and to create them. The theme of Chapter 17 is tele-communication technologies. It outlines the com-ponents 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 net-works 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 con-sumers, 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 inform-ation 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 decision-makers 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 pro-viding information, entertainment and education to millions worldwide. The chapter discusses publish-ing 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 profes-sionals, 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
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 inter-national 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 tele-communication 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 para-mount 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 encoun-tered repeatedly also in discussing regional concerns in Part One or infrastructures in Part Two. Copy-right, 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
the phenomenon. This then sets the overall social framework within which the information pro-fessions 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 pro-fessional 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 publica-tions 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 in-formation 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 ap-proach 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 monu-mental 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,
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 acknowledge-ments 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 two-thirds 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 con-sideration, 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 Com-munauté 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.
Yves Courrierobtained a maîtrise en philosophie from the Université de Paris X (Nanterre) in 1968. He then studied library sciences at the École Nationale Supérieure des Sciences de l’Information et des Bibliothèques (Paris) and at the University of Pittsburgh. He holds a Ph.D. in Information Science from the same university. He has been professor (1971–78) and Director (1977–78) of the École de Bibliothéconomie et des Sciences de l’Information of the Université de Montréal. He has published many papers on the foundations of information science, linguistic theory and computerized information retrieval, education, training and human resources development in information science. He joined UNESCO in 1978.
Yves Courrier Programme Specialist
Division for Information and Informatics UNESCO
1, rue Miollis,
75732 Paris, Cedex 15, France Tel: 1-45-68-45-27
Fax: 1-45-68-55-82
E-mail: [email protected]
Andrew Largeis a professor at McGill University (Montreal) and Director of its Graduate School of Library and Information Studies. He has presented
conference and seminar papers in North America, the Caribbean, Europe, Africa and Asia, and is the author of around 100 books or papers. He is co-editor of the quarterly journal, Education for Information. Andy Large has acted as a consultant for the Canadian International Development Agency, the International Development Research Centre, the British Overseas Development Administration, the British Council and UNESCO, and is currently presenting a series of workshops in Eastern Europe for the Open Society (Soros Foundation). Before moving to Canada, he taught at the College of Librarianship Wales.
Andrew Large Director
Graduate School of Library and Information Studies McGill University
3459 McTavish Street Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A 1Y1 Tel: (514) 398-4204 Fax: (514) 398-7193
P a r t O n e .
I n f o r m a t i o n s e r v i c e s
w o r l d w i d e
A . L i b r a r i e s
a n d
i n f o r m a t i o n
s e r v i c e s
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, pro-fessional associations, education and training institutions and programmes, library acts and communications policy development, and informa-tion networking initiatives. Some indicainforma-tions 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 informa-tion 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
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 Gov-ernment. 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 seven-teen 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 insti-tutes under the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture. NACSIS operates the Science Information Network linking university libraries, university computer centres and university research institu-tions to provide scholarly information to academic researchers. The centre provides a cataloguing in-formation 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 main-tains 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 inter-national 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
KINITI (Korea Institute of Industry and Tech-nology 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 informa-tion 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 re-search 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 in-formation 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 Copy-right 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
Biblio-graphy 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
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 institu-tional 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’ ap-proach), 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 Common-wealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organiza-tion (CSIRO) InformaOrganiza-tion Services is the mainstay of the information infrastructure for science in Australia. It publishes fourteen independently re-viewed 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 tech-nology 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 net-work 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 develop-ment 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 Asso-ciation (ALIA), for its part, sets and maintains
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 pro-grammes and short-term non-degree propro-grammes 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
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 institu-tions 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 con-tinuing 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 devel-oped 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 two-year 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 profes-sional 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 informa-tion 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 Teacher-Librarianship and a B.Sc. in Information Manage-ment. 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: non-standardized curricular offerings in training institu-tions, 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
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 enhance-ment 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 Informa-tion 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 infra-structures 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 strate-gic vision. In it, information is recognized as a key element in developing New Zealand’s future. Com-munication and information technology are seen as a crucial part of the national infrastructure that will enable the country to take advantage of the tech-nological revolution currently sweeping the world.
Despite several reports, studies and sub-missions, 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 Communica-tion. Discussions are also ongoing for the
final-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 tele-communication 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, govern-ment 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 in-formation covering current affairs, New Zealand law, proposed legislation, politics, science, trade-marks, 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, dis-seminated 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 com-munications 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 Net-work (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
and agencies, and financed by the Special Co-ordination Funds for Promoting Science and Technology of the Science and Technology Agency. Table 2 shows the various research-oriented infor-mation 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 Informa-tion to develop a naInforma-tionwide 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 well-developed 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
Table 1. State of library and information services in the Pacific islands, 1996
Status Capital Land area Population
(sq. km)
American Samoa Unincorporated US territory Pago Pago 199 50 923 No No 2 2 0 0 Cook Islands Self-governing in free Avanua 236 20 000 Yes No 1 8 34 3
association with New Zealand
Fed. States of Self-governing in free Palikir 702 115 000 No No 2 4 10 0 Micronesia association with United States
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 Majuro 182 48 000 No No 2 0 3 0
free association with US
Nauru Independent republic Yaren 21 10 000 No No 0 4 6 2 New Caledonia Overseas territory of France Noumea 19 060 183 000 No No 1 2 5 0 Niue Self-governing in free association Alofi 260 2 200 No No 0 3 3 0
with New Zealand
Papua New Guinea Independent state Port Moresby 462 840 3 950 000 Yes Yes 20 0 0 0 Solomon Islands 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.
National library Prof. assn. Professional staff
1 T echnical staff 2 No. of libraries 3 Staff in training
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 The Ministry of Science and Ministry of The Ministry of Funds for Promoting Education, Science Technology Agency Agriculture, Forestry International Science and Technology and Culture and Fisheries Trade and
(Science and Technology Industry (MITI)
Agency)
Operation Nippon Telegraph and National Centre for NEC Co. Computer Centre for RIPS Centre Telephone Co. (NTT) Science Information Agriculture, Forestry (Agency of Kokusai Denshin; Systems (NACSIS) and Fisheries Research Industrial Science
Denva Co. (KDD), etc. (CCAFFR) and Technology,
MITI) AUP For research University researchers Researchers and Researchers and Researchers and (Acceptable Non-profit and research supporting research-supporting research-supporting research-Use Policy) staff/researchers of staff of Science and staff of Ministry of supporting staff
national research Technology Agency Agriculture, Forestry of Agency of institutes/academic and Fisheries Industrial Science societies/joint research and Technology,
groups MITI
For research Non-profit
Protocol TCP/IP, DECnet TCP/IP TCP/IP, DECnet TCP/IP TCP/IP, SNA, FNA
Start 1995 1992 1994 1991 1989
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 con-nect by 1997 the 350 libraries scattered throughout the Republic of Korea using nineteen regional
switching centres. The effort, which is being co-ordinated 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 UNIX-based 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.
