Choma Provincial Library in Zambia is transforming the lives of young creatives by providing them with training, space and equipment to work together on creative projects. In just one year, the library - 

Keen to expand services for youth, public librarians at Choma Provincial Library conducted a scan of facilities for young people in Choma, capital of Zambia’s Southern Province. They found that there were some good youth centres and services, but that the town lacked facilities to support young people’s creativity.

Keen to expand services for youth, public librarians at Choma Provincial Library conducted a scan of facilities for young people in Choma, capital of Zambia’s Southern Province. They found that there were some good youth centres and services, but that the town lacked facilities to support young people’s creativity.

Keen to expand services for youth, public librarians at Choma Provincial Library conducted a scan of facilities for young people in Choma, capital of Zambia’s Southern Province. They found that there were some good youth centres and services, but that the town lacked facilities to support young people’s creativity.

The European Cultural Heritage Green Paper, officially launched on Monday, 22 March, seeks to put Europe’s shared heritage at the heart of the European Green New Deal.

It was produced by European cultural heritage organisation Europa Nostra in close cooperation with the International Council of Museums and Sites (ICOMOS) and the Climate Heritage Network, with the input of members of the European Heritage Alliance and the support of the European Investment Bank Institute.

IFLA was proud to have had the opportunity to provide input and feedback on the paper during its development. As cultural and memory institutions, libraries have an essential role in placing culture at the heart of Europe’s sustainable future.

In this article, we offer an introduction to the European Cultural Heritage Green Paper and ideas on how libraries can take part.  

The European Green New Deal

First presented in December 2019, the European Green Deal seeks to make Europe the planet’s first carbon-neutral continent by 2050.

It is a plan for the European Union’s economic sustainability, turning the challenges of climate change and environmental degradation into opportunities, while ensuring the transition towards carbon neutrality is just and inclusive for all. This will require participation from all sectors.

See IFLA’s blog on the wider Green Deal.

Culture in the European Green New Deal

Culture is essential to the success of the European Green Deal. Overcoming the enormous challenge of climate change takes resilience, creativity, and most importantly, collective action. Therefore, climate action must resonate in the hearts and minds of all people.

The European Cultural Heritage Green Paper provides a set of case studies, essays, and recommendations for policymakers and cultural heritage actors on integrating culture into the priority areas of the European Green Deal. It makes a case for cultural heritage as a driver of climate action and catalyst for positive change, while fostering the senses of belonging and social inclusion that are necessary for just transition.

Finally, it expresses the dedication of the cultural sector towards the goals of the European Green New Deal and opens the door to strengthening future collaboration.

What does this mean for libraries?

IFLA is invested in expanding and promoting the role of libraries as vectors of sustainable development and climate action. For an example, see our brief on Libraries and the Paris Agreement.

As free-to-access public spaces, as well as memory institutions and champions for access to information and lifelong learning, libraries are well placed within communities to be hubs for climate education, training, and public awareness.

Here are some areas from the European Cultural Heritage Green Paper where libraries can have an impact:

Informing Transformative Change

While climate science tells us that mitigation and adaption are necessary, it does not tell us what will work best in any given human system. Learning from the cultural knowledge of both past and current societies can help provide answers for how transformative change can be integrated within the context of cultural and social norms.

Europe’s libraries hold knowledge in their physical and digital collections that can help inform climate science, mitigation, and adaption strategies, and illustrates how past societies have adapted to change.

Supporting the Creative Economy

European creative industries and craft-makers contribute to the sustainable, local, and circular economy goals of the European Green New Deal. Empowering local creators and craftspeople can help re-localise production-consumption processes (using more sustainable techniques) and contribute to sustainable tourism.

Libraries can share knowledge on local craft traditions, offer craftspeople and artists access to resources and services (virtual and in-person), and use their spaces in communities to help creative economy actors reach new audiences and markets.  

Encouraging Participation and Co-Creation in Transition Planning

Libraries are free-to-access public spaces. They are platforms to bring community together to learn about local issues and take part in participatory policy making.

In this role, libraries and other cultural institutions can act as spaces for climate empowerment on the local level. This includes raising awareness of policy changes, encouraging social dialogue, inspiring voluntary participation, and involving community actors in transition planning.

Activating Climate Education and Training

Libraries are champions of lifelong learning for all. Creativity and the arts present new opportunities to connect deeply with people, both within and outside the formal education system. Cultural heritage experiences can grow a shared sense of identity, values, cohesion, and responsibility – building capacity and will for ambitious climate action.

Libraries can take part through education, communication, and training programmes regarding green practices, climate change mitigation and adaptation in the community, and the role of culture and heritage in climate action. 

 

IFLA looks forward to continuing to work with our members in Europe and beyond, as well as our partners in the cultural sector, to support the role of cultural heritage and memory institutions in climate action.

We encourage our members to use the European Cultural Heritage Green Paper and the examples it gives in their advocacy as evidence of the vital role of libraries in building a sustainable future.

Following this link to access the European Cultural Heritage Green Paper  in full, or click here for the Executive Summary.

A side-event at the Asia-Pacific region’s forum on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provided an opportunity to underline the importance of access to information everywhere, and the potential of libraries to support effective policy delivery.

This year’s Asia-Pacific Forum on Sustainable Development, organised to gather views and experiences from the region ahead of the UN High Level Political Forum, is focused strongly on recovery and resilience.  

The ability of people to understand and adapt to change is at the heart of success in this regard. And by providing information and support, libraries are in turn essential for ensuring this ability is enjoyed by all.

The IFLA-organised side-event at this year’s forum offered an opportunity to explore this role, in particular in the light of the pandemic, in more depth.

Access Matters Everywhere

Vicki McDonald, State Librarian and CEO, State Library of Queensland, Australia and Chair of IFLA’s Professional Committee underlined the wide range of policy areas where access to information mattered. Even before the pandemic, the inability to access knowledge online left people at risk of exclusion and poorer life chances – it was vital to get everyone connected and promote digital inclusion.

Dr Dilara Begum, Associate Professor and Chairperson in the Department of Information Studies and Library Management at East West University, Bangladesh, echoed the importance of connectivity She added that it was particularly crucial, in a world with so much information available, to have people who could help users get what they needed too.

Priyanka Mohan, Strategic Programme Lead of the Special Library Programme, MS Swaminathan Research Foundation, India, reiterated that information was key in helping communities of all sorts, in everything from farming to holding governments to account. She noted the particular role of places, such as libraries, in helping people really make use of information to improve their lives.

A Growing Need, Requiring New Responses

Focusing on the impacts of the pandemic on demand for, and supply of, information, Vicki McDonald noted that with so many activities shifting online, there was a huge need for good and accessible online information. COVID-19 had, in effect, shown just how important information is for so many activities.

The State Library of Queensland had built new services and partnerships, making resources available to support education, wellbeing, and community cohesion, with new ideas coming all of the time.

Dilara Begun noted that in Bangladesh too, there had been a jump in demand for information. East West University Library had set up a WhatsApp reference service to help, but found that alongside information itself, there was also a real need for the skills to use it. As a result, the University had focused strongly on developing courses and skills for students and others, but more was needed nationally.

Priyanka Mohan underlined that after the uncertainty caused by the lockdown at first, Indian libraries had also seen major rises in interest in educational programming or resources for wellbeing. There had been great examples of schemes for children, as well as WhatsApp groups for sharing information in specific languages. Such work helped build resilience at the local level by bringing people together, and promoting both community and informed responses to changing circumstances.  

Libraries: Key Actors in Successful Implementation

Drawing on these experiences, valuable lessons emerged for policy-makers. Vicki McDonald highlighted successful efforts to build connections between the Australian Digital Health Agency and libraries, with the former recognising the value of a network of partners focused on digital inclusion.

This was not the only area where such links were possible with strong connections already established by Austraia's libraries with Telstra and other government ministries and agencies which had recognised the unique potential of libraires.

In Bangladesh, Dilara Begum noted that there was already recognition of the need for a joined-up access to information policy at the national level. To implement this – and realise the potential of information, there would need to be a drive to invest in infrastructure, skills, content and devices, especially if the digital divide is to be overcome.

In India, too, the value of libraries as a partner for government, and a mediator between them and people, was strong, according to Priyanka Mohan. Even the best policies would not work if people did not know about them. These services also had to be universal and community based, given that anyone could find themselves in difficulty and so need to call for support.

Conclusion

Despite the diversity between the countries represented, the message from libraries in India, Bangladesh and Australia was consistent: governments needed to give sufficient focus to enabling access to information, and draw fully on the unique abilities and community knowledge of libraries to support SDG success across the board.

With the pandemic making it clear how important a role access plays in so many parts of our lives, there is a strong opportunity to push for change in policy approaches, while also innovating in the ways libraries themselves serve users.

Watch the event again on IFLA’s YouTube channel.

This is the sixth in a series of monthly updates on the Fedora Migration Paths and Tools project – please see last month’s post for a summary of the work completed up to that point. This project has been generously funded by the IMLS.

The Whitman College pilot team has updated their Islandora 8 instance to support Amazon S3 storage via Fedora’s native capabilities in order to comply with functional requirements. Additionally, the new Drupal 9 theme developed by Born Digital is being updated and configured to support various functional requirements related to display and browsing. This theme will be shared with the Islandora Foundation so it can be adopted and extended by others in the community.

An Alpha build of the migration validation utility is mostly complete and should be ready for the University of Virginia pilot team to begin testing by the end of the week. A list of tests the utility is capable of running is available on the wiki. The utility compares source Fedora 3 data with migrated Fedora 6 data and produces a HTML report. This report will also be available as a TSV file. 

Migration validation utility HTML output

Scott Prater from the University of Wisconsin-Madison has generously contributed his time and effort to a Fedora 3 to 6 API mapping document, which will help institutions map their client code interactions from their Fedora 3.x repositories to their new Fedora 6.x repositories. Once this document is complete it will be shared with the Fedora technical team before being shared more broadly as part of the migration toolkit.

Next month we hope to make progress on testing the new Whitman College Islandora 8 repository to ensure that functional requirements have been met. Where there are gaps we will assess how best to address them. Meanwhile, the University of Virginia pilot team will use the validation utility to verify that their Fedora 6.x content has been faithfully migrated from their Fedora 3.x repository before loading the data into a Fedora 6.0 Beta instance to test against their functional requirements.

Stay tuned for future updates!

The post Fedora Migration Paths and Tools Project Update: March 2021 appeared first on Duraspace.org.

რუსთავის საბიბლიოთეკო გაერთიანება ახალი პროექტის ფარგლებში იწყებს მუშაობას პერიოდულ გამოცემაზე „ლიტერატურული რუსთავი“.ჩვენ გვაქვს გამომცემლობითი საქმიანობის მრავალწლიანი გამოცდილება და ამჯერადაც გვინდა ახალი ფორმით წარვდგეთ მკითხველების წინაშე.

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21 მარტს დაუნის სინდრომის საერთაშორისო დღესთან დაკავშირებით ნ.ბარათაშვილის სახელობის N3 საქალაქო-საბავშვო ბიბლიოთეკაში მოეწყო გამოფენა “მეგობრები არ ითვლიან ქრომოსომებს”

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You can listen in and be part of it on YouTube

In the first part you will hear five presentations, covering the worldwide challenges to libraries for children and young adults and their dealings during the Covid-19 pandemic:

• Søren Dahl Mortensen(Denmark): Actions for children in kinder gardens and how we handled the cancelling of a large festival
• Melanie Ramirez (Philippines): Children's Library Services in the “New Normal”
• Emiko Goeku –(Japan). Keep distance, stay connected : new practices at Tokyo Children’s Library
• Huey Bin Heng (Singapore): Navigating Children and Teens programmes in the "New Normal"
• Anton Purnik (Russia): Remote work: documents, communications, planning.

The presentations were followed by a live Q&A session with the speakers.

The second part of the Midyear Meeting includes the business meeting. Observers use this opportunity to learn more about the work of the Libraries for Children & Young Adults Section and the ongoing projects.

 

The IFLA/UNESCO Public Library Manifesto, last updated in 1994, proclaims UNESCO's belief in the public library as a living force for education, culture and information, and as an essential agent for the fostering of peace and welfare through the minds of all people.

In the years since, this document has been the cornerstone of public library advocacy – codifying the library’s role at the centre of freedom and equity of access to knowledge and information for all people.

As technology advances and society changes, the ways that public libraries fulfil this mission have also evolved. IFLA’s Public Libraries Section, has therefore been embarking on updating the Manifesto, in order to ensure it best reflects the realities and missions of public libraries today.

A Global Call

Creating an updated Manifesto that is relevant and useful to public libraries around the world would not be possible without hearing the voice of the global library field. Therefore, IFLA’s Public Library Section launched a worldwide survey in 2020 to gather ideas and feedback from librarians around the world.

With over 600 responses, we learned a lot about how librarians have used the Manifesto in their work, and how they suggest it could be improved and updated for the future.

What’s new?

Here is a look at a selection of concepts that are being addressed or expanded on in the coming Manifesto update.

The Information society

Since 1994, the ways in which people access information have evolved. The spread of the internet has ushered in a paradigm shift for the role of libraries as providers of access to information. Therefore, the updated Manifesto will feature the vital role of libraries in the information society.

It will also feature the need for libraries to continuously adapt to new means of communication to fulfil their mandate of providing universal access to information and knowledge for all people. Similarly, as champions of lifelong learning, the role of libraries as educators expands to include both digital and traditional literacy, including media and information literacy, in the spirit of equipping informed, democratic societies.

Remote Access

Of the many lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic, the importance of virtual access and engagement strategies was one of vital importance for public libraries. Therefore, the role of libraries in providing services to their communities will now be highlighted both in terms of in-person services and services provided through remote access.

The updated Manifesto will assert that, whenever possible, providing digital technologies that allow virtual access to information, collections, and programmes be considered aspects of a library’s mission.  

Libraries and Sustainable Development

As publicly accessible spaces for the exchange of information, sharing of culture, and promotion of civic engagement, libraries should be considered essential agents for sustainable development. Through their activities relating to information, literacy, education, and culture, libraries contribute to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and the construction of more equitable, humane, and sustainable societies.

This is especially pertinent when concerning the public library’s role in ensuring inclusion, access, and cultural participation for marginalised communities, Indigenous peoples, and users with special needs.

Next steps

Over the coming months, IFLA will work with our partners at UNESCO, as well as in the Public Library Section, to finalise the updated Public Library Manifesto.

We know we can count on the global library to help turn this Manifesto into actions that build awareness of public libraries as living forces for education, culture, inclusion, and peace.

Stay tuned for more – coming soon!

 

EIFL has organized a series of 12 webinars to introduce academic (university and research) librarians to our new digital research literacy training programme for librarians. 

An important role of academic libraries is to support researchers and students to produce quality research outputs. One of the ways in which they do this is by providing digital research literacy training. However, a survey conducted by EIFL in 2018 found that academic librarians were struggling to provide this training in a fast-moving digital environment. 

EIFL has organized a series of 12 webinars to introduce academic (university and research) librarians to our new digital research literacy training programme for librarians. 

An important role of academic libraries is to support researchers and students to produce quality research outputs. One of the ways in which they do this is by providing digital research literacy training. However, a survey conducted by EIFL in 2018 found that academic librarians were struggling to provide this training in a fast-moving digital environment. 

EIFL has organized a series of 12 webinars to introduce academic (university and research) librarians to our new digital research literacy training programme for librarians. 

An important role of academic libraries is to support researchers and students to produce quality research outputs. One of the ways in which they do this is by providing digital research literacy training. However, a survey conducted by EIFL in 2018 found that academic librarians were struggling to provide this training in a fast-moving digital environment. 

Library and Research Services for Parliaments Section will conduct a Standing Committee Open Meeting on March 23, 2021. The virtual meeting will be held in two instances. Registration is required.  

The March 2021 issue of the IFLA Library Services to Multicultural Populations Section's newsletter has been published. Download the newsletter (PDF) here.

This issue looks back at the origins and applications of the IFLA/UNESCO Multicultural Library Manifesto, which was adopted by IFLA almost 15 years ago. It also looks at how, over the past year, library services have been adapting to virtual delivery during the pandemic.

This is the final issue edited and produced by Pam Ryan and her team at Toronto Public Library. We thank them for all the work that they have done on this and previous issues.

​

​​IFLA Journal is an international journal publishing peer reviewed articles on library and information services and the social, political and economic issues that impact access to information through libraries.

The Journal publishes research, case studies and essays that reflect the broad spectrum of the profession internationally.

Volume 47, No.1 (March 2021)

Contents:
Editorial

Developments and trends for 2021
Steven W. Witt

Articles

Sources of climate change information used by newspaper journalists in Tanzania 5
Peter Onauphoo Siyao and Alfred Said Sife

Information-seeking behaviour of science and technology researchers in Nigeria: A survey of the Federal Institute of Industrial Research Oshodi 20
Olayinka Babayemi Makinde, Glenrose Velile Jiyane and Tinashe Mugwisi

Business intelligence in academic libraries in Jordan: Opportunities and challenges 37
Faten Hamad, Razan Al-Aamr, Sinaria Abdel Jabbar and Hussam Fakhuri

Research data management in Turkey: A survey to build an effective national data repository 51
Guleda Dogan, Zehra Taskin and Arsev Umur Aydinoglu

Analysis of the alliance of archives, libraries, and museums of South Africa National Parks: Kruger National Park 65
Nkholedzeni Sidney Netshakhuma

Copyright literacy of library and information science professionals in Bangladesh 78
Zakir Hossain

Students’ attitudes towards library overdue fines in an academic library: A study in a private university setting in Bangladesh 91
Sangita Basak and Shamima Yesmin

Abstracts 101

IFLA Journal is an international journal publishing peer reviewed articles on library and information services and the social, political and economic issues that impact access to information through libraries. The Journal publishes research, case studies and essays that reflect the broad spectrum of the profession internationally. IFLA Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

To submit an article please visit IFLA Journal on the SAGE platform.

• Editor: Steven W. Witt
• Frequency: Quarterly
• ISSN: 0340-0352
• eISSN: 1745-2651
• List of previous issues

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Join this EIFL webinar on how to train students and researchers about establishing an online identity, and about ORCID, one of the topics addressed in the EIFL Digital Research Literacy Training Programme Outline for Librarians. The webinar is for academic (university and research) librarians who are currently providing or are planning to provide digital research literacy training for students and researchers.

Join this EIFL webinar on how to train students and researchers about establishing an online identity, and about ORCID, one of the topics addressed in the EIFL Digital Research Literacy Training Programme Outline for Librarians. The webinar is for academic (university and research) librarians who are currently providing or are planning to provide digital research literacy training for students and researchers.

Join this EIFL webinar on how to train students and researchers about establishing an online identity, and about ORCID, one of the topics addressed in the EIFL Digital Research Literacy Training Programme Outline for Librarians. The webinar is for academic (university and research) librarians who are currently providing or are planning to provide digital research literacy training for students and researchers.