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1 World information

2 report 1997/98 U N E S C O Publishing

3 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, 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 UNESCO 1997

4 Preface Developments in information processing and communication are at the heart of many of the transformations that have marked the latter half of the twentieth century. The phenomenon of the Internet highlights the accelerating pace of these developments and their potential impact on economic, social and cultural life. We are embarked upon an information revolution that promises to open a new era in human history, with consequences as far-reaching as those of the agricultural and industrial revolutions. In the fifty years of its existence, UNESCO has always been active in the information field. Its responsibilities in this regard are clearly stated in its Constitution, which assigns UNESCO the role of encouraging the international exchange of books and information as part of its task of promoting peace through the sharing of knowledge and the free flow of ideas. Two pioneers in this domain were Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine, who helped to lay the foundations of information work by their tireless activities at the end of the nineteenth century. As well as establishing the Institut International de Bibliographie (1895), publishing the Universal Decimal Classification and organizing international congresses on bibliography, these two Belgian friends were closely involved in the creation of the League of Nations. Otlet had published in 1914 a Traité de paix général in which he proposed the creation of such an international body; and La Fontaine Nobel Peace Prize laureate in 1913 and subsequently a Belgian delegate to the League of Nations was instrumental in creating the Bureau International de la Paix. They are names to be remembered in the history of international intellectual co-operation in the service of peace-building. In keeping with this tradition, the General Conference of UNESCO at its twenty-eighth session decided to address the crucial issues raised by the most recent technological developments in the information field. More particularly, Member States asked the Secretariat to provide the relevant support for their activities and in so doing to concentrate on the linguistic, cultural, social and ethical impact of the proposed information highways and of the new information and communication technologies. The Organization is thus accepting expanded responsibilities in a field in the process of radical transformation,

5 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

6 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

7 Contents Acknowledgements 10 Introduction Yves Courrier and Andrew Large 11 Part One: Information services worldwide A. Libraries and information services Chapter 1. East Asia and Oceania Josephine C. Sison 21 Chapter 2. South Asia Abhijit Lahiri 33 Chapter 3. The Arab States Mahmoud A. Itayem 47 Chapter 4. Africa Wilson O. Aiyepeku and Helen O. Komolafe 62 Chapter 5. Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States Alexander V. Butrimenko 72 Chapter 6. Western Europe Giuseppe Vitiello 84 Chapter 7. Canada and the United States Carole R. Moore, Peter I. Hajnal and Ralph W. Manning 98 Chapter 8. Latin America and the Caribbean Estela Morales Campos 107 B. Archives Chapter 9. Asia Maria Helena Lima Évora 127 Chapter 10. The Arab States Moncef Fakhfakh 136 Chapter 11. Africa Peter Mazikana 144 Chapter 12. Europe and North America Trudy Huskamp Peterson 155 Chapter 13. Latin America and the Caribbean Jorge Palacios Preciado and Victoria Arias Roca 167 Chapter 14. Audiovisual archives worldwide Helen P. Harrison 182 Part Two: Infrastructures for information work Chapter 15. Computer developments Lucy Tedd 193 Chapter 16. Multimedia technologies Ching-Chih Chen 206 Chapter 17. Telecommunication technologies Martin B. H. Weiss 226 Chapter 18. The Internet Blaise Cronin and Geoffrey McKim 240 Chapter 19. Design criteria for large library buildings Harry Faulkner-Brown 257 Part Three: Issues and trends Chapter 20. The information society Nick Moore 271 Chapter 21. Information highways Mary Dykstra Lynch 285 Chapter 22. Economic intelligence Philippe Clerc 304 Chapter 23. Book publishing Philip Altbach 318 Chapter 24. Access to archival holdings and unique library materials Michael Cook 328 Chapter 25. Preservation of archival holdings and unique library materials Hartmut Weber 338 Chapter 26. Copyright in the electronic age Charles Oppenheim 349 Chapter 27. International co-operation and assistance Arashanipalai Neelameghan 361 Index 381

8 Acknowledgements The editors would like to thank all those who contributed in one way or another to the preparation of the World Information Report. Mrs Suzanne Richer, President of the Intergovernmental Council for the General Information Programme, launched the project and followed it most carefully to the end. The members of the Advisory Board gave unreservedly of their advice and assistance in planning the outline, selecting the authors and reviewing the papers, as follows: Getachew Birru, Dean, School for Information Studies for Africa, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia; Michel Cartier, Professor, Department of Communications, Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada; Khalifa Chater, Director, Institut Supérieur de Documentation, Université de Tunis, Tunisia; Christoph Graf, Director, Swiss Federal Archives, Switzerland; Wolfgang Klaue, former President of the International Federation of Film Archives; Maurice Line, Information and Library Consultant, United Kingdom; Antonio Miranda, Director, School of Information Science, University of Brasilia, Brazil; Arashanipalai Neelameghan, Honorary Visiting Professor, Documentation Research and Training Center, Indian Statistical Institute, India; and Tibor Vamos, former Director, Computer and Automation Research Institute, Hungarian Academy of Science, Hungary. Ben Goodegebure, from the International Federation for Information and Documentation, George McKenzie and Michael Roper, from the International Council for Archives, and H. Sene, from Cheik Anta Diop University in Dakar, also made a significant contribution. Within UNESCO itself, a large number of units and individuals contributed, often very significantly, at various stages in the preparation of the Report, from reviewing the original outline to final form. The enterprise would not have been possible without their willing collaboration and assistance throughout the process. Finally, special mention should be made of Francine Barral and Khalissa Ikhlef for the wide range of skills they displayed in the course of this undertaking, and above all for their untiring patience.

9 Introduction 11 by Yves Courrier Division for Information and Informatics, UNESCO and Andrew Large McGill University, Canada Some words are used more frequently than others, and information clearly belongs to the first group. If, prima facie, everyone seems to be concerned with information, nevertheless different people will have different views of what is information. A physicist, an engineer, a computer scientist, a psychologist, a journalist, a decisionmaker, a librarian, an archivist or a documentalist all of these professionals and many others deal in some way with information. What makes a difference is not the subject of their concern, information per se, but how they handle it and for what purpose. The physicist studies the relationship between order and energy, the telecommunication engineer measures the uncertainty of a message, the computer scientist designs ways and means to process bits, the psychologist describes how the human mind functions, the journalist makes news out of facts, while the decision-maker interprets facts and data to take decisions. The primary role of librarians, archivists and documentalists is to provide information for these and all other kinds of information users. They identify, acquire and organize information (or the documents containing that information) so that it can be supplied to clients on demand to meet business or leisure needs. In this broad and complex information domain, the World Information Report has been designed with a clear purpose in mind: to present to non-specialists, and particularly to decision-makers and the public at large, the wide reality of information provision as it is found throughout the world today and as it is being transformed by the technological, social and political developments of tomorrow. The starting-point is recorded information, that is, information which is already present on some medium. The medium itself can be varied: stone, clay, parchment, paper, slide, film, magnetic disk, optical disk or whatever. The information content can be fixed in space, as in the case of information recorded on stone walls, or available around the world, as in

10 Introduction 12 the case of information on an Internet site. Recorded information can appear as a single, unique document of great historical or artistic value, as, for example, in archive or museum collections, or it can be published in millions of copies, as with newspapers or paperback books. Information can be highly transient, as in a telecommunication broadcast, or highly durable, as with Sumerian clay tablets. Several professions are concerned primarily with handling recorded information. Some, like archivists and librarians, will give more attention to documents which are unique; others, like information or computer scientists, will aim principally at transmitting highly selected data as rapidly as possible. Professional principles as well as practices may differ. The present Report has been designed on the assumption that all the professions concerned with recorded information share some principles and concerns for one very simple reason: they all provide information services. In 1931 Ranganathan wrote his five laws of librarianship and the first one reads: books are for use (Ranganathan, 1988). Three years later, in 1934, Otlet wrote: The purpose of organizing documents is to make it possible to offer, on any fact or item of knowledge, relevant information... for the benefit of the largest number of users (Otlet, 1989). As Taylor (1986) pointed out, the unique principle underlying information services is the provision of added value to information. This value is added as a result of the various functions performed by information professionals: the acquisition, selection, organization, storage and dissemination of documents in whatever form they might take. Other professionals, of course, are concerned with adding value to information. Accountants and statisticians, for example, manipulate figures for accounting or statistical purposes. They can construct tables, graphs and charts from raw figures recorded information which make those figures more meaningful for their clients. Journalists also add value to information by tracking it down, filtering and assembling it to provide news stories for their audience. In a different way, publishers, booksellers and telecommunication network operators add value to information by linking potential users from all over the world with that information. Information is the middle term in this work s title: the other two words are Report and World. This is a report on the state of information provision today, with some explanation of how this state was reached and predictions about the direction in which developments are leading. The boundaries of the information-provision community are neither clearly defined nor stable at a time of rapidly developing information technologies. The World Information Report is precisely an attempt to reflect this moving reality as the twentieth century draws to a close. Starting with a description of information services as they are now, it also considers the technological developments that are set to modify this description in the years to come and the economic, legal and political consequences of these developments now and in the future. Authors were asked to eschew the scholarly paper approach, replete with quotations and citations. Instead they were asked to provide an overview of their field of expertise with a few further readings where applicable so that readers could pursue individual topics further should they so choose. There are currently around 200 countries in the world. This Report attempts to give a summary of information provision from a global perspective. A glance at the Index will reveal that reference is made to most, if not all, of these countries at one place or another. It seems safe to assert that few other books have dealt with this topic from such an international perspective. Nevertheless, it would be an exaggeration to claim that all countries have been afforded equal space. In the first place, published accounts of information systems and services, including statistical data of various kinds, are more

11 Introduction 13 plentiful for some countries than for others. Second, although information is a crucial ingredient for the successful development of economic, social and political life in all countries, whether developed, developing or underdeveloped, it is not the case at present that all countries have established such systems and services to the same degree. Third, although the authors have been selected on the basis of their international experience as well as knowledge of their chosen topic, it is understandable that authors will have more familiarity with conditions in some countries than in others. Taken together, however, the twenty-seven chapters in the World Information Report provide a comprehensive account of information provision around the world in the final years of the twentieth century. The World Information Report is divided into three parts. Part One provides a description of information services throughout the world. It is divided into two sections. Section A (Chapters 1 to 8) concentrates on libraries and information services. It adopts a geopolitical approach, dividing the world into eight regions, arranged from east to west: East Asia and Oceania; South Asia; the Arab States; Africa (south of the Sahara); Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States; Western Europe; Canada and the United States; and Latin America and the Caribbean. Although each author has chosen a slightly different approach, in general the following areas are addressed in these chapters: national libraries and information systems, academic libraries, public libraries, school libraries, specialized library and information services, professional associations, and education and training programmes for information personnel. Other topics such as information marketing, publishing and research are included in some of the chapters. Within this framework, authors discuss topics such as the introduction of information and telecommunication technologies into these regions, bibliographic control, database production and international collaboration both within the region and between countries of the region and the outside world. The focus is on the present reality, and on the provision of facts, including statistical data, wherever possible. What is offered, in other words, is a description of the institutions, the people and the legal environment which together make up the information scene around the globe. This is a complex and contrasting reality, exhibiting at one and the same time impressive achievements and, on occasion, serious problems yet to be surmounted. Section B of Part One deals with archives. It adopts a similar approach for archival systems and services as in the previous section for libraries and information services. A geopolitical organization is used for Chapters 9 to 13, but the division of the world is slightly broader than in Section A: Asia; the Arab States; Africa (south of the Sahara); Europe and North America; and Latin America and the Caribbean. Topics dealt with include archival legislation, standards, institutions and holdings, technical facilities (including information and telecommunication technologies), budgets, education and training, and professional associations. Several authors discuss the related topic of records management. Chapter 14, in contrast, adopts a thematic rather than a geographic focus: issues concerning archival holdings of audiovisual rather than printbased materials. After this survey of information services throughout the world, Part Two (Infrastructures for Information Work) turns to technical matters. Information providers utilize a wide range of technological tools. The World Information Report presents in three separate chapters state-of-theart surveys of the most relevant technologies: computers, multimedia and telecommunications. Chapter 15 on computer developments begins with an overview of computing technology before examining computerized library systems, information retrieval, interface design and the human aspect of

12 Introduction 14 computerization. Multimedia information sources are of growing importance. Chapter 16 on multimedia technologies discusses the technology required both to use multimedia sources and to create them. The theme of Chapter 17 is telecommunication technologies. It outlines the components of any network as well as the role of standards and the various organizations designated to approve them. Although using all these three technologies, the Internet has been awarded its own chapter (Chapter 18) as a measure of its current and future importance in information delivery. Despite the undeniable importance of telecommunication networks in general, and in particular those networks linked to form the Internet, a majority of the world s recorded information is still to be found on paper, microform, slides or film stored in buildings. The final chapter of Part Two is therefore dedicated to library buildings, or more accurately to the design issues related to large library buildings (archival buildings, with their somewhat different requirements, are not discussed here). Part Three (Issues and Trends) does not take a descriptive approach but rather discusses a number of important issues of contemporary concern. Several of these issues are related to technological developments, but others have a political, social or legal focus. Chapter 20 deals with the information society, whose characteristics are that information is used as an economic resource, that the general public is making increasing use of information as consumers, and that an information sector is developing within the economy. The chapter examines the origins and causes of the information society, and discusses information as an organizational resource. It also discusses the relationship between information and citizenship. Chapter 21 concentrates on information highways, the metaphor coined in the United States to describe the technological revolution in information processing and delivery that is sweeping the globe. The technological aspects of networks and the specific impact of the Internet were covered earlier in Chapter 18. Chapter 21, in contrast, considers the broad political, economic and social implications of the new technologies that promise to reshape all our lives. Chapter 22 has a sharper focus: economic intelligence, whose objective is to give decisionmakers in enterprises or in government the knowledge to understand their environment and to adjust their strategies accordingly. It is argued that the effective use of economic intelligence can produce large dividends both for developed and developing countries. The topic is of relevance to this Report because economic intelligence is based upon the identification, collection and analysis of information. Economic intelligence is a relatively new concern, but one which seems set to become decisive in the years to come. With an estimated 200 million personal computers in the world (Cartier, 1996), and close to 40 million Internet users, is there a future for the printed book? Answers to this question undoubtedly vary, but Chapter 23 offers one response from a book publisher s perspective. The author believes that books remain a primary means of communication and are central to providing information, entertainment and education to millions worldwide. The chapter discusses publishing from the perspectives of developed and developing countries, including the role of new technologies in book production. It argues that books are simply too convenient and too affordable to disappear. Chapters 24 and 25 both deal with issues of the utmost importance for all information professionals, but especially for archivists: access to and preservation of archival material. The potential conflict between the need to preserve for future generations rare or unique materials and the need to make such materials available now to users is discussed in both chapters. Chapter 24 deals with topics such as the appraisal process, legislation and

13 Introduction 15 standards for collection, preservation and access, and bibliographic control. The focus in Chapter 25 is on conservation and preservation techniques. Despite the potential of optical storage media for archival storage, it is argued that microfilm continues to provide a highly reliable and inexpensive storage medium for archival holdings and unique library materials. Copyright safeguards the rights of authors and publishers to reap dividends from their labour. But its abuse acts as a deterrent to freedom of access to information. Libraries in particular can encounter considerable copyright problems when seeking to provide clients with photocopies of copyrighted material. Even greater copyright problems are now being raised by electronic publishing, where authorship and ownership are less well-defined concepts than in the traditional world of publishing. These issues are explored in Chapter 26. Finally, to emphasize the global perspective of the World Information Report, the last chapter describes international co-operation and assistance in this area. The roles of the many international and regional agencies active throughout the world are discussed; the exemplary solidarity of information professionals and their strong concern for international co-operation have led to many co-operative efforts and produced impressive results. A work such as this emphasizes both the similarities and the differences between individual countries and regions. Many examples could be drawn from the Report to illustrate this point. No chapter can ignore the role of computing and telecommunication technologies in the provision of information. These technologies occur again and again as one reads through the twenty-seven chapters. Yet the level of technological development differs markedly between regions and between individual countries. To take a very different example, the need to provide effective access to information is of paramount importance to all information professionals, but the problems in realizing this goal as well as the means of realizing it differ from country to country. Copyright is a recurring theme, but national legislation on this issue varies. It is intriguing to follow through the Report these intertwined themes, and to appreciate the commonality of the problems but the multiplicity of the solutions necessary to fit widely differing political, economic and social environments. This last point leads to a brief discussion of how this Report can be used. The chapters in Part One primarily deal either with libraries or with archives in specific regions of the world, and within these regions individual countries are examined. But many national and regional examples can also be located in Parts Two and Three even though they do not have location as their primary focus. Likewise, individual chapters in Part Two deal with specific information technologies, with the Internet and with library architecture. But again, numerous references will be found to these topics in Parts One and Three. Finally, Part Three emphasizes issues and trends in information provision, yet such issues are encountered repeatedly also in discussing regional concerns in Part One or infrastructures in Part Two. Copyright, for example, has an entire chapter devoted to it; nevertheless, many examples of copyright issues will be found in other chapters scattered throughout the Report. Whenever possible, links between the treatment of similar topics in different chapters are made by cross-referencing within the chapters themselves. The role of the Index is to supplement these cross-references by concatenating subjects that have been dispersed by the Report s structure. If the overall logic of the Report led to a particular order of presentation of the topics, the reader, of course, is free to travel through it in any way. For instance, Chapter 20 (The Information Society), could be the starting-point, in which Nick Moore defines precisely what is meant by this term and indicates the economic factors which describe

14 Introduction 16 the phenomenon. This then sets the overall social framework within which the information professions must redefine their roles, giving a particular importance to this chapter. Another approach is to go directly after Part One to the final Chapter 27 by Professor Neelameghan on international co-operation and assistance. This sequence will emphasize the social importance of information work at the local, national, regional and international levels. The detailed description of the institutions and the professional groups in charge of providing information to all segments of society, for research, education, work or leisure, for profit-making or free public service, indicates that even though the impact of the new information technologies might be immense, certain basic principles and tried methods are still valid throughout the world, and may remain so for some years to come. In this kind of work, selection of one topic for inclusion inevitably means the exclusion of another topic (as it is, the World Information Report, by any account, represents a very substantial volume in terms of sheer pagination). For instance, access has been studied from the standpoint of rare books and archival material only. Universal access to publications has not been included even though tremendous efforts have been made in the last twenty years in this area. Similarly, the concept of a universal digital library and its impact on the future of libraries, free versus fee-based information services, problems of standardization and compatibility, the conversion of all preserved material to a digital format, education, training and human resource development for information professionals, digital publishing, and the role of information for development are just some of the important topics that have not been allocated a specific chapter in the Report (although most of them are touched upon within individual chapters). They represent topics which could be covered in any subsequent volume of the World Information Report. The authors were asked to follow certain guidelines in the preparation of their chapters. First, as mentioned above, the chapters were expected to be factual and precise, but easy to read: they were not intended to resemble scholarly papers. Second, authors were requested to provide up-to-date and reliable statistical data whenever possible. The difficulty of meeting this objective was recognized from the outset: in too many cases data simply are not available; in other cases different data sets, even within the same section of one chapter, cannot directly be compared because they were collected using slightly different parameters. Overall, the authors have responded to this requirement with laudatory success. Third, authors attention was drawn at the outset to the many areas of potential overlap between individual chapters, but they were compelled to write their own chapter without the benefit of seeing anyone else s chapter. The editors have done their best to eliminate needless overlap (some repetition, of course, is essential both to treat properly a topic of relevance to two or more chapters and to present the same topic from the different perspectives of several chapters). The blame for any remaining redundancy must therefore lie with the editors and not with the authors. Fourth, authors were asked to adopt an international approach in their coverage, drawing examples from a broad spectrum of countries wherever feasible (see above). The final requirement probably most irksome of all for the authors was that of confining their coverage to a very restricted number of pages. As experts in their fields the authors undoubtedly would have found it easier to write an entire book on the topic than fifteen or so pages! In many cases they were compelled by the editors to delete fascinating and relevant sections from their draft chapters simply to prevent the Report from reaching monumental proportions. In an endeavour of this kind, the editors must perforce rely upon the co-operation of their authors in meeting initial deadlines, submitting any revisions,

15 Introduction 17 and answering lingering questions which inevitably arise at the final editing stage. Without exception the authors have proved a remarkable team to work with, and the editors at this point would like to express their gratitude to them (full acknowledgements to the many people who made this Report possible are included elsewhere). The preparation of the Report involved thirty-two authors and two editors scattered over seventeen countries and five continents. It is difficult to contemplate such an international endeavour taking place over a short time-span without the contribution of information technology. Even though it was not made an essential requirement, in the event more than twothirds of the authors and both the editors could be reached by electronic mail. The same is true for the members of the Advisory Board, who were instrumental in the overall design of the Report, in the selection of authors and in the evaluation of the submitted chapters. All the texts without exception were submitted on diskette as well as on paper. Overall, the time saved in the preparation of the printed publication by the use of new information technologies can be estimated conservatively at between three and six months. To organize meetings, contact authors, obtain texts and clarifications, the Internet proved to be an extraordinary instrument: easy to use, accurate, most of the time reliable and above all terribly fast. Moreover, after careful consideration, it was decided to put a selected number of the papers in the Report onto the World Wide Web in English; this was completed by the end of November The texts which are on the Web ( 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 (y.courrier@unesco.org) are most welcome and will make the World Information Report an ongoing project. References CARTIER, M Le nouveau monde des infostructures. Montreal, Fides, 192 pp. OTLET, P Traité de documentation. Le livre sur le livre. Liège, Centre de Lecture Publique de la Communauté Française de Belgique. 445 pp. RANGANATHAN, S. R The Five Laws of Library Science. Bangalore. 450 pp. TAYLOR, R. S Value-added Processes in Information Systems. Norwood, New Jersey. 258 pp.

16 Introduction 18 Yves Courrier obtained a maîtrise en philosophie from the Université de Paris X (Nanterre) in 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 ( ) and Director ( ) 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 Andrew Large is 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. Yves Courrier Programme Specialist Division for Information and Informatics UNESCO 1, rue Miollis, Paris, Cedex 15, France Tel: Fax: y.courrier@unesco.org Andrew Large Director Graduate School of Library and Information Studies McGill University 3459 McTavish Street Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A 1Y1 Tel: (514) Fax: (514) inaw@musicb.mcgill.ca

17 Part One. Information services worldwide A. Libraries and information services

18 Chapter 1 East Asia and Oceania 21 Josephine C. Sison SEAMEO Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture, Philippines The geographic areas covered in this chapter include the East Asian countries of China, Japan, Mongolia and the Republic of Korea, on the one hand, and Australia, Fiji, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and the twenty-one other small island countries in the Pacific, on the other hand. It gives only a general overview of the current state of library and information systems and services in these countries, discussed under the subheadings of national libraries and information systems, professional associations, education and training institutions and programmes, library acts and communications policy development, and information networking initiatives. Some indications of the main characteristics of professional practice in each country, where available, are also given, as are problems and trends. National libraries and information systems Among the East Asian countries, Japan is by far the most advanced in terms of using information technology to provide the best possible information services to its users, although the Republic of Korea would almost be on a par with Japan. China, for its part, is still very much in the process of laying down the infrastructure in its bid to become a networked society in the near future. There are several major libraries and information centres in Japan involved in the provision of science and technology information as well as related information services. The National Diet Library (NDL) was established in 1948 to serve the Japanese Diet (Parliament) and the public. All publications produced in Japan are deposited in this library. It is the largest library in Japan with about 6,189,470 book volumes and 141,529 periodical titles. It currently has a staff of 850. The NDL provides all kinds of library services to the public, but research and legislative reference services are rendered exclusively to Diet members. The NDL collects 23,000 science

19 Information services worldwide 22 and technology journal titles and technical reports from overseas, and publishes the Directory of Japanese Scientific Periodicals as well as the Japanese Periodicals Index: Science and Technology. Another major national information system is the Japan Information Centre of Science and Technology (JICST). Established in 1957 by law as a public corporation under the auspices of the Science and Technology Agency, its main objective as an information centre is to promote the development of science and technology in Japan. JICST collects, processes and disseminates scientific and technical information published in Japan as well as that published in other parts of the world. It is currently generating about 50% of its income from its services; the other 50% is provided by the Japanese Government. JICST has highly qualified staff numbering 320 at the present time, with a budget of billion yen for the fiscal year 1995/96. The main activities and services of JICST include scientific information gathering, information processing and dissemination, library services and online information services. The JICST Online Information System (JOIS) makes available seventeen bibliographic and factual databases produced by JICST as well as 150 databases loaded on the Scientific and Technical Information Network (STN) International, a worldwide integrated online system sponsored by JICST. Another important organization in Japan providing vital information services is the National Centre for Science Information Systems (NACSIS), which is one of the inter-university research institutes under the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture. NACSIS operates the Science Information Network linking university libraries, university computer centres and university research institutions to provide scholarly information to academic researchers. The centre provides a cataloguing information service, NACSIS-CAT, which uses a shared bibliographic description scheme, as well as information retrieval services called NACSIS-IR. Among the twenty-five databases NACSIS maintains are KAKEN (abstracts of annual reports of grants-in-aid subsidized by Monbusho), GAKUI (index to doctoral theses submitted to Japanese universities), and GAKKAI (academic conference papers). Finally, the Japan Patent Information Organization, or JAPIO, ought also to be described. Established as a non-profit organization in June 1971, JAPIO is the largest provider of online, print and CD-ROM patent information services in Japan. Online information on Japanese patents, designs and trademarks is available through PATOLIS (Patent Online Information System). The staff of JAPIO is 300 and the budget for the fiscal year 1995/96 is approximately 23 million yen, entirely financed from its various patent information services. In China, the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (ISTIC) is one of the largest information services in that country. Established in October 1956, ISTIC is under the auspices of the State Science and Technology Commission or SSTC. ISTIC at present has a staff in excess of 1,100, and an annual allocation of funds averaging about 15 million yuan. The allocation covers about 70% of the budgetary requirements of the institute; the other 30% is generated from income from its information services. Dedicated to China s economic, social, scientific and technical development, and to decision-making in matters related to science and technology, ISTIC provides the following services: information retrieval; information research; document delivery; technical information and consulting; education and training; publishing, printing and reproduction; and international exchange and co-operation. In the Republic of Korea, the government rationalized the various information services along specialized lines in 1990, with the rapid growth of its information industry. One of the foremost is

20 East Asia and Oceania 23 KINITI (Korea Institute of Industry and Technology Information), created in 1991 and responsible for industrial and technological information. ETRI (Electronic Technology Research Institute) responds to the industrial information needs, and KORDIC (Korea Research and Development Information Centre) is the national science and technology information service system. KINITI is a non-profit organization under the umbrella of the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, and has 208 staff members at present. Its annual budget is US$12 million, and it is financed by governmental support (70%) and from fees collected from its various services (30%). Its goal is to acquire industrial and technological information from home and abroad, and to offer access to users through various means appropriate to their needs. KINITI offers a wide range of services such as collection of information resources, information processing and database construction, a computer-based information service network (KINITI-IR) for online information retrieval, an information search and analysis service, a Technical Information Management System (TIMS) for use by small and medium-scale companies, a document delivery and publication service, information marketing, and user training programmes. KORDIC was established by the Ministry of Science and Technology in 1993, mandated to function as a centre for database development and services in the Republic of Korea. KORDIC developed and maintains the Science and Technology Information System (STIS), a project that aims to establish information-sharing channels among research institutes and universities, at the forefront of which would be the resources of their libraries. Through the STIS project, KORDIC developed its online retrieval system called the Korea Research Information of Science and Technology Access Line (KRISTAL), which currently contains twenty-two national databases containing about 600,000 records. As a country with a highly developed information infrastructure, New Zealand s two major information providers, the National Library of New Zealand and the Crown Research Institutes, will be briefly described. The mission statement of the National Library of New Zealand is to contribute to the building of a learning society and enterprise economy within New Zealand by supporting the creation of an environment where information is readily available and widely used. It collects, preserves and makes accessible an important part of the documentary heritage of New Zealand. The National Library is the principal adviser to government on library policy and information issues. It makes available an authoritative record of New Zealand publishing through the legal deposit requirements of the Copyright Act. The National Library makes available a reference collection of some 1.5 million book and non-book materials, as well as 8,670 current journal titles and monographs-in-series. Its services include loan and copy services, database services (New Zealand Bibliographic Network and Kiwinet), and publications such as bibliographies and training guides. The National Library is responsible for the maintenance of the New Zealand National Bibliography and Index New Zealand (INNZ) which is a subject index to the contents of New Zealand general and scholarly serials, newspapers, theses and conference papers. The ten Crown Research Institutes (CRIs) provide excellent research and related services for the benefit of the country, each of which is based around a productive sector of the economy or a grouping of natural resources, like the Horticulture and Food Research Institute of New Zealand Limited (HortResearch) and Industrial Research Limited (IRL). They have their own libraries which provide computer-based information services, and are linked to an online system called CRInet. Other