Prolissa 2004

Countries in the African continent are implementing strategies to overcome developmental and societal challenges to remain competitive in the new global knowledge-based economy. Libraries and archives can play an important role in this process through provision of information. Information in modern society is valued as an essential component in the daily lives of people, both at individual and organisational levels. Increasingly, we expect information to meet our needs through technological interventions or interactions. Indeed, recent technological developments have accentuated contemporary conceptions of the library and information field as an intersection of information, technology, people and society. This volume explores the opportunities and challenges encountered in the practice of contemporary libraries, archives and records management in the digital age. It cannot be overemphasized that the traditional traits and practices of libraries, archives and records management are constantly changing given the increased use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the different information management value chains. This book will serve as a premier reference source for organisations in both private and public sectors, researchers, information practitioners in industry, and postgraduate students in information management.

Methods, Management and Marketing; The Change of Libraries; Digital Resources and New Library Models; Focus to Users and User Groups; Information Literacy; Quality, Using Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Digital Library Education and Research; Evaluation; Impact Assessment; Information and Communication Technology Services; Support to Research; Catalogues and Manuscripts.

This volume is a valuable resource of research papers and applications presented at the Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries International Conference QQML2009, on the methodological tools used in library and information science. It provides the reader with a better understanding and holistic view on the subject and contains a plethora of invaluable methodologies and applications to a variety of information and library science. Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries will be suitable to students as a textbook, as well as to scientists and professionals.

CoLIS 5 was the ?fth in the series of international conferences whose general aim is to provide a broad forum for critically exploring and analyzing research inareassuchascomputerscience,informationscienceandlibraryscience.CoLIS examinesthehistorical,theoretical,empiricalandtechnicalissuesrelatingtoour understanding and use of information, promoting an interdisciplinary approach to research. CoLIS seeks to provide a broad platform for the examination of context as it relates to our theoretical, empirical and technical development of information-centered disciplines. The theme for CoLIS 5 was the nature, impact and role of context within information-centered research. Context is a complex, dynamic and multi- - mensional concept that in?uences both humans and machines: how they behave individually and how they interact with each other. In CoLIS 5 we took an interdisciplinary approach to the issue of context to help us understand and the theoretical approaches to modelling and understanding context, incorporate contextual reasoning within technology, and develop a shared framework for promoting the exploration of context.

This is a comprehensive study and erudite description of the struggle of African Indigenous Knowledge Systems in an Age of Globalization, using in particular eighty-four children's traditional games in south-eastern Zimbabwe. The book is an informative and interesting anthropological account of rare African children's games at the risk of disappearing under globalization. The virtue of the book does not only lie in its modest philosophical questioning of those knowledge forms that consider themselves as superior to others, but in its laudable, healthy appreciation of the creative art forms of traditional literature that features in genres such as endangered children's traditional games. The book is a clarion call to Africans and the world beyond to come to the rescue of relegated and marginalized African creativity in the interest of future generations.

Based on his extensive experience in international librarianship, Peter Johan Lor, South Africa's first National Librarian and a former Secretary General of the IFLA, has written the first comprehensive and systematic overview of international and comparative librarianship. His book provides a conceptual framework and methodological guidelines for the field and covers the full range of international relations among libraries and information services, with particular attention to the international political economy of information, the international diffusion of innovations and policy in library and information services, LIS development and international aid. It concludes with a discussion of the practical relevance and future of international and comparative studies in LIS. See a short interview with Peter Lor on his work https://www.ifla.org/node/92590

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th EAI International Conference on Towards new e-Infrastructure and e-Services for Developing Countries, AFRICOMM 2022, which was held in Zanzibar, Tanzania, in December 2022. The 30 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 78 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: E-infrastructure; E-Services (Farming); E-Services (Health); E-Services (Social); E-Services (Education); and Advanced ICT.

New Directions in Cognitive Information Retrieval presents an exciting new direction for research into cognitive oriented information retrieval (IR) research, a direction based on an analysis of the user’s problem situation and cognitive behavior when using the IR system. This contrasts with the current dominant IR research paradigm which concentrates on improving IR system matching performance. The chapters describe the leading edge concepts and models of cognitive IR that explore the nexus between human cognition, information and the social conditions that drive humans to seek information using IR systems. Chapter topics include: Polyrepresentation, cognitive overlap and the boomerang effect, Multitasking while conducting the search, Knowledge Diagram Visualizations of the topic space to facilitate user assimilation of information, Task, relevance, selection state, knowledge need and knowledge behavior, search training built into the search, children’s collaboration for school projects, and other cognitive perspectives on IR concepts and issues.