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5856 results in Facet Publishing

Page 240 of 293

  • 5 - We are our memories: community and records in Fiji

  • from Part 2 - Communities and non-traditional record keeping
  • Edited by Jeannette A. Bastian, Ben Alexander
  • Book:
    Community Archives
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    01 November 2009, pp 87-94

  • Summary

    Fiji is a Pacific nation of 330 islands (a quarter of which are inhabited) lying at the heart of the ‘South Pacific’ midway between the equator and the South Pole. It has a population approaching 900,000 people, and archaeological evidence has established that the group of islands was probably first settled around three and a half thousand years ago (Yaqona, 2004, 10–11). As with most other former colonies, change has been a constant theme for our nation. The idea of nationhood is itself relatively new, unlike countries such as China, Japan, France or Egypt, which have a long and colourful record of nationhood.

    We in Fiji, on the other hand, were originally a collection of variously structured kin groups headed by chiefs who contested for predominance within their immediate areas. The more successful chiefs sought to extend their power and influence as far as possible.

    After a number of failed attempts at centralized government, and under the growing threat of increasingly disruptive elements within the settler community, the leading chiefs of the time decided to cede Fiji to Britain and on 10 October 1874 Fiji became a crown colony of Britain (Lal, 1992, 10–11). A mere 96 years later, on 10 October 1970, after considerable growing pains and earnest dialogue among Fiji's communities and the British, Fiji became an independent nation.

    For the last 150 years, the people of Fiji have had to deal with great waves of change, and challenge. This becomes especially clear when dealing with issues such as culture, identity and what seems to be competing perceptions of knowledge. Against this backdrop archives and records managers are struggling to implement relevant, effective record-keeping systems in a society that is losing parts of its traditional heritage, and is not yet convinced of the need to manage records over time. What then are the challenges to retaining our memory? What role do archives play? And where do we go from here?

    Oral tradition is the synthesis and transmission of knowledge and histories in a community from one generation to the next. The approach is not about ‘data’ or ‘facts’ that are captured in the ‘formal record-keeping environment’, but rather it is a knowing which comes from doing and sharing.

  • 9 - From Yizkor Books to weblogs: genocide, grassroots documentation and new technologies

  • from Part 4 - Online communities: how technology brings communities and their records together
    • By András Riedlmayer, University of Chicago (BA, history), Princeton University (MA, near Eastern studies) and Simmons College (MS, library and information science), Stephen Naron, Stockholm, Sweden
  • Edited by Jeannette A. Bastian, Ben Alexander
  • Book:
    Community Archives
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    01 November 2009, pp 151-168

  • Summary

    Introduction

    In the aftermath of World War 1, the journalist Aram Antonean, a survivor of the Armenian genocide of 1915–16, collected testimony from other survivors and published it, along with photographs and other documents, in a book entitled Mets ochire [The Great Crime] (Antonean, 1921). Antonean, and others, recognized the urgent necessity of capturing these stories. In the introduction to his book, he wrote: ‘Many times, I thought that a volume needs to be written for each [survivor] in order to encompass, at least in a schematic way, the overall picture of the terrible horrors. And there were a hundred thousand of these survivors, each one of whom had a story to fill a volume’ (Slyomovics, 1998, 4).

    By telling their stories, these survivors added their ‘volume’ to a collective effort to defy the attempt to efface their people, the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire, from history. Of course, Antonean realized that this effort, important as it was, was destined to be incomplete. Presaging David Boder's interviews1 with survivors of the Holocaust decades later, Antonean knew that the ‘colossal endeavor would still fall short of the stories of those who had perished, taking with them more than a million volumes’ (Slyomovics, 1998, 4) Sadly, this dynamic of destruction and communal reconstruction would not end with the Armenian genocide. In fact, it was an omen of things to come. Genocide and forced exile has been the 20th century's terrible and consistent companion. But despite the staggering loss of human lives and cultural heritage, communities of survivors – bound by ethnic, religious and social relations – have found remarkable ways to collectively reconstruct and remember what was lost. And despite the unique contexts and circumstances of each genocide or persecution, the survivors’ responses are similar in substance and aim. Of course, communal commemoration of the dead and of victims of national tragedy is nothing new – its visible signs, from ancient burial grounds to national war memorials to today's high-tech memorial museums and hyperlinked online documentation centres, are all around us. But each group of survivors, each generation, reinvents the process by which their lost community is commemorated. And in doing so, survivors employ those technologies most prevalent at the time.

  • 1 - Why this book?

  • Sheila Pantry, Peter Griffiths
  • Book:
    How to Give Your Users the LIS Services They Want
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    01 November 2009, pp 1-12

  • Summary

    In these turbulent times, library and information service (LIS) staff at all levels need constantly to keep one step, or more, ahead of the users.

    Today's LIS users do not behave like those who used the services ten or twenty years ago, and today's user behaviour will change again, probably even more rapidly than we have seen in recent years. Having the strategies to deal with this is not just an issue for senior managers and the leaders of the profession. Nor is it just an issue for the public library sector. It is an issue for every type of library, and for library and information professionals at every level – and in every country.

    While we recognize that nothing stands still in this information world of ours, we believe that the focus of all our attention remains (and always has been) the user. Without users there is no real reason for a library and information service to exist. Experience will give the manager an advantage – but do we need to get older to be able to assess and forecast what the users will do next as far as information searching, retrieval and subsequent usage of the data is concerned? LISs worldwide spend enormous sums of money on staff, purchasing services, materials and other systems, but do they really understand what exactly makes the user tick?

    In recent years many ideas, often from other sectors, have taken off and been exploited in new and exciting ways. They are being communicated in real time to world wide audiences. Many new applications are being developed quickly on the back of this for services such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Google Maps. Major trends are emerging and converging, such as Twittering and mash-ups, conversations and open linked data. And at last the semantic web is becoming a reality as more organizations publish their data in open formats that these new tools can access and exploit creatively across the web. Everyone in the marketplace can participate, including publishers, library and information centres and users. Many people who never entered an LIS are participating and the information world of ours must shift its dynamics to embrace these new types of users. The barriers to entry are minimal – the costs of participating zero.

  • 2 - Special, local and about us: the development of community archives in Britain

  • from Part 1 - A community archives model
  • Edited by Jeannette A. Bastian, Ben Alexander
  • Book:
    Community Archives
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    01 November 2009, pp 29-46

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Community archives in the UK encompass collecting activities that trace their roots back to the 19th century. At the same time, these archives have also been shaped by the ways in which the concept of community has been interpreted and applied by local and national governments as well as by a wide range of non-profit agencies. In some towns and counties, collecting at a local level predated the establishment of formal collections; in others, voluntary bodies helped form those institutions. In more remote areas, collecting began as a result of the distance from a local government collecting body's base, inadequacies in the policies or activities of those collecting bodies, or suspicions that the collecting body was not a suitable repository for holding particular kinds of source material. This article explores the growth of community archives and community collections in the UK through a range of voluntary bodies; the interactions among mainstream archives, libraries, and museums; and, as a result of those interactions, the creation of a body that seeks to act as a forum for community archives and all who are active in working for and with them.

    The development of community collecting

    Collecting records at a local level has a long history in England. Formal repositories in counties grew out of the need to house and preserve the court records from ‘quarter sessions’, which before 1888 constituted the local government of each county. It was not until 1926 that Bedfordshire, a county north of London, became the first record office in the country to take in records from corporate bodies and individuals to add to the historic official holdings. The creation of public libraries in the 19th century also provided stimulus for the preservation of local records, including what came to be defined as ephemera (posters, theatre programmes, sale catalogues) and photographs. Regional and local societies built up their own holdings while local voluntary activity contributed to the growth of formal record holding bodies.

    In the town of Walthamstow, for example, a public library service was created in the 1890s, and the second borough librarian, G. E. Roebuck, acquired records of local institutions, title deeds and manorial records, which he housed in the library.

  • 9 - Future perfect?

  • Sheila Pantry, Peter Griffiths
  • Book:
    How to Give Your Users the LIS Services They Want
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    01 November 2009, pp 119-136

  • Summary

    In this final chapter we look at what could really make a difference in the future:

  • ➡ some recommendations

  • ➡ a possible patron?

  • ➡ politics

  • ➡ the library as place

  • ➡ shh, this is a digital library

  • ➡ shaping a modern library

  • ➡ challenges for the future.

    • Throughout the book we have identified many actions that can be done to give your users the LIS they want. There are challenges and opportunities that can be taken up to rethink creatively and take the initiative in getting the users to articulate what they need, keep the dialogue open with them and set the pace. You have access to all the information you need to keep ahead of the game if you want!

    Some recommendations

    When the contributors in Digital Consumers (Nicholas and Rowlands, 2008) were asked to each provide one suggestion as what should be a priority when offering services to users they came up with the following in order of priority:

  • 1 Live with the prospect of constant change.

  • 2 Establish a link with information provisions and access/outcomes.

  • 3 Keep it simple.

  • 4 Do not be seduced by digital fashions, they will all disappear.

  • 5 Get social.

  • 6 Hold on to physical space.

    • Information people will be pleased to know that no one said ‘the last one out turn the lights off ‘, although a few were close to saying this.

    A number of recommendations for libraries are suggested by Thomas Frey of The DaVinci Institute who says of the future (Frey, 2006): ‘libraries are in a unique position. Since most people have fond memories of their times growing up in libraries, and there are no real “library hater” organizations, most libraries have the luxury of time to reinvent themselves.’ He agrees with us that the role of a library within a community is changing and most of all the way people are interacting with the LIS and the services offered are also changing. The best advice is to enjoy the journey and relish in the wonderment of what tomorrow may bring and continue to accept the challenges and changes.

  • 4 - Great expectations: how LIS professionals can manage and train users

  • Sheila Pantry, Peter Griffiths
  • Book:
    How to Give Your Users the LIS Services They Want
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    01 November 2009, pp 45-60

  • Summary

    In this chapter we discuss:

  • ➡ how to manage users of the service

  • ➡ levels of expectations

  • ➡ the role of the information professional

  • ➡ user training.

    • In the previous chapter we took a general look at how the nature of library use has been changing, and in particular the impact of the generation known by labels such as ‘Digital Natives’, ‘Gen-Y’ and the ‘Google Generation’. Now we examine issues in more depth, looking at the changes in the way this generation uses the services we offer, and the new issues this raises for LIS managers.

    Managing users of the service Access

    Libraries have long been used to receiving enquiries by telephone and letter, and to dealing with customers beyond the physical building. The professional judgement of reference staff has ensured that the customer has received the most appropriate material to meet the enquiry based on the customer's request and the amount of detail available to refine the enquiry. This remote form of reference interview has served to identify the most suitable materials where the remote customer has been unable to access or assess it.

    The widespread development of e-library services has radically changed this model. Using e-services, customers can now view materials online, and select the most useful publications for their purpose. But they can also bypass professional intervention altogether, and run the risk of failing to find all the available materials, perhaps because of failures of their search strategies, or perhaps because their lack of subject knowledge did not alert them to the absence of particular documents. They may well be unaware of relevant resources that are missing from their electronic repository (including of course those that remain only in print-on-paper format).

    Identifying authorized users

    In the physical library, authorized customers are identified by a physical token such as a ticket or patron card. This is recognized by the staff and an agreed set of privileges is offered to the patron in accordance with his or her membership. This token also acts as an acceptance by the patron of the rules under which the collection is managed, for example by agreeing to a maximum number of items to be borrowed at a time.

  • 12 - Overcoming anonymity: Kittitians and their archives

  • from Part 5 - Building a community archive
  • Edited by Jeannette A. Bastian, Ben Alexander
  • Book:
    Community Archives
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    01 November 2009, pp 221-234

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Many natives of St Kitts have claimed that they do not care about the past because there is nothing in it that is worth remembering. The complexities of the relationship of post-colonial societies and their history have often had an impact on the way archives are viewed. Kittitian researchers approach them with a sense of awe, that something so old has survived while others call them ‘white people archives’ and refuse to use them. The statement is a rejection of the archives of the colonizer and a yearning for what is not there – an archive of the colonized. Trouillot writes, ‘Silences are inherent in history because any single event enters history with some of its constituting parts missing. Something is always left out while something else is recorded’ (Trouillot, 1995, 49). Since power and the ability to create archives rested with the island's elite, the records naturally reflect the events they felt were important. As a consequence records are often obstacles that hide and distort significant elements of the history of the colonized (Bastian, 2006, 267). Accounts of visitors to St Kitts and the Caribbean speak of the cheerful singing of the field gangs, but there was nothing enjoyable about the cane fields. The songs, often protests or prayers, were a tool, developed in Africa, to co-ordinate team effort in agricultural activities (Abrahams and Szwed, 1983, 46). By recognizing that the archive was an inherent part of the machinery of colonialism, one becomes conscious of its limitations in contributing to the history of the colonized in a post-colonial community and yet it is still a source of information about them.

    For the Kittitian community the ‘daily recounting’ (Connerton, 1989, 17) or gossip of village life gives rise to a history that is immediate, accessible and appealing to a people whose roots had been severed and who were governed by an alien elite. However in government and in organizations, reliance on memory places severe limitations on decision making. The administration of self-governing St Kitts had to learn the importance of records quickly and almost entirely without assistance. Convincing the rank and file of the civil service to comply with this need required training and the nurturing of a new culture that was inconsistent with what existed in the villages. Without this change, Kittitians stand the risk of silencing themselves.

  • 3 - The Single Noongar Claim: native title, archival records and aboriginal community in Western Australia

  • from Part 2 - Communities and non-traditional record keeping
    • By Glen Kelly, Chief Executive Officer of the South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council in Perth, Australia
  • Edited by Jeannette A. Bastian, Ben Alexander
  • Book:
    Community Archives
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    01 November 2009, pp 49-64

  • Summary

    [Editor's note: In August 2008, the Fourth Annual Conference on the History of Records and Archives (ICHORA IV) was held in Perth, Australia. The theme of the conference was ‘Minority Reports: indigenous and community voices in archives’. The following keynote address by Glen Kelly is reproduced, with some minor editing, in its entirety.]

    Introduction

    First of all, let me acknowledge the Traditional Owners of this place, the Whadjuk Noongars. This isn't something that I say f lippantly; my family are Traditional Owners in the lower south west of the state. I am a Wardandi Noongar, so I make that acknowledgement as an outsider, to state that I recognize the primacy of the Whadjuk Noongars in this country and to pay my respect to these people.

    Let me also acknowledge the organizers of this conference and thank them for asking me to present this keynote address. I must say that the history of archives and records is an area that is a little out of my expertise; however, in developing this address, I have been able to reflect on a number of things that are important to my business and it has given me some fresh insight into a number of areas that are central to my role in a native title representative body and the creation of evidence to support native title claims.

    By way of introduction, my name is Glen Kelly. I am a Wardandi Noongar, obviously with European heritage as well, and am the Chief Executive Officer of the South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council (SWALSC).

    SWALSC is a community organization with a membership of some 2500 Noongar people, and we are very much an organ of the Noongar community. SWALSC is also the Native Title Representative Body (NTRB) for the south west of Western Australia, that is, we have been certified by the Commonwealth Government to deliver services as defined in the Native Title Act (1993). As a result, SWALSC has statutory functions which are, broadly speaking, the representation of native title claims.

    This of course shapes the types of things that I am going to speak on today, and the general context will be from the direction of a native title representative body and native title claims.

How to Give Your Users the LIS Services They Want
  • Sheila Pantry, Peter Griffiths
  • Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    01 November 2009
  • In these turbulent times, with the challenges of a constantly changing job market, shifting information-seeking behaviour and a vast array of new resources continually being produced, library and information services need to constantly keep one step, or more, ahead of their users. The benefits of analysing user behaviour are self-evident: better strategic planning, cost benefits and better use of budgets, better marketing, satisfied customers, satisfied management, and a library or information unit that is central to the needs of your parent organization. However, paradoxically, user needs and levels of expectation, including those of remote users, are often not fully explored. This accessible text goes back to the basics and investigates the following key issues: why this book; defining your users; understanding users - the what, why, where, when, how and who; what is the current knowledge of user behaviour and needs - is it really predictable; great expectations - how LIS professionals can manage and train users; using information about past user behaviour; making the most of knowing your users; keeping track of changes in what users want; tracking the future - electronic and social networking; and, future perfect. This book will help any library or information professional anywhere to take a fresh look at this important area and to tackle it in their organization, so as to ensure that their users will always obtain exactly what they want. Webmasters and knowledge managers will also find much to interest them.

  • 7 - A living archive, shared by communities of records

  • from Part 3 - Records loss, destruction and recovery
  • Edited by Jeannette A. Bastian, Ben Alexander
  • Book:
    Community Archives
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    01 November 2009, pp 109-132

  • Summary

    Introduction

    In 1993 the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) established the International Criminal Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia since 1991 (ICTY) ‘for the sole purpose of prosecuting persons responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia’ (UNSC, 1993; Bassiouni and Manikas, 1996; Scharf, 1997; Bass, 2000). The central purpose of the ICTY, as of any criminal court, is the deterrence of, and retribution for, serious wrongdoing (Osiel, 1997). But from the start, expectations of what the Tribunal could achieve went beyond the primary judicial goal of establishing the truth about and giving an historical record of what happened, contributing to healing individuals’ and communities’ traumas, and to reconciliation (Power, 2002). Connected with the diverse expectations of the outcomes of the Tribunal's work are expectations of the role the Tribunal's archives can play. Expectations are mounting as the ICTY's work is near completion and decisions about the legacy of the Tribunal are imminent.

    In this essay, I explore the potential of the ICTY archives in establishing truth, engaging with history and practising memory – all of which may help communities in former Yugoslavia and elsewhere not only come to grips with their own past but also acknowledge a past shared with neighbouring ethnic and political communities. I will argue that these expectations can only be met by a living archive as a place of contestation, allowing for what Hayden White has called different kinds of discourse about ‘what happened and what is to be done’ – the archive not merely as a storage technique but primarily as a force for delegitimation of mythified and traditionalized memories (White, 2000, 55).

    ‘Sarajevo joins race for ICTY archive’ (Dnevni avaz, 2007)

    ‘Discussion on the fate of ICTY archive’ (Nezavisne novine, 2007)

    ‘Fighting for the Hague documents’ (Nedeljni Telegraf, 2008)

    ‘BiH, Serbia, Croatia all lobby to take over ICTY archives’ (Vecernji list, 2008)

    With headlines like these, the media in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republika Srpska, Serbia and Croatia brought the archives of the ICTY into the limelight. The headlines also attest to contesting views on the fate of the archives, which vary by region in the former Yugoslavia. And even within one region there are competing views.

  • Introduction to the series

  • Edited by Jeannette A. Bastian, Ben Alexander
  • Book:
    Community Archives
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    01 November 2009, pp ix-x

  • Summary

    RECORDS AND ARCHIVES are important resources for individuals, organizations and the wider community. Records are created in the course of the functions and activities of organizations and the personal lives of individuals, and are preserved and maintained to support business and accountability and for cultural use. They provide evidence of, and information about, the actions of their creators and the environment in which those actions occurred. They extend and corroborate human and corporate memory and play a critical role in maintaining awareness of how the present is shaped by the past. Records are kept by almost everyone, but their management (and especially their medium-term and long-term management) is a professional discipline with its own distinctive body of knowledge. Within the discipline, ‘records’ and ‘archives’ are sometimes used as synonyms, but in English-speaking countries ‘archives’ usually denotes records which have been recognized as having long-term value. The term ‘archives’ can also be used more widely, to refer to collections of historical materials maintained by organizations, individuals, families or community groups, or to the locations where such materials are held.

    The series Principles and Practice in Records Management and Archives aims both to disseminate and to add to the body of professional knowledge and understanding. Each text in the series is intended to offer a detailed overview of one or more key topics. The archives and records management discipline is experiencing rapid changes - not least as a result of the digital revolution - and the series will fully reflect the new technological context as well as the societal changes and governmental initiatives in many countries that are placing new emphases on compliance, accountability, access to information and community relations. Some volumes in the series will address theoretical and strategic issues relating to the creation, management and interpretation of records and archives or their role in society; others will give practical guidance for those seeking successful and effective ways of managing them and presenting them to users. The authors come from many countries worldwide and are recognized experts in the field.

    Community Archives: the shaping of memory The fourteen essays in this book offer a range of perspectives on archives and communities, and on the interactions and interrelations between them.

Community Archives
  • The Shaping of Memory
  • Edited by Jeannette A. Bastian, Ben Alexander
  • Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    01 November 2009
  • How do archives and other cultural institutions such as museums determine the boundaries of a particular community, and of their own institutional reach, in constructing effective strategies and methodologies for selecting and maintaining appropriate material evidence? This book offers guidance for archivists, record managers and museums professionals faced with such issues in their daily work. This edited collection explores the relationships between communities and the records they create at both practical and scholarly levels. It focuses on the ways in which records reflect community identity and collective memory, and the implications of capturing, appraising and documenting these core societal elements - with particular focus on the ways in which recent advances in technology can overcome traditional obstacles, as well as how technologies themselves offer possibilities of creating new virtual communities. It is divided into five themes: a community archives model; communities and non-traditional record keeping; records loss, destruction and recovery; online communities: how technology brings communities and their records together; and, building a community archive. This book will appeal to practitioners, researchers, and academics in the archives and records community as well as to historians and other scholars concerned with community building and social issues.

  • Introduction: Communities and archives – a symbiotic relationship

    • By Jeannette A. Bastian, Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Simmons College, Boston, Massachusetts, Ben Alexander, Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies, Queens College, City University of New York
  • Edited by Jeannette A. Bastian, Ben Alexander
  • Book:
    Community Archives
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    01 November 2009, pp xxi-xxiv

  • Summary

    SEEKING, BUILDING OR dwelling within the close kinship of community is both an acute desire and a pressing need for many citizens of our global, unbounded and networked 21st century society. These desires and needs often find expression through records. Through their formation, collection, maintenance, diffusion and use, records in all their manifestations are pivotal to constructing a community, consolidating its identity and shaping its memories. Archivists have significant roles to play in this process. Sustaining a community – whether digitally or physically – depends not only on a practical and theoretical understanding of its records but also on the knowledge and ability to preserve and value them. The collection of essays in this volume addresses both the ability of archivists to assist in the community-building process and the responsibilities that archivists have in fostering and furthering all aspects of that development. For while records may fulfil beneficial and legitimating roles in our search for community, they also have other often prescriptive, less benign, but no less critical parts to play. As they demonstrate the many different ways in which communities and records interact with one another, these essays call our attention to both the salutary and the controversial acts of record making and record keeping, illustrating how these activities in themselves may create community.

    Every volume presents its own intellectual and professional challenges. This volume is no different. The central challenge is the idea of ‘community’ itself. How do you ask authors to write essays about community when the concept is so ambiguous, so difficult to define? How do you construct a collected volume around ideas that are generally ‘understood’ but not well articulated, that essentially are agreed upon to be fundamentally subjective? While the subjectivity of ‘community’ initially lay at the heart of the editors’ concerns it also proved to be the glue, binding all definitions together and resulting in rewarding analyses as well as inspired and unexpected insights. The authors in this volume, an eclectic group of archivists, librarians and lawyers, approach questions of community from a range of national, cultural and individual perspectives that highlight both the versatility of ‘community’ and its close connection to memory and identity.

    The 14 essays in this book make immediately clear that there is no one definition of ‘community’ or even of ‘archives’ and that both of these concepts assume widely disparate meanings in different contexts.

  • 7 - Keeping track of changes in what users want

  • Sheila Pantry, Peter Griffiths
  • Book:
    How to Give Your Users the LIS Services They Want
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    01 November 2009, pp 87-96

  • Summary

    In this chapter we look at:

  • ➡ helping users to review their information needs

  • ➡ how to keep track of changes in what users want

  • ➡ how and where to find information about their changes

  • ➡ surveys and statistics

  • ➡ wider uses of information professional skills: reputation management

  • ➡ know your users: building user loyalty and keeping it

  • ➡ what next?

    • Helping users to review their information needs

    At the end of the day it is the customer who really decides the quality of the services, by:

  • • making demands for improvements on an existing service

  • • asking for new services

  • • being willing to co-operate.

    • How do users express these demands and identify the need for new services? Here is the ideal opportunity to use information audit as a technique both to discover the information assets within the organization and to create a record of the ways in which your patrons are using them. It is also far more likely than when we originally developed our ideas of information audit that you will find information users who are quite content to be non-patrons of the LIS because they believe that the internet and other informal sources are accurately meeting all their requirements.

    From your surveys of the users you will have knowledge of their information-seeking behaviour patterns. Under various headings we look at how to implement better strategic planning, the cost benefits and better use of budgets, better marketing and advertising, short and longer term gains and most of all at satisfied customers, wherever they are located and a very satisfied (but not complacent) management.

    We cannot state too many times that the LIS manager and staff must ensure that the LIS should be central to the organization whatever the sector. If not, as we risk the dire consequences or cuts and decimation of services themselves. (This point is reinforced by Ford (2002) in the context of performance measurement.)

    We noted a moment ago that users should expect to be willing to co-operate with the LIS. One way would clearly be to participate in surveys of requirements and use (and small incentives seem to work as well as anything more formal), but another means of co-operation is to observe licence terms and copyright.

  • Conclusion: The archivist and community

    • By Richard J. Cox, Professor in Library and Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh
  • Edited by Jeannette A. Bastian, Ben Alexander
  • Book:
    Community Archives
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    01 November 2009, pp 251-264

  • Summary

    Introduction: feeling good

    Invoking the notion of community as part of our professional mandate is another way we can feel good about what we do. We feel good if we can say we build or connect to community, even if we are not altogether sure about what it means. Indeed, community may have as many definitions as information. Social pundits invoke it to urge citizens to take control of improving the quality of their lives and to understand a broader public good. Real estate agents carefully describe it to market and sell a house, affirming that location is everything. Historians study its meaning, or use it as a means of focusing their investigations. Sociologists use it as a way of investigating social, political, economic and other trends in society. Journalists and others in the media use the term for their investigative reporting.

    Community is seen by many to be an asset; to not belong to a community is a problem, a detriment to living out life to its fullest. The point here is that being part of some sort of community is deemed to be a normal part of humanity, and it is seen as an essential objective if one seems disconnected from a community. Professions, such as are represented by archivy, are also communities, and archivists usually feel just as good when they commune with each other at conferences, workshops and other venues.

    The current interest in community may be the result of so many thinking it is endangered in the digital era. Before a few hundred years ago, humanity lived in local communities, and they often could do so in some degree of isolation. The rise of commercial networks, the broadening intellectual Enlightenment, the emergence of telecommunications, the demands of the Industrial Revolution for raw materials, and the electronic computer revolution all brought with them threats to how we conceived community. Another way of looking at this is to understand the shift from agrarian to mechanical to virtual time, where we see a transition from very natural to extremely artificial notions of timing our daily routines. The earliest notions of community were delineated by how far one could walk to beat out a living and back again, and that distance kept expanding from feet to horse or animal power to steam, then automotive and, finally, air power.

  • 4 - Oral tradition in living cultures: the role of archives in the preservation of memory

  • from Part 2 - Communities and non-traditional record keeping
    • By Patricia Galloway, BA in French from Millsaps College (1966), MA (1968) and PhD (1973) in comparative literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH), and a PhD in anthropology (2004), also from UNCCH
  • Edited by Jeannette A. Bastian, Ben Alexander
  • Book:
    Community Archives
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    01 November 2009, pp 65-86

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Vanishingly few purely oral cultures – those that do not even communicate with a literate culture – still exist in the world. There are numerous indigenous cultures with many nonliterate members; there are also myriad modern literate subcultures that preferentially preserve all or some tradition in oral form. Both, however, are embedded to greater or lesser extent in a web of global literate cultures of varying local intensities. Some historians have argued that tradition preserved orally is not valid evidence, while others recognize it as a category of ‘memory’ that has its own rules of resonance. Modernist western archivists, themselves ref lexively literate, sit uneasily in between: charged with supporting the preservation of records of the past, they have until recently adhered to a practice almost exclusively focused on written textual objects. Now they are being confronted with memory modalities that challenge the model of sequential written text as sufficient documentation for all human cultural phenomena.

    Production of information, oral and written: the ‘orality and literacy’ episteme

    Although few communities in the early 21st century completely lack some kind of literacy, it is also true that few are completely documented by the written word, or will ever be so. Thus nearly all communities’ communication and recording of memory take place in a mixed environment. The discussion of orality and literacy as modalities for recording and preserving the past has most frequently been focused, somewhat abstractly, on cultures and communities seen as characterized by ‘pure orality’ – that is, communities where no written language is produced at all – or by ‘literacy’ – taken as communities where everyone is literate. Further, this discourse has been connected historically with an orientalist discourse that placed ‘oral’ and ‘literate’ in a family of binary oppositions including ancient–modern, primitive–civilized and inferior–superior, together with an argument that holds that literacy ‘transforms consciousness’ (for the better, of course) (Ong, 1991). Yet the adequacy of this whole approach to ranking the value of written and oral documentation, with its implication that the written word is more accurate or true than the orally transmitted word, has been set aside as historians and anthropologists have turned away from a positivist view of history and culture and have recognized that all literate cultures still retain many oral practices (Olson and Torrance, 1991).

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