Simmons College

GSLIS

International Librarianship

LIS- 490

 

CATALOG DESCRIPTION:
Comparison of American and foreign library systems in terms of national differences in philosophy, objectives, services, and information policies. Evaluation and comparison of collection policies, technical processes, public services, professional training, management, and facilities.  Examination Selected in-depth area studies.  International cooperation and major projects in the information fields; contributions of international organizations.  Guest lectures, media presentations, and individual research projects.

OBJECTIVES:

1.      To introduce students to the current literature, research and studies involving international and comparative librarianship in order to enhance their professional competence.

2.      To enable students to acquire an understanding of library and information services in other countries.

3.      To acquaint students with the major issues and problems impacting the development and management of libraries worldwide.

4.      To provide students with a knowledge of outstanding and famous world libraries and library leaders.

5.      To recognize the vital need for international communication and cooperation in our global profession, and to become acquainted with current developments in the area of worldwide library cooperation.

6.      To provide international students with an opportunity to share library service experiences in their homelands.

7.      To enable students to analyze library/information services and systems and specific problems in the other national, cultural, and societal environments.

8.      To become familiar with the activities and contributions of professional organizations, inter-governmental agencies and non-governmental agencies in the information field that are working to achieve international library cooperation and the development of library and information services.

OFFICE HOURS:

TBA and/or by appointment

TELEPHONE NUMBERS:

Office: 617-521-2856
E-MAIL: sergio.chaparro@simmons.edu
 

ATTENDANCE and RITES:
As assumed in any educational environment, your attendance is expected. I have a great memory for people. Your presence plays an enormous role in the discussion. This class is very informal in many ways, I am very informal and talk a lot, however, I expect you also to intervene, propose issues and ideas argue and or take a position, which will happen many times along the class. Being observant is good, but that is sometimes not enough. I will perhaps call your name and ask you (in front of everybody, sorry) what do you think about ALA and Cuba or educating the immigrant through the public library, therefore you are warned. You don’t need to have the right answer or the correct point of view. I am interested in what you think, know and say because we all have something to share.

 

TEXTBOOKS:

There is no required textbook. The materials indicated on the reading list will be the items used for the course. The recommended texts are:

a) Libraries: Global Reach - Local Touch / edited by Kathleen de la Pena McCook, Barbara Ford, and Kate Lippincott. Chicago: American Library Association, 1998.

b) Kesselman,  M., & Weintraub, I. Global Librarianship. New York: Marcel Dekker, 2004.

(However, do not get them yet, let’s talk about them in class first)

 

GRADES:

A "B" or "B+" grade constitutes fully satisfactory work; such a grade means that the student has met the requirements of the course and has done what is expected in terms of the fact sheet, the comparative study assignment and the area study presentation and paper. An "A" or "A-" grade means that the student has gone "above and beyond the call of duty" in his/her written work and research and presentation of the information. A grade less than "B" means the student has not met the requirements of the course.

DISABILITY ACCOMMODATION:
Reasonable accommodations will be provided for students with documented physical, sensory, systemic, cognitive, learning and psychiatric disabilities. If you have a disability and anticipate that you will need a reasonable accommodation in this class, it is important that you contact Todd Herriott, ADA Specialist, in the Academic Support Center, early in the semester. Students with disabilities are also encouraged to contact their instructors to discuss their individual needs for accommodations.

LIS 490 Assignments:  Spring 2006

1.  Analysis of a Comparative Study (1 comparative study).

Select one comparative study published as article or chapter in a monograph and write an analysis[1] of it (3-4 pages /Double space/Times New Roman). You are expected to critique the work - noting the methodology used and the conclusions reached with comments about both. You should be prepared to discuss it in class when comparative topics will be discussed.
 

2.  Area Study.

Select a country and prepare an area study. As complete a picture as possible of a specific problem or library and information issue on in that country should be included[2][1]. This is a major step for the research proposal.

3. Report of an interview

Report of an interview with an international librarian, a librarian specialized in foreign language o foreign collections, or an information specialist of an international organization. (5 pages, Times New Roman Double Space)

4. Research Proposal (This assignment is closely connected to the area study).

To be thoroughly discussed in class. The goal here is for the student to propose specific library and information research in a country or countries. It is strongly suggested that you use your area study as the base for this paper.

 

Grading:  4 assignments.

Comparative Study Analysis (10%)

Area Study (40%)

Report of an Interview (10%)

Research Proposal (40%)

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 Tentative LIS 490 Class Calendar: Spring 2005

 

This calendar depends on the way the class develops during the semester, our critical views, and interests. Each class I might also assign some readings. I am strongly interested in promoting the dialogue through journal articles, current literature, and research.

 

Week one: Introduction

  1. Introduction
  2. Definition of International/Comparative Librarianship
  3. Methodology for Study of the Discipline
  4. Information Sources
  5. Assignments
  6. Methodology of Area Studies

Week two:  International Cooperation and Funding of International Projects in the Library and Information Fields

  1. Foundations and funding Agencies (e.g., Carnegie, Luce, Ford, Soros)
  2. The Role of International Organizations and Cooperative Agencies (e.g., UNESCO, IFLA, etc.)

Week three:  

  1. The role of Foundations and International organizations in the Internet environment.
  2. Challenges and problems
  3. The OAS and The Portal of the Americas

 

Week four:  The Role of Professional International Associations (e.g., IFLA, ICA, etc.)

  1. American International Activities:
    1. Role of Professional Associations (e.g., ALA, SLA, ASIS&T, ALISE, etc.)
    2. Government Agencies (e.g., AID, State Dept.), etc.
    3. Non-Governmental Agencies (CLR)

2.      Professional Exchanges (e.g., ALA Book Fellows Program)

   

Week Five: Information Technology in international contexts: its uses and misuses ( Or why OPACs are useless sometimes!)

  1. Online Networks for International Information
  2. Global Information Infrastructure
  3. Digital Libraries in the International Arena
  4. Is there a Digital Divide? What are its main components?

Week Six:  Potential Comparative Topics and Areas of International Cooperation:

    1. National Planning for Library/Information Systems and Services
    2. Professional Education
    3. Library Technology, Automated Systems, Networks
    4. Library Management
    5. Preservation Planning
    6. Classification Systems, etc.
    7. Library Services for immigrants and diverse populations

Week Seven:  International Aspects of Professional Education

  1. Equivalencies, International Standards and Guidelines, Continuing Education
  2. The problems and challenges of international library education

 

Week eight:  

1.       National Libraries around the world

2.      The concept of National Libraries. Why do we need them? Cultural factors in the promotion of National Libraries.

 

 

Week nine:  National Libraries around the World II

 

Week ten:  Main library and information traditions and influences (Western World)

  1. UK (The Public library and the Special Library)
  2. Germany (Bibliographers, printing and cataloguing, two Germany library systems, the unification)
  3. USA (The Public Library as a social agency)
  4. Russia (Libraries and literacy united by a political goal)

 

Week eleven:  Main library and information traditions and influences (Western World)

1.                                          France

2.                                          Italy

3.                                          Spain (Spain and its relation with Latin American Librarianship)

Week twelve:  Information, Libraries and Research to win wars. Political conflict and International Librarianship

 

  1. WWI
  2. WWII
  3. Cold War Librarianship and Post-cold war librarianship

 

Week thirteen:  The Internet Age and International librarianship

  1. Information policies: why are they needed now more than ever.
  2. E-Government (brief introduction to its major concepts)
  3. The Challenges of the digital divide
  4. Doing librarianship in the Internet Age (developing countries and the case of Brazil)
  5. The lessons of international librarianship for USA

Week fourteen:  Library Education in Developing Countries, Understanding of International and Comparative Librarianship in diverse and multi-cultural societies.

  1. Wrap-up
  2. Pizza Party!

 

Some selected resources on International Librarianship:
 

National Library of Australia

USA Library of Congress

China National Library

IFLA

UNESCO

Biblioteca Nacional Argentina

Russia National Library

Brazil National Library

National Library of Canada

Some resources on virtual libraries and museums:

Virtual library and museums

Spain and Portugal Library Resources:

 Iberian Studies Web

Some Useful Journals:
 

  Note: Some of the journals might not be available at Simmons College Libraries. In that case other libraries.

International Information and Library Review

African Journal of Library, Archives & Information Science

International Review of Children's Literature and Librarianship

Libri: International Library Review

Libraries & Culture: a journal of library history. 


Australian Academic and Research Libraries


Focus On International Library And Information Work


The Library Quarterly

Libraries and their Sites:
 

Libraries of the World

 

ALA Library History

Library Jobs around the World:

 Library Jobs 1

 Library Jobs 2

Library Jobs 3
 
 

ALA International Relations Round Table:
Students are expected to become familiar with the work of the IRRT. Please, click on the following link to learn more about what you can do for international librarianship.

  ALA-IRRT
 

Useful links

These links provide multiple information about international library issues, and may be useful in helping the student to trace challenges and situations faced by the library field around the world. Libraries and librarians cannot live isolated from the social and historical context in which they work.

Russia and East Europe

 The Stalin Era Research and Archives Project (U Toronto)

 The Digital National Security archive

 Revelations from the Russian Archives (Library of Congress)

 Archives in Russia by the National Institute of Social History

 Electronic Resources for Russian and East European Studies
 

France
 French Libraries resources by the University of Indiana at Bloomington

Europe and Western Europe
 Gabriel: The Gateway to European Libraries.

 Western European Studies Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries

Germany
 The German Digital Libraries Project at D-Lib

 The German Studies Web of the ACRL

Latin America
 Organization of American States (IACID)
 
   

Basic Bibliography:

 

 

Basic Bibliography (more will be added later): These items should help you understand major issues of international librarianship. More specific bibliography will be suggested in class.

 

Anglada, L. (1999). Working together, learning together: The consortium of academic libraries of Catalonia. Information Technology and Libraries, 18 (3), 139-144. 

Billington, J. (2000). The Library of Congress turns 200. American History, 35, (1), pp.44-50. 

Black, A. (2000). Skeleton in the cupboard: Social class and the public library in Britain through 150 years. Journal of Information, Communication and Library Science, 7 (2), pp. 17-26. 

Bostick, S. L. (2001). The History and development of academic library consortia in the United States: An Overview. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 27 (2), pp.128-130 

Bogart, D. (2001). IFLA and its role in international policy making. OLA Quarterly, 7 (1), p. 18-19.

Dawson, R. (2004). The National Library of France: A patron reflects. Libraries & Culture, 39 (1), p. 76-88.

Everett, M. (1998). Latin America On-Line: The Internet, development and Democratization.Human Organization, 57 (4), 385-393. 

Genieva, E. (2000). The fate of displaced cultural values in Russia: Different approaches to one problem. Libri, 50, p.217-220.

Read also the Margaret Stieg article on the class bibliography.

 

Giordano, T. (2000). Digital resource sharing and library consortia in Italy. Information Technology and Libraries, 19 (2), pp.84-89. 

Goedeken, E. A (1996). The Literature of American Library History 1993-1994. Libraries and Culture, 31, 3-4, pp. 604-643. 

Gomez, R. (2000). The hall of mirrors: the Internet in Latin America. Current History, 99 (634), 72-77. 

Gracia, E. (1999). Past, present, and future of library education in Spain. Current studies in Librarianship, 23 (1/2), p. 16-24.

 

Graham, Patterson Toby (2001). Public librarians and the civil rights movement: Alabama, 1955-1965. Library Quarterly, 71 (1), p.1-27.

 

Hamilton, S. (2002). Internet accessible information and censorship, intellectual freedom and libraries-A global overview. IFLA Journal, 28 (4), p. 190-196.

Heery, S. (2001). Rural libraries: Cajamarca Province, Peru. Focus on International and Comparative Librarianship, 32 (2), pp. 63-65. 

Johnson, I. M. (1999). Management development for libraries and information services in Latin America and the Caribbean. International Information and Library Review, 31, pp.225-244. 

Johnson, I. M. (2000). The role of associations and information and library education in teaching and research: Recent and potential developments in Britain and Europe, 18 (2/3), pp. 201-220. 

Krzyzanowski, R. & Taruhn, R. (2000). Electronic library for scientific journals: Consortium project in Brazil. Information Technology and Libraries, 19 (2), 61-65. 

Kim See, C. (2001). Government information and information about governments in southeast asia: a new era? An overview. INSPEL, 35 (2), p. 120-136.

Lahiri, A. (2001). Impact of glasnost and perestroika on the Russian libraries. Journal of educational media & library sciences, 39 (2), p.114-130.

Larson, K. C. (2001). The Saturday evening girls: A progressive era library club and the intellectual life of working class and immigrant girls in turn-of-the-century Boston. The Library Quarterly, 71 (2), pp. 195-230. 

Leskien, H. (1996). Allocated parts: The Story of libraries in Germany. Daedalus, 125 (4), pp. 331-352. 

Lottman, H. (2000). The Great Italian book emporium. Publishers Weekly, 247 (10), pp.65-95. 

Matarese, V. (2000). Italian information research: The Realities and promises. Econtent, 23 (4), pp.51-56. 

Matthew, B. (2000). Lost in the stacks: A history in praise of the libraries as they begin to embrace digital technology. Harper’s Magazine, 300. 

McMullen, H. (1985). The very slow decline of American social library. The Library Quarterly, 55, pp.207-225. 

McMullen, H. American Libraries before 1876. Greenwood Press, 2000. 

Mediavilla, C. (1997). The War on books and ideas: The California Library association and anti-communist censorship in the 1940s and 1950s. Library Trends, 46 (2), pp.331-347. 

Metitieri, F. (1995). The Internet in Italy: NIR services and OPAC’s. Computers in Libraries, 15 (2), pp. 50-53. 

Montealegre, R. (1998). Waves of change in adopting the Internet: Lessons from four Latin American countries. Information Technology & People, 11(3), 235-260. 

Moulaison, H.L. (2004). The Minitel and France’s legacy of democratic information access. Government information Quarterly, 21 (1), p. 99-107.

Pinedo, I. D.,  Mangiano, C. (1997). Cooperative cataloguing: Supply and exchange of data through a European project and a European Union feasibility study: The Italian experience. International Cataloguing and Bibliographic Control, 26 (2), pp.38-41. 

Pors, N. O., Edwards, V. (2001). International cooperation: The West-East relationship in EU funded products. Library Management, 22 (3), pp. pp.124-130. 

Ribes, C. , Garcia, M, & Rodriguez, M. (2001). Collaboration among medical libraries. Inspel, 35 (3), p. 183-90.

 

Richards, P. S. (1988).  Information Science in wartime: Pioneer documentation activities in World War 2. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 39 (5), pp. 301-306.  (I strongly recommend you to read these items by Richards)

Richards, P. S. (1989). Aslib at War: The brief but intrepid career of a library organization as a hub of allied scientific intelligence 1942-1945. Journal of Education for Library and Information science, 29 (4),  pp.279-96. 

Richards, P.S. (1985). German libraries and scientific and technical information in Nazi Germany. Library Quarterly, 55 (2), PP.151-173. 

Richards, P.S. (1988). Gathering enemy scientific information in wartime: The OSS and the Periodical republication Program. Journal of Library History, 16 (2), pp. 253-264. 

Samad, R. (2001). The double edged sword: A brief comparison of information technology and Internet development in Malaysia and some neighbouring countries. IFLA Journal, 27 (5/6), p.314-318.

Stieg, M. (1992). The Second World War and the Public libraries in Nazi Germany. Journal of Contemporary History, 27, pp. 23-40. 

Sutter, S. (1994). The Fall of the bibliographic wall: Libraries and archives in unified Germany. College & Research libraries, 55, p.403-411.

Tenopir, C. (2000) I never learned about that in library school: Curriculum changes in LIS. Online, 24 (2), 42-46. 

Vitiello, G. (2000). Library policy and legislation: A European perspective. International Information and Library Review, 32, 1-38 (This article is for reference only, a good account of library policy making in the new Europe).

Volodin, B. F. (2000) History of Librarianship, Library History , or information history: A view from Russia. The Library Quarterly, 70 (4), pp. 446-467. 

Vickery, B. (1999).  A century of scientific and technical information. Journal of Documentation, 55 (5), pp. 476-527. (A classic!!)

Walker-J (2000). Literacy and libraries. Focus on International and Comparative-Librarianship. 31 (2), pp.83-87. 

Webber, S. (1999). Information Science in Europe. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science, 25 (5), pp. 27-29. 

Wenzel, S. (1999). From Revolution to evolution: The transformation of the Bibliotheque Nationale into the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, through the lens of popular and professional reports. Library Quarterly, 69 (3), pp. 324-338. 

Wiegand, W. (1999). Tunnel vision and blind spots: What the past tell us about the present: Reflections on the twentieth century history of American librarianship. The Library Quarterly, 69 (1), pp. 1-32. 

Wiegand, W. A. (1997). Out of sight, out of mind: Why don’t we have schools any schools of library and reading studies? Journal of Education for Library and Information science, 38 (4),  pp.314-326. 

Williams, R. (1997). Documentation and Special libraries movements in the United States: 1910-1960. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 48 (9), pp. 775-781. 

Willison, I.R. (1989). The National Library in Historical Perspective.  Libraries and Culture, 24 (1), 75-91.

Wilson, A. M., Hermanso, R. (1998). Educating and training library practitioners: A comparative history with trends and recommendations. Library Trends, 46, pp. 467-504. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The British Library





 
 
 
  


[1] Which means a thorough review of its high and low points.

[2][1] More details about this project will be discussed in class. Notice that you don’t have to investigate all aspects of librarianship in that nation. Become acquainted with the literature and then select, discuss,  and investigate a problem.