Sinclair-Sparvier and Mangan (2008) launched the International Indigenous Librarians' Forum (IILF) in 1999. The IILF created a global community to exchange ideas on best practice in libraries, museums, archives and educational institutions. This forum met several times between
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1999 and 2011 to develop the community concept and to reach its main goals: the improvement of indigenous information, better collection management, and improved services for indigenous clients. Although various organisations appear to protect indigenous knowledge, they fail to acknowledge fully the significance of how indigenous people can be involved in every part of the work. As a result, in librarianship, there needs to be greater focus on collaboration in library and information services for indigenous people (Becvar & Srivanasan, 2009).
In particular, there are two factors that should be emphasised in relation to well-organised information. First, Drabinski (2013) and Knowlton (2005) state that librarians have traditionally been trained in logical and systematic ways, and have tried to adopt theoretical knowledge and practical experience into their work to create well-organised information, as can be seen through Library of Congress Classification (LCC), Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), and Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC). However, Berman (1971) shows how such systems were founded on questionable structures involving prejudices in relation to religion, gender, race, and social stratification. For example, DDC classified Christianity as a major religion while Buddhism, Islam and Hinduism were classified as minor. Moreover, “homosexuality” was treated as a sub-division of “sexual deviance”. Another aspect was the requirement for communities to arrange their knowledge in a particular way.
The greater the trust in community, the more holistic the knowledge that emerges. To stress that indigenous knowledge should be comprehended and more widely understood, the ALA Office for Information Technology Policy (2010) launched a policy called “Librarianship and traditional cultural expressions: nurturing understanding and respect”. This was intended to build knowledge of the holistic cycle in cultural values and beliefs.
2.8.1.1 Communi t y-focused i nform at ion servi ces i n Becvar and Sri nivas an (2009)
Srinivasan has challenged librarianship and archival theory by calling for institutions to engage indigenous people in every area of the management of collections relating to their heritage (Becvar & Srinivasan, 2009; Shilton & Srinivasan, 2007). This means that cultural heritage should be managed from the bottom up. Librarians and archivists have to trust the community, and in practice this means an inclusive approach to the community, whereby people of different ages, genders and backgrounds have the opportunity to engage in the way their community collections are managed (Becvar & Srinivasan, 2009; Shilton & Srinivasan, 2007).
Recently, library science has shown an interest in community-focused information services which offer people from the community the opportunity to meet local needs. The community-focused information services model involves collaboration between librarians and indigenous people to
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reduce the effect of cultural insensitivity and create well-organised information (Becvar &
Srinivasan, 2009; Shilton & Srinivasan, 2007). The main purposes of the community-focused information services model are as follows: 1) preserving and promoting a cultural and ethnic heritage; and 2) serving marginalised communities to enable cultural revitalisation (Becvar &
Srinivasan, 2009).
As librarians play an important role in helping an indigenous community to preserve and share its culture and knowledge, including responding to the actual needs of the community, librarians need to encourage the communities involved to create and share meaning. However, Becvar and Srinivasan (2009) suggest that the key problem with collaboration between researchers and professional practice in librarianship is that it has failed to bring out the important aspect of cultural difference in terms of how information flows inside communities. For example, researchers have collaborated with communities in the following ways: 1) NorthStarNet, linking Chicago’s sprawling suburbs; 2) Artention San Miguel, a community newsletter for San Miguel de Allende in Mexico; and 3) The Bethlehem, a digital history project in Pennsylvania (Becvar
& Srinivasan, 2009). From these examples, it can be seen that the authors are promoting community-focused information services, providing a resource for service users as a community through the use of technology. The community can take then part in creating and sharing its own information. However, the methods that libraries employ, such as community-focused information service resources, still offer limited access, often due to hierarchies of social status (Becvar & Srinivasan, 2009). For example, in the Warumungu community in Tennant Creek, Australia, community members are allowed access by means of their family networks and ancestor regions. Gender also restricts access to information in that the ancestral song series can only be sung by women. Moreover, librarians have not always provided procedures to ensure that staff recognise the importance of cultural differences when sharing and exchanging information, such as at the PictureAnnArbor project in Michigan, which shares images and documents; at SkokieNet, a public library; and, especially, at the Afya project in Illinois, USA, which uses action-based methods. These projects do, nevertheless, use local people’s stories and language in presenting their cultural material (Becvar & Srinivasan, 2009). (See Section 6.5.2 for further discussion.)
To create information access systems to capture the cultural diversity of knowledge resources and ensure effective retrieval, Boast et al. (2007) propose the Emergent Database, Emergent Diversity (ED2) concept for improving digital resources and making them available, in collaboration with many local communities from different geographical areas.
Becvar and Srinivasan (2009) judge that successful collaboration requires the researcher to pay attention to appropriate rights and ethics, and to be sensitive about access, such as by respecting
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the confidentiality of certain cultural information. In addition, another key to success rests in trusting local researchers to collect data and control the outcome of research projects involving technological systems and publications. These factors mean that research outcomes will be responsive, relevant and attentive to the needs of the community. Becvar and Srinivasan (2009) also find successful examples of community-focused information services (CIS) in collaborative projects, particularly one involving participation by the Zuni Native American Tribe. This project saw the creation of an online catalogue called “Recontextualizing Digital Objects”. Other examples are a project between the A:shiwi A:wan Museum and the Heritage Centre of Zuni in New Mexico, the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge, England, and the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (Becvar & Srinivasan, 2009).
According to Becvar and Srinivasan (2009), there are ten main concepts within community-focused information service practices. Four of these are basic concepts founded on theories of community: appraisal, in that a community acts as the selector and collector of its own records;
provenance, in the sense that a community is the author of its records; description, as a community provides its own governance; and community participation, in which the emphasis is on a community being involved at every level of the management of its information. These four basic elements are similar to those offered within other theories on the same subject. In terms of general concepts underpinning this theory, four elements are employed. The first is provenance, in the sense that a community always owns its cultural heritage. The next is collection, in which experts and communities tend to create and collect data through oral transmission. The third is storage, where published works are generally housed in information institutions. The last is preservation and continuity, with the project, often temporary, being created by the community, where local people can be supported by experts in using technology to promote preservation and conservation.
Across these significant concepts, there are important practices covering three different issues.
The first concerns types of material, with the theory usually focusing on published works. The second relates to appropriateness, where experts and outsiders who are involved with communities should be made aware of and respectrestrictions based on hierarchy, identity, power and preservation when accessing indigenous knowledge.This suggests that experts should respect traditional access restrictions established by local people. The last important concept within this theory is access, which covers the making available of records; access for users is the priority target in disseminating local knowledge. One area of concern in allowing greater community access is the relationship between experts and the community. This requires time so that trust might be built within a community when outsiders seek access to community property (Table 2.1).
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Table 2.1: Community-focused information services model