IFLA’s global vision with local perspectives

The publication of this issue of IFLA Journal leads up to the 83rd IFLA General Conference and Assembly 19–25 August 2017 in Wrocław, Poland. The theme of this congress is Libraries, Solidarity, and Society, which is both evocative of Poland’s unique political history and IFLA’s continued work to support collaboration among information professionals around key issues facing societies across the globe. At the same time, IFLA is hosting a series of meetings focused on formulating a representative global vision that explores how a profession connected globally can meet the challenges of the future as they are expressed on a local level. This issue makes clear that IFLA Journal continues to mirror the overarching dialogues within the profession through the publication of research that represents widely held research problems within the profession and a diversity of scholars working to identify and develop applied solutions to issues that range from indigenous knowledge, digitization services, assessment, and the overall value of libraries and knowledge access to societies. This issue of the journal features scholars from Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, South America, the Caribbean, and North America.

Articles such as Ellen Namhilia’s ‘Predicament of library value’ contribute to debates regarding traditional library activities such as collection development, yet Namhilia contributes analysis of this topic through the lens of collection management within the context of developing countries. Looking towards issues of digitization, Katherine Boss and Meredith Broussard address the universal problem of preserving born-digital news applications, exposing the preservation challenges presented by news apps with useful suggestions of how to overcome technical barriers. Another side of digitization is addressed in ‘Digitization of indigenous knowledge on forest foods and medicine’. Sraku-Lartey et al.’s innovative survey of communities in Ghana regarding the interface of the digitization of indigenous knowledge and the sustainable use of forest resources used for foods and medicine recommends the development of laws and regulations that could help protect communities and natural resources from bio-piracy.

In articles that focus on academic library settings, Harris, Ismael, and Al-Goban focus on library users. Harris’ study on the assessment of information literacy instruction for students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) provides an important perspective on the manner by which students perceive the learning of information literacy skills and perceive the instruction itself. This research helps to develop the means to measure and improve the efficacy of instruction programs. Ismael and Al-Goblan provide a comparative approach to the user experience, analyzing the use of customer relationship management systems (CRM) in academic libraries in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. With the aim of analyzing the implementation of customer management systems developed for business in the academic environment to achieve the mission of the library, Ismael and Al-Goblan strive for answers to widely held concerns regarding the competitive knowledge environment produced by globalization.

The final paper of this issue takes an interdisciplinary and theoretical view of e-science, taking a historical view of information science and of e-science as an informational phenomenon. Again, this article displays the scope of the profession and its necessary interactions and understanding of new methods of knowledge production that may challenge our notions of information and information work.

As the global library profession gathers in Wroclaw in August of 2017, this breadth of topics and diversity of perspectives will be evident amidst a common goal of developing frameworks for understanding our common concerns while implementing practices that respect the contextual nature of work within the information sciences at a local level.