Abstract
I would like to express my deep thanks to my predecessor, Monica Blake, for her commitment and hard work as Editor of Alexandria. Over her 8 years as Editor, she has brought a wealth of papers on a wide range of subjects and libraries to the attention of our profession. These papers have considered, reflected and reported on some of the major issues facing national and other libraries today. I wish her well in all her endeavours in the future and would like to express my appreciation for the support she has given me during the handover.
This current issue of Alexander is wide-ranging and features papers which consider a range of both ethical and practical issues.
John Vincent is Co-ordinator of The Network – an important and influential group of cultural and heritage organisations tackling social exclusion in libraries, museums, archives and galleries in the United Kingdom; Barry Clark is the former Chief Librarian of Sandwell Library and Information Service in the West Midlands region of the United Kingdom. Working together they describe the important and growing role that Libraries of Sanctuary can play today. They describe the developments in recent years that led to the designation of the public library in Sandwell as the first Library of Sanctuary in the United Kingdom, and their paper looks at how such Libraries may play a growing and increasingly significant role in the future.
Peter Siyao is Librarian at Mzumbe University, Morogoro, and Alfred Said Sife is Library Professor at Moshi Cooperative University (MoCU), Kilimanjaro, both in the United Republic of Tanzania. Their paper analyses the degree of prominence that major Tanzanian newspapers give to reporting on climate change. Following a detailed analysis of the newspapers, they conclude that the priority given to reporting climate change information is low when compared to the importance of the issue and make recommendations how this may be addressed in the future.
Brent Roe is University Librarian at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Canada. He is a long-standing member, and now an Expert Advisor, to the Committee on Freedom of Access to Information and Freedom of Expression (FAIFE). This Committee advises the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) on censorship, intellectual freedom and related matters. Brent led the development of the IFLA statement on censorship which was published in 2019, and here he describes the intellectual and practical process involved in bringing forward this important statement from the global body for libraries.
Jamie Andrews is Head of Culture and Learning at the British Library. In his paper, he discusses the recent collaborative project entitled ‘The British Library in China: Connecting through Culture and Learning’. This project formed part of a portfolio of government-funded bilateral UK-China cultural announcements that was made in 2015.
The article outlines the activities and events undertaken during the project, many of which had a significant impact, and enabled meaningful and sustainable relationships to be developed with stakeholders from cultural, political, diplomatic, business and commercial sectors in China. The British Library intends to build a strong legacy from the momentum created by the project.
Amelie Roper is Research Facilitator at Cambridge University Library (CUL), United Kingdom. CUL is one of six legal deposit libraries entitled to receive publications from the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.
Following the introduction of Non-Print Legal Deposit, the legal deposit libraries received two large tranches of digital music publications in PDF format which covered the years 2013–2018. These tranches consisted of the back catalogues of two major music publishers.
Dr Roper analyses the genres of the music that were collected in this way, and the relationship between printed and digital publications and the intended users. Her paper identifies some of the challenges facing the legal deposit libraries if they are to fully reflect the breadth of the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland’s music publishing, and ensure that it is made available in a way that is both useful and relevant to current and future users.