Journal articles on the topic 'Catalogues: Libraries (Government)'

Purpose – This study aims to examine the present trend of academic libraries consortia and the likely ways to improve on the development of consortia in Nigeria. Design/methodology/approach – The study adopted the descriptive survey method. It covers four selected academic libraries in the north and eastern parts of Nigeria. A questionnaire entitled “Library Consortia in Nigerian Universities Questionnaire (LCNUQ)” was designed to collect data for the study. Findings – The study revealed that academic libraries in Nigeria have not fully embraced library consortia, as only two out of the four academic libraries surveyed have functioning library consortia. The paper shows that none of the libraries surveyed have collection development policies on e-resources, as well as union catalogues and interlibrary networking. It also reveals some likely ways of improving library consortia to include: jointly budgeting, increased funding and collective and compulsory development of interlibrary networking and union catalogues among university libraries within the country. Practical implications – The study will encourage librarians and library management in developing countries to embrace and facilitate the development of library consortia. Originality/value – The paper reveals the present trend of library consortia in Nigeria. Therefore, the findings may be of help to librarians, university administrators and government to build and improve on the development of library consortia in Nigeria and other developing countries.

AbstractThis article by Jennie Grimshaw presents an overview of the transition of UK government publishing from print to electronic between the mid-1990s and 2016. It goes on to describe the tools being developed by the British Library in collaboration with the other five legal deposit libraries, to collect, preserve, organise and provide access to born digital government publications. This paradigm shift in official publishing gives the libraries a window of opportunity to improve their management of these materials and ensure that they can be found through their catalogues more easily than their print predecessors.

Objective – The Depository Services Program (DSP) provided printed Government of Canada publications to libraries until the termination of its distribution program in 2013. Full Depository Libraries (FDLs) received all eligible publications distributed by the DSP automatically. This study endeavours to determine whether academic library members of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) that were formerly FDLs have maintained their print, federal government holdings since 2013; and what the results of the data collected in this study reveal about access to government information in Canada more broadly. Methods – The study identified a sample of 100 monographs distributed to FDLs via the DSP between 1979 and 2009. Each monograph was then searched for in the public catalogues of former FDL CARL member libraries to determine current holdings. Results – Most libraries included in the sample did not have records of all 100 publications, but every publication was located in at least 5 libraries and 12 publications were found in all libraries included in the study. Of the libraries in our sample, 1/3 had retained more than 90 of 100 publications, and 3/4 had retained at least 80. Conclusion – The redundancy that was a cornerstone of the DSP network still exists to a certain extent and should be leveraged to ensure retention and access to these essential materials for years to come. Existing collaborations and partnerships are well positioned to support a pan-Canadian discussion about preservation of and access to historical federal government information in Canadian libraries and library networks.

The situation for libraries in France, particularly art libraries, is complex. Administrative structures differ from those of other countries and from one another, but the existence of networks provides a means of linking different libraries and systems and of sharing and exploiting their common resources. Art education is currently a government priority; libraries of schools of art (including that of the Ecole du Louvre) are among the art libraries which fall within the sphere of the Ministry of Culture and Communication. The training of French museum personnel is now the responsibility of the new École du Patrimoine attached to the Ecole du Louvre and served by its library and a related documentation centre. Co-operation among art libraries is demonstrated by their participation in union catalogues and computer networks: the Ministry of Culture and Communication has adopted the LIBRA system, developed for public libraries, and some art libraries within the Ministry’s jurisdiction have recently joined the network. Their peculiarities have necessitated some adaptions of the system. Still more national co-operation is essential: the professional associations, including the Art Subsection of the Association des Bibliothécaires Français, advocate it; the technology is available. Now is the time for French art librarians to seize the opportunity of joining together to serve an eager public - ‘tous les publics’ - more effectively than ever before.

The Sous-Section des Bibliothèques d’Art gathered in a successful and perhaps historic meeting, at St-Etienne, in October 1989. In spite of their different types, and in spite of being linked with central government in differing ways, French art libraries are collaborating more and more. Plans for five projects -on periodical indexing, periodical microfilming, the adoption of a thesaurus, the cataloguing of exhibition catalogues, and networking - were discussed, as was the creation of a new national art library which will occupy the site of the Bibliothèque Nationale and which can be expected to play a key role in coordinating future developments. A resolution regarding the national art library is appended.

Forming, accumulating, as well as bookkeeping of documentary resources is one of the traditional functions of a modern library. Library book collections are of exceptional importance for the formation of the national cultural heritage of the state. The Book Exchange Fund (hereinafter – BEF) of the Scientific Library of the Odesa I. I. Mechnikov National University is a part of its Exchange and Reserve Fund. The department is intended for exchange, redistribution, free transfer of documents to libraries and other institutions. BEFs in libraries acquired a legal status in 1959 when a special resolution of the Soviet government was adopted. The documents began to be redistributed through an Exchange and Reserve Fund, which contributed to the preservation of non-core and duplicate editions in some libraries that could be in demand in other libraries. The mechanism for using documents that are in library exchange funds is defined by The procedure for using documents through exchange library funds. In 1947, a BEF for monographic literature was arranged while a BEF for periodicals was allocated. Nowadays the BEF consists mainly of duplicate editions of the University. These are publications highlighting the history of Odesa National University, the works of the teaching staff of the Humanities and Natural Sciences faculties, as well as publications prepared by the Scientific Library staff. The activities of the Department of Rare books are aimed at researching private collections of the Library. Special attention is paid to the research of Ukrainian books from the stackss of the Scientific Library. Employees of the Information and Bibliographic Department publish bibliographic indexes, both thematic and devoted to personalities. It is worth mentioning that the Scientific library exchanges specialized periodicals with partner libraries. The Library has 17 permanent book exchange partners, namely the higher educational institutions, research institutes, the National V. I. Vernadskyi Library of Ukraine. Since 2020 alone, the Library has received through book exchange 860 copies of books and periodicals and sent to its partner libraries 694 copies of current professional University periodicals. This method of periodicals distribution contributes to the popularization of the academic achievements of scientists of the Odesa I. I. Mechnikov National University in the professional community. The content of the BEF is disclosed with the help of a reference apparatus, that is card catalogues and non-annotated bibliographic lists of books and periodicals, posted on the website of the University Library in the section Exchange and Reserve Fund (Book Exchange Fund). The Book Exchange Fund is separated from the main stacks, it is not inventoried and is not used for reader service. The work with the Exchange and Reserve Fund of the Library is ongoing. The Book Acquisition Department is carrying out organization and distribution the documents which come to the BEF, improving the accounting of documents. The Department staff continues processing the reserve part of the Exchange and Reserve Fund selecting copies to replenish the main fund of the Library and removing physically worn copies.

Abstract While access to library and archival collections in mainland China remains unclear due to the ongoing covid-19 pandemic and increasing government scrutiny, past experiences in Chinese archives are still relevant for scholars going forward, in the event that the People’s Republic of China reopens the doors to these collections. In surveying the digital, print publication, and manuscript collections pertaining to the Chinese history of World War ii, this article shows how access to new kinds of sources redefined the pre-pandemic state of the field. In particular, curated volumes that emphasized perspectives from the Chinese Communist Party and leftist intellectuals gradually have given way to a more representative collection of the documentary evidence, and Taiwanese collections continue to be important to the historiography. The article begins with coverage of well-known guides and published catalogues of mainland and Taiwanese collections. It then covers some military documents that Chinese scholars occasionally have referenced. It emphasizes the richness of accessible material on the social and cultural history of the war era as part of a call to colleagues and future students to expand the scope of what is traditionally thought to be “military history.” There is ample opportunity for major interventions into our understanding of wartime China, which shaped the course of modern history overall, and major innovations in historiography that scholars usually make from the dusty reading rooms of the libraries and archives.

Art libraries in Denmark mostly fall into one of two categories: art departments’ in public libraries, and research libraries attached to colleges, universities, and museums. Librarians in research libraries are in many cases scholars in their own right, while library staff at the Kunstakademiets Bibliotek are responsible for the Bibliografi over dansk kunst (sadly not published since 1981) and for Danish contributions to the BHA. The Royal Library and some art libraries hold collections of visual resources and of archival materials; in addition, there is an autonomous national archive of Danish artists, Weilbachs arkiv. An art librarians’ section of Bibliotekarforbundet (the Union of Danish Librarians), Kunstfaggruppen, was initiated by art librarians in public libraries, but is open to other art librarians too; Danish art librarians also work together within ARLIS/Norden. Professional training in Denmark is largely confined to general librarianship; art librarians in public libraries tend to be trained librarians with a personal enthusiasm for art, whereas librarians in research libraries are in some cases graduates but are not necessarily trained librarians. While the public library system took advantage of standardization, automation, and networking, the research libraries could not so readily embrace change, but two recent initiatives are beginning to bring libraries of all kinds together — DanBib, the Danish online union catalogue, formed in 1995 by merging the two separate databases for public and research libraries which both originated in the 1980s, and Kulturnet Danmark, a government-sponsored scheme involving the Internet.

Among regional depository libraries in the United States, most collections include a large number of government documents published prior to 1976. Much of this material may remain uncataloged because of several factors, including the sheer volume of material that was published during the mid-twentieth century prior to the advent of online catalogs. The availability of the US government’s indexing systems, which allow discoverability through the Superintendent of Documents (SuDocs) classification and Government Printing Office’s (GPO) Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP), has also prompted some depositories to postpone cataloging their older materials, and lack of staffing in many government-documents departments makes retrospective cataloging a lower priority. A survey of regional depository librarians sought to learn about the current retrospective cataloging practices and plans for these materials at various institutions. The survey responses indicate that the majority of regional depositories that responded are working on or already have completed retrospective cataloging for pre-1976 materials. Those that are not cataloging these materials are relying on CGP and library shelf lists to locate materials with SuDoc numbers.Cataloging of these collections provides greater control over these materials and increases their use through the online catalog and interlibrary loan. But it will also assist libraries and GPO in the identification of materials regarding recent Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) initiatives, the Preservation Steward Program, the FDLP Regional Discard Policy program, and Guidelines for Establishing Shared Regional Depository Libraries. Also of consideration is the “Regional Depository Models: A Vision for the Future” presented by the DLC Regional Models Working Group in April 2016, which outlines the benefits of a fully cataloged regional. It can also assist libraries to determine materials for possible in-house digitization by identifying titles that have few holdings in OCLC and that have a relevance to the institution or state.

As academic libraries evolve, the complexity and breadth of federal government documents collections pose challenges to librarians. These materials are often shelved under the Superintendent of Documents classification system (SuDoc) and, depending on the library, may be only partially cataloged. The collection’s monolithic nature may complicate projects to catalog, promote, move, or deaccession materials. Using a collection inventory to define mini collections by SuDoc area helps quantify these large collections for academic librarians. The collection inventory system described in this article can be customized and applied beyond the scope of government information. Its approach informs how we assess and build collections, how we inherit collections, and how we work within established systems.

Objective – This study sought to determine the characteristics of research materials used by history students in preparing their master’s theses. Of which information resources formats did such students make use, and in what proportions? What was the age distribution of resources used? What was the dispersal over journal titles and over subject classification, i.e., the degree of interdisciplinarity? To what extent did the master’s students make use of non-English-language materials? To what extent did their institution’s library hold the resources in question? The investigator was especially interested in finding quantitative support for what he terms two “hypotheses.” The first of these is that historical research depends to a high degree on monographs, journal articles being far less important to it than they are to research in, especially, the natural sciences and technology. The second is that the age distribution of resources important to historical research is much flatter and longer than that of resources upon which researchers in the natural sciences and technology rely. Design – Citation analysis, supplemented with comprehensive catalogue searches. Setting – Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU), a mid-sized public university located in New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.A. Subjects – MA and MS theses (N=47) successfully submitted to the Department of History over the period from academic year 1998/1999 through academic year 2007/2008, inclusive. Methods – The investigator initially identified the theses through a search of the online catalogue (“Consuls”) of the Connecticut State University system, and retrieved all of them in either electronic or hard-copy form. He then subjected all citations (N=3,498) listed in the references sections of these theses to an examination in order to identify for each cited resource the format, the age, the language, and, in the case of scholarly journal articles, the journal of publication. He carried out bibliographic searches in order to rectify any citations which he had noted to be faulty or incomplete. The study took no account of possible additional citations in footnotes or endnotes or in the text, and did not measure citation intensity (whether, for instance, a thesis referred only once, or perhaps many times, to a given resource). Duplicates “were ignored.” He furthermore performed systematic searches in Consuls and in the Library of Congress (LC) online catalogue in order to establish, insofar as possible, into which assigned LC Classification class each resource fell, and whether it belonged to the holdings of the SCSU library. “Holdings,” as used here, includes physical resources owned, as well as those resources to which the library has licensed access. Not marked as either “held” or “not held” were: resources available online without restriction or charge, items not identified in either Consuls or the LC catalogue, and all government documents. Ages of cited resources were calculated based on the edition or version date actually given in a student’s citation, without any consideration of a possible earlier date of the original version of the publication or document concerned. Main Results – Format, age distribution, and journal frequency. The local citation analysis found that 53.2% of all cited resources were monographs, 7.8% were scholarly articles, 5.3% were contributed chapters in books, and 0.6% were dissertations or theses. Non-scholarly periodicals accounted for 15.7%, government documents for 6.7%, and freely available web documents for 4.1%. The remainder, approximately 6.5%, comprised archival papers, judicial documents, directories, interviews, posters, audiovisual materials, and 13 other formats. Cited resources, measured back from the date of acceptance of the citing thesis, ranged from 0 to 479 years old; the mode was 3 years, but the median was “25” (p. 170) or “26” (p. 177) years. Just over 70% (i.e., 2,500 cited resources) were more than ten years old. Almost one thousand of the cited resources were fifty or more years old. The 274 scholarly journal articles included in the references sections were spread over 153 distinct journal titles, of which 105 titles made only one appearance, and 136 titles three or fewer appearances. The mean was 1.8 appearances. Subject dispersal and language. Of the 2,084 cited resources for which LC classification was locatable, 51.5% had a classification other than history, i.e., other than class C, D, E, or F. Nearly two thirds (66.0%) of the cited scholarly journal articles had appeared in journals with a focus other than history. (Note: table 4 is incorrect, precisely reversing the actual ratio.) Of all cited items, 98.5% were in the English language. Half (27) of the non-English-language resources cited were in Korean, all cited in the same thesis. Books (i.e., monographs plus compilations from which contributed chapters were cited) accounted for 87.0% of foreign-language citations. More than four fifths of the examined theses (83.0%) cited not a single non-English-language resource. Local holdings. Of all 3,498 cited items, 3,022 could be coded as either “held” or “not held” by the SCSU library. Of the items so coded (not, as indicated on p. 180, of all cited items), scarcely two fifths (41.0%) belonged to the library’s holdings. The holdings percentage was highest (72.6%) for the 274 scholarly journal articles cited, followed by the 186 contributed chapters (50.0%), the 550 non-scholarly periodical items (49.5%), and the 1,861 monographs (46.8%). For other cited formats, the percentage was much lower, and in some cases, e.g., for the 55 archival and the 44 judicial documents, it was 0.0%. Of the 54 foreign-language resources cited, the institution’s library held only two. Conclusion – The investigator concludes that his study’s findings do indeed lend quantitative support to his two “hypotheses.” This outcome will surprise few, if any, librarians; it is in accord with what Koenig (1978) long ago saw as a matter of “intuition” and “all conventional wisdom,” something that many subsequent studies have confirmed. Sherriff accordingly recommends, firstly, that collections which strive to support historical research should, in matters of acquisition policy and budget allocation, take serious account of that field’s relatively strong dependence on monographs. Secondly, the data on age distribution carry obvious implications for librarians’ decision-making on matters such as de-accessioning and weeding, relegation to remote storage, and retrospective acquisitions. This finding should also be considered, for instance, in connection with preservation policy and the maintaining of special collections. He even suggests that librarians “need to teach students the value of reviewing literature historically and showing them how to do so effectively” (p. 177). Sherriff considers a number of further (tentative) conclusions to be warranted or suggested by the results of this study. First of all, that historical research is now characteristically an interdisciplinary matter, in the sense that it requires extensive access to information resources, including journals, which libraries have traditionally not classified as belonging to the discipline of history itself. For a library supporting such research, this phenomenon “has implications for matters including collection budgets, reference work, bibliographic instruction, and the location of collections and departmental libraries” (p. 168). It also means “that librarians working with history students and history collections need to be aware of the relevant resources in other disciplines. This can improve reference work, research assistance, and bibliographic instruction; it may also help the coordination of acquisitions across departmental lines” (p. 179). Secondly, one may conclude that “there is no ‘core’ collection of journals for history” (p. 178) which will be able to satisfy a large proportion of master’s students’ research needs. Thirdly, the fact that a library such as SCSU’s holds significantly less than half of what master’s students require for preparing their theses “may exercise a narrowing effect on students’ awareness of the existing literature on their topics” (p. 180), “increases the importance of departmental faculty, reference librarians, and subject specialist librarians drawing students’ attention to resources beyond the library’s catalogues and collections” (p. 180), and requires that the library give serious attention to effective document delivery arrangements. Finally, this study’s finding that only a small percentage of master’s students in history made use of non-English-language materials, but then in certain cases used them rather extensively (27 Korean items cited in one thesis, ten Italian in another, nine Spanish in yet another), suggests that acquisition, or at least proactive acquisition, of such materials needn’t be a priority, as long as, once again, the students concerned have easy access to efficient and affordable document delivery services. Sherriff does concede, however, that his finding could indicate “that students are unaware of relevant resources in other languages or are aware of them but lack the language skills necessary to use them” (p. 179).

A review of: Ranger, Sara L. “Grey Literature in Special Libraries: Access in Use.” Publishing Research Quarterly 21.1 (Spring 2005): 53-63. Objective – To examine the barriers to making grey literature (literature not controlled by commercial publishers) easier to access in special libraries. Design – Interviews. Setting – Variety of special libraries (government, corporate and specialized academic) in the United States. Subjects – Sixteen librarians from fourteen organizations in Washington, Michigan and Texas were interviewed. Four of the organizations were government libraries, four were corporate libraries and five were specialized academic libraries. One of the interviews was not used because the organization did not maintain a collection of paper-based grey literature. Methods – Librarians were selected as possible interview subjects via three methods: some were previously familiar with the author; some were referred to the author by friends, family and colleagues; two candidates volunteered in response to a presentation of the project at a professional meeting. Interviews were conducted between February 2002 and May 2003. A standard set of seven questions were used, but often followed with further questions. The interviews were conducted either in the library or the librarian’s office. The interviews were tape-recorded and the answers were written down. Interviews typically lasted between fifteen and thirty minutes and asked about the current state, holdings, access and use of grey literature in the special library. Main Results – Results from the interviews suggest a wide variance in the percentage of users that access grey literature. Grey literature was used less in the corporate libraries than the academic and government libraries. The percentage of the collection made up of grey literature also varied widely between the different libraries. Reports were found to be the most popular form of grey literature, although most of the libraries reported owning conference proceedings and newsletters in addition to reports. One interesting observation found during the interviews was that most of the users of grey literature are also producers of grey literature. The librarians surveyed reported that some of the reasons for using grey literature included use in research, to write (often more grey literature), interest in the topic, for class assignments, as records of previous practices, for localized studies, and for creating models and practices. Results found that for the libraries surveyed, much of the grey literature remains uncatalogued and what has been catalogued was done using a variety of methods. Over half of the libraries surveyed had their grey literature accessible online. Conclusion – Two main reasons were cited as explanations for why grey literature was not used as much as it should be: lack of cataloguing and visibility. In many of the libraries surveyed, much of the grey literature had not been catalogued, making it difficult to find and use the resources. Reasons cited for not cataloguing grey literature include lack of time, funds and/or knowledge. As well, in many of the libraries surveyed, it was found that the holdings of grey literature were not readily visible to the users, so users were not even aware that it existed. To improve the awareness and accessibility of grey literature, the author recommends regional depositories for grey literature, international standards for cataloguing and more cooperation between special libraries.

AbstractIn 2008, BIALL held a pre-conference workshop in Dublin entitled “Back to Basics: Cataloguing and Classification”. The workshop raised some interesting questions about the quality of cataloguing training provided by library schools and law libraries. Although cataloguing in British law libraries has been the subject of research, no study has yet explored cataloguing in Irish law libraries. This study by Clare O'Dwyer redresses this lack of information by focusing exclusively on the Irish context. The perceptions and expectations of cataloguers are examined using a multiple case study design combining interviews and questionnaires. The libraries selected for case study are representative of the three main types of law libraries in Ireland: a professional society law library, a government law library and a law firm library. Following analysis and discussion of the research findings, the study concludes with a series of recommendations regarding the curriculum for Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and further training of cataloguers in Irish law libraries.

A method to evaluate a library’s government information collection using OCLC’s WorldCat is described. By searching material type codes for government publications, and limiting the search to an owning library, it is possible to find the number of cataloged government publications in a library’s collection. The system can be used to identify the age of government publications in a library, the number of items on a given subject, and find publications on a topic from a specific time period. This method of analysis is especially useful for analyzing government information collections when publications are cataloged into a library’s main collection. The search technique can be used to generate statistics on government publication collections which can be used to prepare reports on library collections and materials.

The All-Russian Library Congress — the 26th Annual Conference of the Russian Library Association (RLA) — took place on May 16—20, in Nizhny Novgorod, the Library Capital of Russia 2022. The Congress was organized at the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and the Government of the Nizhny Novgorod Region. Its topic is “Libraries and cultural diversity”. The event was held in face-to-face and remote formats. In total, more than 1300 experts took part in the Congress (about 900 in person, 400 remotely) from 67 regions of Russia and 12 foreign countries. More than 200 thousand viewings were collected by open broadcasts of two plenary sessions in VKontakte.The professional program of the Congress consisted of two plenary sessions, 56 breakout sessions (518 reports), special events and master classes. The work was carried out at 12 sites. Traditional training schools of acquisitions librarian, library blogger, cataloguer and restorer took place. Special event was dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the journal “Bibliotekovedenie” (Library Science). The 22nd Exhibition of Publishing Products, New Information Technologies, Goods and Services traditionally accompanied the Congress.The participants of the Congress discussed the first results of implementation of the “Strategy for the Development of Librarianship in the Russian Federation for the period up to 2030”, which determined the work of libraries. The RLA actively contributes to the preparation of the Professional Standard “Specialist in Library and Information Activities”, which is currently being approved by the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of the Russian Federation.The event focused on current problems of work in libraries, including their digital transformation; educational programs within the framework of the Federal Project “Creative People”; the creation of model municipal libraries of new generation, their further development, etc.The Congress made decisions on the development of methodical recommendations for online training of librarians, methodological materials on library statistics; on the publication of collection of recommendations on conservation, restoration, storage of large-format documents of various types; on the preparation of application for the interdepartmental project on the development of National model of related library data based on the IFLA LRM conceptual model, etc. The Congress announced the results of the RLA elections for 2022—2025. At the end of the event, Murmansk was announced the Library Capital of Russia 2023.

As part of its participation in the Google Books government documents scanning project, the Purdue University Libraries agreed to contribute volumes of the Congressional Serial Set (CSS). Realizing that the results would be far more useful if the individual documents within this title were cataloged separately, librarians developed procedures to create brief records and began cataloging CSS documents from the 1890s. The University of Iowa became a partner in this collaborative pilot project, and its cataloging staff used the Purdue template and procedures to create records from the CSS for individual documents from two years in the 1890s. Purdue staff used those records to barcode their own corresponding CSS documents before sending those volumes to Google for scanning. Staff subsequently loaded the records into WorldCat to improve discoverability for scholars. The result of the collaborative cataloging effort was the ability to prepare CSS volumes for scanning quickly and efficiently.

This study looks at current workflows, practices and preparations for the future among North American Hebraica catalogers in academic, government and other special libraries and archives, The survey explores the demographics of the Hebraica cataloging community. Questions were asked about what types of materials this group processes, workplace responsibilities, and metadata practices and trends. The author was very interested to know what steps and types of training Hebraica catalogers are undertaking to learn about new technologies and tools being developed to describe bibliographic and digital resources.

Like all national libraries, the Biblioteca de Catalunya is being affected by change. Founded in 1907, it had a difficult time from the mid-1930s until constitutional government was restored, but received full recognition of its status and role as the national library of Catalonia in 1981; this was reinforced in 1993. It receives Catalan material on legal deposit, is responsible for the Catalan national bibliography and union catalogue, and acquires additional material by purchase, donation and exchange. Its collections, mainly of printed books and music, manuscripts and prints, number over 2 million items and include many rare and valuable documents. It also has an accepted leadership role among Catalan libraries. The changes afoot are mainly in the automation of acquisitions and cataloguing, where the library was a late starter but where much progress has already been made; in the progressive introduction of managerial methods into all procedures; and most conspicuously in a radical rebuilding programme which reflects the revised functions and redesigned procedures. The present medieval building is being reorganized internally to provide better reading and working areas, and previous additions to it are being removed and replaced with larger purpose-built storage areas. Some of the work is now completed, without any disruption to the library's operations, but the whole programme is not due to finish until 1996.

Information is everywhere. Today, with technology advances and more and more awareness for the need of progress and development, the government is taking a lot of interest in promoting research work and projects. This has become because of the technological advancements and changing information needs of the users. Technology has dominated all spheres of human activity and the libraries are not and exception one. Due to development in technological advancements, sources like electronic journals, e-books, e-databases, pre-prints, numerical and graphical data, library catalogue, educational materials, patents, standards, and so on are available on the Web. So we can say that information is the basic need for the progess and development of nation and humanity.

Abstract: This article examines the development of the library of the International Mozarteum Foundation after Austria’s annexation by Nazi Germany, 1938 to 1945. Although the Mozarteum Foundation was under direct government control, it nominally remained a non-governmental institution even during the Nazi era. Therefore, although it was not directly involved in the National Socialist system of cultural property theft, it made intensive efforts to expand its holdings from collections expropriated by the National Socialists. The driving force behind this was the musicologist Erich Valentin, who was also responsible for the library; he worked closely with the Viennese professor of musicology, Erich Schenk. Various, entirely unsuccessful attempts to profit from the expropriation of Jewish collectors (like Stefan zweig) are described. In contrast, the intensive efforts of the Mozarteum Foundation to take over expropriated libraries of ecclesiastical institutions, such as St Peter’s Abbey in Salzburg with its valuable historical holdings, were successful. The article also deals with the restitutions after World War II, which only began a decade after the end of the war and were not carried out systematically. Therefore, looted property could still be identified in recent years, the restitution of which is also addressed. An important concern of the article is also to point out the importance of a thorough documentation of the results of provenance research (not only in regard to the Nazi period). All the information ascertained about the provenance of the individual sources should be permanently documented in the catalogues, if possible, in standardised form. Abstract: Cet article examine le développement de la bibliothèque de la Fondation internationale Mozarteum après l’annexion de l’Autriche par l’Allemagne nazie, de 1938 à 1945. La Fondation Mozarteum était certes sous le contrôle direct de l’État, mais elle restait nominalement une institution non gouvernementale même pendant la période nazie. Elle n’a donc pas été directement impliquée dans le processus national-socialiste de spoliations de biens culturels, mais elle a déployé des efforts considérables pour accroître ses fonds à partir de collections spoliées par les nationaux-socialistes. Le musicologue Erich Valentin, également responsable de la bibliothèque, en étroite collaboration avec le professeur de musicologie viennois Erich Schenk, a joué un rôle moteur dans cette entreprise. Diverses tentatives, totalement infructueuses, de profiter de l’expropriation de collectionneurs juifs (tels que Stefan zweig) sont décrites. En revanche, les efforts intensifs de la Fondation Mozarteum pour récupérer les bibliothèques confisquées d’institutions ecclésiastiques, telles que l’abbaye Saint-Pierre de Salzbourg et ses précieux fonds historiques, ont été couronnés de succès. L’article aborde également les restitutions effectuées après la Seconde Guerre mondiale, qui n’ont commencé qu’une décennie après la fin de la guerre et n’ont pas été menées de manière systématique. C’est pourquoi des biens spoliés ont encore pu être identifiés ces dernières années, et leur restitution est également évoquée. L’un des principaux objectifs de cet article est de souligner à quel point il est important de documenter minutieusement les résultats des recherches sur la provenance (pas seulement en ce qui concerne la période nazie). Toutes les informations relatives à la provenance devraient être documentées de manière permanente dans les catalogues, si possible sous une forme standardisée. Abstract: Der Beitrag untersucht die Entwicklung der Bibliothek der Internationalen Stiftung Mozarteum nach dem Anschluss Österreichs an Nazi-Deutschland in der zeit zwischen 1938 und 1945. Die Stiftung Mozarteum stand zwar unter direkter staatlicher Kontrolle, blieb aber nominell auch während der NS-zeit eine nichtstaatliche Einrichtung. Daher war sie zwar nicht unmittelbar in das nationalsozialistische System des Kulturgüterraubes eingebunden, bemühte sich aber intensiv darum, ihren Bestand aus von den Nationalsozialisten enteigneten Sammlungen zu erweitern. Treibende Kraft war dabei der Musikwissenschaftler Erich Valentin, der auch für die Bibliothek zuständig war; er arbeitete eng mit dem Wiener Professor für Musikwissenschaft Erich Schenk zusammen. Beschrieben werde verschiedene, durchweg erfolglosen Versuche, von der Enteignung jüdischer Sammler (hier insbesondere Stefan zweig) zu profitieren. Erfolgreich waren im Gegensatz dazu die intensiven Bemühungen der Stiftung Mozarteum um die Übernahme von enteigneten Bibliotheken kirchlicher Institutionen wie dem Stift St. Peter in Salzburg mit seinen wertvollen historischen Beständen. Der Beitrag geht auch auf die Restitutionen nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg ein, die erst ein Jahrzehnt nach dem Ende des Krieges begannen und nicht systematisch durchgeführt wurden. Daher konnte auch in den letzten Jahren noch Raubgut identifiziert werden, dessen Restitution ebenfalls thematisiert wird. Ein wichtiges Anliegen des Beitrages ist es auch, auf die Bedeutung einer sorgfältigen Dokumentation der Ergebnisse der Provenienzforschung (nicht nur im Blick auf die NS-zeit) hinzuweisen. Alle ermittelten Informationen zur Provenienz der einzelnen Quellen sollten in den Katalogen, möglichst in standardisierter Form, dauerhaft dokumentiert werden.

As federal government information is increasingly migrating to online formats, libraries are providing links to this content via URLs or persistent URLs (PURLs) in their online public access catalogs (OPACs). Clickthrough statistics that accumulated as users visited links to online content in the University of Denver’s library OPAC were gathered over a six-year period and were analyzed. Among the conclusions were that DU users prefer online content over print for both newer and older documents and that there is great benefit in adding URLs above and beyond the URLs supplied by GPO cataloging.

Serials are important sources of information to library users. This study examines the serials management in a Law library, the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (NIALS). Diverse resources aid research, learning and teaching, among these are serials. They feature as inaugural lectures, public briefings, reports, white papers, gazettes and other government publications, hazards, panels/commissions of inquiry, memoirs, findings, treaties, field trip’ reports, television or film series, body corporate statements of accounts, newspapers, conference proceedings. The role of UNESCO coupons in paying for foreign journals was briefly mentioned-though these are no longer sent to many Nigeria libraries. The compulsion for all serials editors to write to NLN for an ISSN to enhance the compilation of National Bibliographic Control, like the British Union Catalogue of Periodicals, and collective aim at ensuring a knowledge output consortia among all libraries to ‘save the bucks’ was also mentioned, this, so many of the knowledge industries do not comply with this statute, unfortunately. The paper discussed the management of serials which include: acquisitions, classification, storage and preservation. The study recommends the need for acquisitions policy reviews, staff skills, suggesting the employment of only possessors of library and information science qualifications in the libraries, preservation and conservation of serials via binding and pre-purchase quality assurance.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study the resource construction mode of the Digital Library Promotion Project, so as to summarize the general characteristics of successful collaborative collection building for digital libraries. Digital Library Promotion Project (DLPP) is a digital culture boosting project launched by the Ministry of Culture of the People’s Republic of China with National Library of China as its implementing unit. The project aims to build a nation-wide library network that could support and guarantee resource development and sharing among public libraries all over China so as to achieve equalization in public culture service among people from different parts of the country. This paper is a case study of the digital library development in China. The present situation of Chinese public libraries is accounted in this paper, and the developing mode and mechanism in cooperation between libraries of different administrative ranking are discussed along with the future development of the project. This paper may provide references to countries and libraries in their efforts to pursue sustainable development. Design/methodology/approach This paper is a case study of digital collection development and sharing in a developing country where regional differences are large. The paper starts with the environmental scan of the resource situation of public libraries in China, which is the background and significance of the DLPP. The main part of the paper is the introduction and analysis of the collection developing method of the DLPP, including: union catalogue, co-construction of featured resources and joint procurement of databases. Through analyzing the mechanism in collection development and sharing, this paper discusses the measures that guarantees the success of the project. Findings Through analyzing the mechanism in collection development and sharing, this paper discusses the measures that guarantee the success of the project, these are: sustained financial support from the government, scientific mechanism for cooperation, flexible handling of copyright issues unified standards in resource development and targeted training programs. Originality/value This paper is a case study of the digital library development in China. The present situation of Chinese public libraries is accounted in this paper, and the developing mode and mechanism in cooperation between libraries of different administrative ranking are discussed, as well as the future development of the project. This paper may provide references to countries and libraries in their efforts to pursue sustainable development.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect that government austerity policies has had on local studies in Devon and suggest a possible alternative means of maintaining local studies’ collections. Design/methodology/approach This paper presents an historical survey of local studies provision in the county since the nineteenth century and outlines the present local studies’ landscape. Findings The findings show that local studies’ provision has been severely affected by eight years of progressive cuts to public library funding and that present publications, both printed and digital, are no longer being adequately recorded. Practical implications This paper suggests that in Devon, the museum sector may be a more appropriate home for local studies’ library provision than are archive services. Social implications Volunteers in libraries, museums and archives across Devon will be involved in maintaining a union catalogue and a bibliography of local publications. Originality/value While this is a suggested solution for Devon, it may not be applicable in regions with different traditions of heritage provision.

The Library of the Victoria and Albert Museum originated in the mid-19th century as the library of a School of Design, and adopted the title ‘The National Art Library’ later in the century following publication of the Universal Catalogue of Books on Art. Decades of steady growth and of low usage ended in the late 1960s, when sudden growth of art publishing, and of interest in art history, generated demands the Library was not equipped to meet. The Library possesses one of the world’s outstanding collections of art publications but is still funded, staffed, and administered as if its role was merely that of a Department of the Museum. Currently all aspects of the Library’s procedures and policies are under review; government funding is to be sought for a programme of computerisation, and it is hoped to redefine the Library’s role in national and international contexts and to re-establish it as the ‘heart and core’ of art library provision in the U.K., as an active participant in cooperative schemes and projects, and as a training centre for art librarianship, or in other words, as an active and truly national art library.

The purpose of the article is to reveal the functional features of the Republican Library for Science and Technology of the Republic of Belarus as the main information structure ensuring the innovative activity of the country. In the modern conditions, the successful development of science and technology is one of the factors of national security. Achievement of the set government tasks is impossible without systematic analytical study of patents, scientific and technical literature, as well as technical normative legal acts. The necessary information base has been established in Belarus, which is located in the Republican Library for Science and Technology, which is the largest center of information on science and technology and the only one of the republican libraries of Belarus with its regional structure. Regional scientific and technical libraries operate as branches in each of the region centers. In each regional center there work, statured as branches, regional libraries for scientific and technical literature, which provide equal access to library resources for users from different parts of the country. One of the main tasks of RLST and its regional branches is library and information-bibliographic servicing enterprises, organizations and institutions of the republic – their collective subscribers. Since its establishment and for 45 years of its history, RLST has been providing information support for the scientific and technical sphere of Belarus, being the state repository of patents, the depository of technical normative legal acts and other documents in the field of standardization, industrial catalogs, scientific and technical publications, providing access to national and international resources, actively using electronic services in its work. The article briefly describes the contribution of RLST staff to the study of the history of invention in Belarus. Examples of resources created on the basis of case studies are given. Working with children and youth to increase their interest in scientific and technological activities and to promote the ideas of sustainable development in Belarus is one of the new vectors of RLST educational work.

From its beginnings in 1836 as the library of the Government School of Design, the National Art Library (NAL) in the UK was intended to have an impact on design in the country. After the Great Exhibition of 1851 it former part of what was to become known as the Victoria and Albert Museum (V & A). By the 1850s it had already adopted the title of National Art Library, although it was called the V & A Museum Library between 1908 and 1985. By 1853 collections aimed to cover the arts and trades comprehensively, and by 1869 the NAL aimed also at comprehensive access to individual objects created in the course of history. By 1852, the library was open to all, although a charge was made at first. Various forms of subject indexing have been used; from 1877 to 1895 subject lists were prepared for internal use and sold to the public, and from 1869 to 1889 a remarkable Universal catalogue of books on art was produced. The present mission statement of the NAL focuses on collecting, documenting and making available information on the history and practice of art, craft and design, and the library aims its services at both the national and international community. However, its great 19th century contribution to published subject control of art materials has been almost completely absent in the 20th century. During 1994 the NAL will contribute records to the British Library (BL) Conspectus database, though there is little formal cooperation between the two libraries. As a specialist library it can organize its collections and index them in ways that are impossible for a comprehensive library such as the BL, and it therefore has an important part to play in the national library scene.

Expanding the research about the old Vilnius University Library launched by L. Vladimirovas, this article discusses the fact (which has never been mentioned in historiography), about a gift to the burnt library of Åbo Academy, which then belonged to the Duchy of Finland, Russian Empire. In support action, which was organised by the supreme government of Russian Empire, lots of scientific, educational and cultural institutions took part; one of them was Vilnius University. Successful research of official documents, preserved in Lithuanian State Historical Archive (one of them The books of gifts to Vilnius University, 1820–1832), and the Activity daybook (1823–1832) of Vilnius University Library, as well as lists of donated books, preserved in the Library of Helsinki National University (Catalogus librorum qui bis extant in Bibliotheca Caesareae Universitatis Vilnensis) and in Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine (Katalog ksiąg dubletowych Biblioteki Uniwesyteckiej Wilenskiej oddanych dla zgorzaley Biblioteki Abowskiej i tamże odeslanych roku 1829 dnia 28 lutego), allowed us to specify chronology of this charity act, discover its effectors in Vilnius, and provide qualitative and quantitative parameters of donated books. It was identified, that the shipment of books delivered from Vilnius no earlier than 1829 February 28, consisted of 1481 volumes, mainly doublet books on different topics, which were deposited to the Helsinki University. Alexander Wictor Bohatkiewicz, a librarian and a bibliographer in Vilnius University Library, played a crucial role in the selection of the books. At present, the best part of the donated books is preserved in the National Library of Helsinki University. Completed research makes a premise to a historical digital reconstruction of the donated collection.

In Spain, the public National Health Service provides care to Spaniards and other residents and is tailored for a decentralized state of autonomies. Each Autonomous Community has legislative capacity in its organization and management. We study the case of the collaboration between private hospitals and the public health service in La Rioja, an Autonomous Community of Spain located in the North of the Iberian Peninsula, due to the importance that this relationship has in health systems, in general. We applied the case study method as a methodological tool in a long-term local study. The interpretation was carried out within a national context, which allows us to understand its meaning and the historical keys to hospital development in this region. Primary sources have been reviewed (mainly reports, catalogs, and censuses of hospitals from the Ministry of Health and the Government of La Rioja) and other secondary sources, located in archives, libraries, Institute of Rioja Studies, and Department of Health. The hospital system in La Rioja was characterized by a predominance of public beds compared with private ones, although there has been a growing trend in the number of private beds from 2013 onwards due to the incorporation of health and social care convalescent hospitals (two). La Rioja has been promoting public–private collaboration (seen as a strategic alliance) and focusing on agreements in the socio-health space, particularly using the management service agreement and the concession of work formulas. The development of the public health service in La Rioja, from 1986 to 2019, has been determined by a progressive lower dependence on specialized hospitals from other health services of neighboring Autonomous Communities and by a mixed public–private hospital system.

Objective – To test a metric for library use, that could be comparable to metrics used by competing government departments, for ease of understanding by policy makers. Design – Four types of data were collected and used: Time-diaries, exit surveys, gate counts, and circulation statistics. Setting – A large public library in British Columbia, Canada. Subjects – Time-diary subjects were 445 patrons checking out materials; exit survey subjects were 185 patrons leaving the library. Methods – A paper-based time diary, prototypes of which were tested, was given to patrons who checked out library materials during a one-week period. These patrons were charged with recording the use of the checked-out items during the entire three-week loan period. From this information, the average number of hours spent with various types of loaned material (print and audio/DVD) was calculated. The average number of hours spent per item type was then applied to the circulation statistics for those items, across a month, to get a total of hours spent using all circulated material during that month. During the same one-week period of time-diary distribution, exit surveys were conducted by library staff with patrons leaving the library, asking them how long they had spent in the library during their current visit. The average number of minutes per visit was calculated and then applied to the gate count for the month, to get a total number of minutes/hours spent “resident” in the library that month. Adding the totals, a grand total of patron time-use hours was calculated. A monetary value was applied per hour, using the results of a contingent valuation study from Missoula, Montana (Dalenberg et al., 2004), in order to convert hours of library benefit into a dollar figure. Main Results – There was a 24% response rate for the time diaries (106/445). The diary entries yielded an average of 3.5 hours of time-use per print item, and 1.9 hours per DVD. The range for audio materials was quite wide, and for all item types, a few heavy users skewed the averages. Hours of secondary use (when people other than the original borrower read, listened to, or watched, the materials) were calculated, and represented 13% of the total hours. The average amount of time spent per visit was 42 minutes. Applying these averages to one month of circulation figures and gate counts, respectively, the result was that patrons spent 182,000 hours using library services in one month. Applying dollar amounts of benefit per hours spent, based on the Missoula study, the result was that patrons had received $842,000 of benefit from their use of the library in that month. Conclusions – This study confirmed that the prototype performance measure of hours of patron use, and refinements in obtaining it, was a useful tool with which to present the case for the value of libraries to policy makers. The study estimates that 90% of library use occurs off-site, and that a surprising proportion of that use is by secondary users. Future studies could refine the collection methodologies even more by collecting demographic information, by mapping user activities during branch visits, and by obtaining better information about secondary users of materials. Future research should also take into account: seasonal effects on borrowing, reading level of borrowers, and possibilities for collecting information in online formats. With these developments, it might be possible to assign “enjoyment levels” to items in library catalogs.

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> It seems that the aim of conventional studies on tactile maps for visually impaired people have been to improve their utility in terms of instrumentalism. However, given the recent progress of disability studies in social science and post-representational approach in recent map studies, it is necessary to examine how tactile maps work in the society and how they relate to “disability” as a social phenomenon. These are also important issues to think about how geospatial information technology for visually impaired people embed in the society. Hence, regarding the map as more-than-representation, this paper analysed various documents (e.g. newspaper articles, essays, instruction manuals for orientation and mobility specialist), and considered the social position of tactile maps in Japan. The results showed the following.</p><p>The tactile map has a long history as a teaching material of geography. It was used for education for the blind in Western countries in the late 18th century. This situation was introduced to Japan by overseas memoir. For example, in the late Edo era, Namura Gohachirou who was a member of Japanese Embassy to the United States witnessed geography education using tactile maps at the blind school in New York. In his diary named <i>Akou Nikki</i>, Namura said that the education for blinds using tactile maps seemed to “translation” from the words of those who can see both eyes well to the words of visually impaired people. His statement clearly shows the material difference of tactile maps. Many tactile maps have acquired social status as “translated objects”. The material form of tactile maps is different from the “map” (visual map) known to the general public, so it makes awareness of physical differences between the body of visually impaired people and sighted people. In 1880, the first blind school in Japan, Kyoto Moua In had exhibited teaching materials and other instruments to the exposition, including a tactile map representing the city of Kyoto. Such a social event also had a role to attract the attention of sighted people to the material heterogeneity of the tactile map <i>and</i> visually impaired people.</p><p>The 1960s-80s was the period of the situation of tactile maps changed significantly in Japan. In the 1960s, rehabilitation techniques for visual impairments was introduced to Japan from USA, and the concept of “orientation” which was lacking in conventional walking training diffused. In accordance with these movement, the teaching manual of orientation and mobility (O&amp;M) training became write the methodologies to make and use the tactile map for the training. In 1964, Kazuo Honma, the founder of Japan Brail Library, visited all over the world and bought lots of tools for visually impaired people, including tactile maps, at the blind libraries in various places and brought them back to Japan. He held an exhibition to show those materials in the following year. Furthermore, as the International Year of Disabled Persons 1981 and the subsequent enforcement of various laws related to people with disability, it has been emphasized to create cities where physically impaired people can go out of their homes. Since that time the tactile maps began to be installed in public facilities, and were introduced in the assistive technology catalogs. In this way, the tactile map was incorporated into the context of “outdoor behavior” and “walking”. Not only the body of visually impaired people but also the tactile maps as material objects have increasingly been exposed to the “outside” spaces (e.g. city, road). As a result, the tactile map became understood from the viewpoint of “safety”, and it became involved with human and non-human actors (e.g. government offices, volunteer organizations, barrier-free laws, traffic guidelines) different from those of geography education.</p>

A review of: Line, Maurice B. “The Information Uses and Needs of Social Scientists: An Overview of INFROSS.” Aslib Proceedings 23.8 (1971): 412-34. Rpt. in Lines of Thought: Selected Papers. Ed. L.J. Anthony. London: Bingley, 1988. 45-66. Objective – The study reported in this article was conceived in order to answer a question of very large scope: What are the information systems and services requirements of social scientists? Inherent in this question was the correlative question: How do social scientists tend to use such systems and services, and what resources and information access approaches do they by choice employ? The choice for such an approach was well-considered, given that 1) there were at the time almost no research results available in this area; 2) the investigators feared that approaches developed earlier for the natural sciences and technology would be uncritically adopted for the social sciences as well; and 3) “the social science information system was developing anyway, and if it was to develop in appropriate ways, some guidance had to be provided quickly” (412). The Investigation into Information Requirements of the Social Sciences (INFROSS) project team believed that there was “no point” (412) in embarking first on a series of more narrowly focused studies. The express intention was to derive findings that would be usable “for the improvement of information systems, or for the design of new ones” (414). For more on the project's conceptual underpinnings, see Line’s “Information Requirements.” Design – Exploratory study employing both quantitative and qualitative approaches over a period of three and a half years, beginning in the autumn of 1967. Setting – The whole of the United Kingdom. The project was funded by that country’s Office for Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI), which had been established in 1965. Subjects – Almost 1,100 randomly selected academic social science researchers, plus a substantial number of government social science researchers and social science “practitioners” (“college of education lecturers, schoolteachers, and individuals in social work and welfare” [413]). For the purposes of the study, the social sciences included anthropology, economics, education, geography, political science, psychology and sociology, but numerous historians and statisticians ultimately participated. Methods – Three methods were employed: surveys, interviews, and direct observation. A “very long” (413) questionnaire was sent to 2,602 of the identified ca. 9,100 social science researchers in the United Kingdom, with 1,089 (41.8%) completed questionnaires returned. Two pilots were conducted with the questionnaire before a definitive version was finalized for the study. Seventy-five interviews were conducted (individually or in groups) with researchers, some of whom had received but not responded to the questionnaire, and some of whom were not included in the questionnaire sample. The interviews with non-responding persons in the sample were for purposes of determining “whether they were non-typical” (413). Fifty additional interviews were conducted (individually or in groups) with practitioners. Day-to-day observation of a small number of social scientists was undertaken in the context of a two and a half year-long experimental information service at Bath University – the first time any UK university had employed information officers for the social sciences. Main results – The results showed a pronounced perception among social scientists that informal “methods of locating references to relevant published information” (416-8, 426-7, 431) are more useful than formal methods (such as consulting the library catalogue, searching library shelves, or searching in indexing and abstracting publications), and an even more pronounced inclination to actually use such informal methods – something of a revelation at the time. Less than one sixth of all sociologists, for example, made use of Sociological Abstracts. On both counts, “consulting librarian” (418) scored worse than all the other ten options. Forty-eight percent of respondents never did it, and only 8% perceived it as a “very useful” (418) method. Nonetheless, 88% of respondents were in principle prepared to delegate at least some of their literature searching, and approximately 45% all of it, “to a hypothetical information officer” (425). More than 75% of the experimental service clients also responded affirmatively to the question: “Should a social science information officer be a high priority,” given limited available resources? (Line, Cunningham, and Evans 73-5). Most subjects found, in any case, that their major “information problems” (427-8) lay not in discovering what relevant documents might exist, but rather in actually getting their hands on them. In only around 20% of the cases were they ultimately successful in doing so. The younger the researcher, the greater the dissatisfaction with her/his own institution’s collection. This study also revealed that academic social scientists drew little distinction between information needs for their research and those for their teaching. There was one social science discipline which clearly stood out from the rest: psychology. Psychologists were the heaviest users of abstracting and indexing (A&I) publications, as well as of the journal literature, published conference proceedings, and research reports. They were also the least tolerant of time lags in the A&I services’ coverage of new publications. Further significant findings were: • A librarian’s way of categorizing research materials was not very meaningful to the researchers themselves. • A&I services were generally used more often for ‘keeping up’ than for retrospective searching. • Consultation with librarians was more common in the less scholarly and more intimate college environment than at research institutions. • A large percentage found library cataloguing insufficiently detailed. The same was true for book indexes. • There was considerable enthusiasm for the idea of a citation index for the social sciences. (N.B.: the SSCI began publication two years after the appearance of this article.) • Among informal methods of scholarly communication and information transfer, conferences (to the investigators’ surprise) rated remarkably low. • Researchers with large personal collections made more use of the library and its services than those with small collections. • Social scientists had little interest in non-English-language materials. Line speaks of “a serious foreign language problem” (424). The INFROSS study produced an enormous amount of data. Only 384 of the computer tables produced were made available in 4 separate reports to OSTI. Only 3 tables, 2 of which were abbreviated, appeared in this article. The further raw data were available on request. Conclusion – Line himself was exceedingly cautious in drawing explicit positive conclusions from the INFROSS results. He even stated that, “No major patterns were detected which could be of use for information system design purposes” (430). He was freer with his negative and provisional assessments. Two years earlier he had written: “It still remains to be established that there is an information problem in the social sciences, or that, if there is, it is of any magnitude” (“Information Requirements” 3). However, it was now clear to Line that information services and systems for the social scientist were indeed quite inadequate, and that (potential) users were not satisfied. He was, furthermore, prepared to go out on a limb with the following assertions and inferences: 1) It was a great strength of INFROSS that it had – in marked contrast to previous science user studies – generated “a mass of comparable [his italics] data within a very broad field, so that every finding can be related to other findings” (430). 2) There are discernable – and exploitable – differences in the information needs and use patterns among the different social science disciplines (which he often also refers to as the different “subjects”). 3) INFROSS had likewise made more evident the nature of similarities across disciplines. 4) There is indeed, from an information/library perspective, a continuum from the ‘harder’ to the ‘softer’ social sciences. 5) Social scientists showed too little awareness, made too little use, and even displayed “insufficient motivation” (431) to make use of available information systems/services. He elsewhere (“Secondary Services” 269, 272) characterizes them as “remarkably complacent,” “even apathetic.” 6) There is good reason to doubt the wisdom of libraries’ investing in user education, since it is bound to have little effect (for further discussion of this matter, one can consult his “The Case for” 385-6 and “Ignoring the User” 86). 7) User-friendly systems amount inevitably to underdeveloped and ineffective systems – and therefore “personal intermediaries,” in sufficient numbers, will remain essential if we wish to offer social scientists really good information services (426, 431). Line believed that INFROSS was only a beginning, and he had already, even before writing this article, begun follow-up research aimed at attaining results really of use for information system design purposes (e.g., the DISISS project). He complained many years later, however, that all this research “indicated means of improvement, but led to no action” (“Social Science Information” 131). In any case, “Bath” (the common shorthand subsequently used to refer to all this research) became, and has remained, the starting point for all subsequent discussions of social science information problems. Several years ago, there was a well-argued international call for “a new and updated version of the INFROSS study” – with an eye to finally using the findings for practical purposes, and aiming “to extend and follow up the research agenda set by the original study” (Janes “Time to Take”).

IntroductionThis article investigates how local studies collections in public libraries can help people explore the experiences of regional Australia. Some of this discovery can be done online, but as not all local studies material has been catalogued, is online or available in a digital format, some of this exploration will need to be onsite at public libraries throughout Australia. This exploration could be combined with other investigations into regional areas. What are local studies collections in public libraries? These collections are defined as beinginclusive of local history and so the local collection should support studies that look at the historical past, both distant and recent, or at current concerns in the community, such as local environmental issues, or plans for the future development of a locality. (Dewe 1–2)This broader look at the context of a place should provide information in a range of formats to help explore an area, and to find out about the history, geography and the environment as well as other local concerns and issues. Local studies collections should contain recent as well as older material. Each local studies collection will be different (McCausland; Bateman; Johnston; Gregg; Heap and Pymm) with some of these differences simply being because each area has a unique collection of stories which can be told about it. Other differences will be in how each public library interprets their remit to collect information and stories about a community, and which stories are included or excluded from the collection. There are budget constraints as well because each public library has to choose how to fund local studies as part of their overall library provision which means there are tensions and competing priorities in what is collected and how it is made available for research as well as information and entertainment. Some areas have more research activity so there is more being written, photographed, drawn, or otherwise recorded about an area, but no matter how small an area is, there is usually new local studies material being continually created.Local Studies CollectionsLocal studies collections are important as they provide key information about an area. For professional scholars, even in social history, the local becomes interesting only within a larger context, however. Local case studies may throw light on wider questions (Reid and Macafee 127).This highlights the value which local studies can contribute as part of research as these collections may provide case studies to explore, or different avenues to investigate. It also shows the importance of information in many local studies collections being brought together so the separate, local information can be connected to other local information. This bringing together can be as a result of research or through an aggregation system such as Trove (“Trove”).Peter Reid and Caroline Macafee have stated that becausethe potential is always there for local history to be pulled into issues of wider concern, it could be said to occupy a liminal space, a borderland between knowledge that is personal, and therefore academically trivial, and knowledge that is generalizable and therefore worthy of scientific attention. (127)This seems a harsh description, but it shows how these collections can be undervalued and that this undervaluing can risk them being overlooked by biographers, historians, and other researchers. Despite this thinking, local studies collections can offer unique and valuable insights into people and places; including for regional areas. The skilled library staff who manage these collections are also key resources in the history of regional areas, as they can help connect the local studies information to other local collections. As well as connecting people to the resources, the unwritten knowledge of staff is a separate and very important resource.How to Discover Local Studies CollectionsA good way to start exploring local studies collections is by searching Trove. Trove had, around the time of writing, “over 457,524,491 Australian and online resources” (online) and is an Australia-wide database, managed by the National Library of Australia. It enables you to search many library catalogues with one search tool which means that you can search once, in one place, rather than by individual library or museum catalogues. Trove brings together metadata including catalogue records, mostly from library catalogues, from organisations who choose to contribute access to their information. Some of the resources you can search for on Trove are in local studies collections in public libraries or held by other organisations which collect local information such as state and national libraries. Start your search by the name of the location which you are exploring. Be as specific as possible, as you can always broaden your search later. If the item has been digitised, or is already digital, you are often able to view or listen to this material online.As well as providing access to library catalogues, many local newspapers have been digitised and are searchable and viewable on Trove. Some newspapers have been digitised up to 1955, while some titles have fewer years available online, and microfilm will need to be used to find more recently produced information. Public libraries often hold the microfilm for their local newspapers. State libraries may hold them as well. This timeline of digital access is important to keep in mind as searching newspapers on Trove is very easy and searching on microfilm is not so appealing because of having to work through each newspaper page by page, microfilm roll by microfilm roll. You need to check the information about what issues of a newspaper have been digitised so you know when you need to start looking at microfilm copies rather than digitised ones. Older newspapers often include syndicated stories, so an event may have occurred in an area you are interested in but be reported in the newspaper from another area. You could also use the Trove API (application programming interface) to explore high volume digitised newspaper or catalogue data (Sherratt).This method of starting with Trove can also be a helpful way to find out which public library is in the area you are looking for, as the name of the organisation which holds the resources is listed online. You can click on a link to take you to their catalogue. While public libraries are often named for the town they are in, you may be looking for a place with a different name, so this method can be helpful. It can also show resources held in other libraries which may relate to the area of your research. Trove Mosaic by Mitchell Whitelaw (online), although an older interface, is a visual way to explore Trove and clearly highlights the different organisations contributing photographs.Libraries include local studies photographs in their social media and a very small number of them are collecting social media about their community (Forsyth et al.). Searching social media for terms such as #flashbackFriday or #throwbackThursday may also provide a way to discover local studies material online, although depending on your research topic, this method could be too haphazard an approach. There are still some local studies blogs to follow (MacRitchie) and searching for these can also provide information about local studies material in public libraries.Public Libraries and Local StudiesYou can also start at the public library. Depending on where in Australia you are searching there are different tools to help find your local public library. Rather than list them all, a useful starting point is to go to your favourite search engine and search for the name of town/suburb followed by public library. This should connect you with information about the local library through the library website, the regional library website (where two or more councils work together to provide a public library service), or via the council website. This is likely to provide sufficient information to be able to contact the library. However, before you contact the library, search the library catalogue. They may even have a separate local studies database for some or all of the local studies collection. This is why is it a good idea to start with Trove, before going to a local library search, as Trove should be aggregating collection information from a variety of sources bringing together the local public library as well as other organisations (sometimes some unexpected ones) which have material of relevance.Work from the State Library of New South Wales had demonstrated that not everything in local studies collection is catalogued (State Library of New South Wales) which makes it impossible to search for everything online. Quite a few (but not all) public libraries have a webpage where they describe their local studies collections and services. This can provide helpful information so that if you do not find something online you can telephone or email the library seeking further information. If the library is nearby you could simply visit it, but it is best to ring or email first if your time is limited, as it can be helpful to make an appointment to ensure that staff will be able to assist you with using the library collection. For searching the catalogues for local studies information, again, be as specific as possible, knowing you can always broaden your search terms. Helpfully, most (but not all) library catalogues have a sort by date option once material has been found, and some even have local studies specific search help. Often you can view or listen to digitised material online, but some libraries only make low resolution images available, which is rarely of good enough quality for research. When you have searched the catalogue or other online local studies database and not found anything, contact the library as they will be able to provide further information.Library staff will help you use their collections. Some public libraries charge a fee for more detailed research, others, quite reasonably, require you to do this more detailed research yourself.There are many variables, and it really depends on what and where you are researching. Perhaps you are looking for a written history of each area you plan to visit when exploring regional areas of Australia, or you might be planning to visit local studies collections to see how they lead you to areas and stories of local interest, or there is a particular research question you want to explore in several regional areas. How local studies books and other materials are written will depend on the time they were written, and the purpose for them. They can depict ideas and priorities which are outdated and/or offensive.Not Everything Is on TroveWhile Trove is a suggested starting place, given that every item in local studies collections is not catalogued, visiting the local public library can be an important step to take. Always check if the local studies area has different opening hours to the rest of the library. If part or all of the local studies collection is in a locked room, visiting the library at a very busy time is unwise as it may make it harder for the staff to assist you as they will have many other priorities and you may not be able to access the collection.Visiting the Library Visiting a public library and looking at how their local studies collection is arranged can help you see the collecting priorities. It also makes it very clear as to which public libraries have prioritised their local studies information. Occasionally the local studies area will be a partnership with both the library and the local family or local history society providing resources or the collection. This can result in different access conditions being applied to different collections.Visiting the collection means you can talk with the library staff about the history of the area as part of your experience of regional Australia. It is interesting to see how different local studies collections are arranged and how the local area is promoted through the collection and any displays or merchandise for sale. Often local publications will be for sale in the library so that you can purchase titles about the history of the area. Some councils commission histories of their areas, other times niche histories will be written by people in the community and the local studies collection can be a helpful way to discover these.Keep in mind that local government boundaries change (Leigh) and this may mean that resources you are looking for could be in a neighbouring area, rather than the location you are exploring. This is another reason to start with Trove.You May Not Be Able to See Everything Even If You Visit...For reasons of preservation you may not be able to see everything in the local studies collection even if you visit. Sometimes you need to watch out for special tours, which may not coincide with your visit to the area. There may be parts of the collection stored but not fully explored by staff, waiting their time in the queue to be catalogued and made available for research. Generally public library staff will be very helpful for you in your research, particularly if you have specific questions about the area.Know about CopyrightKnow the information about duration of copyright as some libraries say on their catalogues that everything which has been digitised is in copyright. This may be accidental as a result of some bulk cataloguing processes linked with digitisation. Stating something is in copyright is not the same as it being in copyright. The Australian Copyright Council has a helpful information sheet on the duration of copyright to help you understand what is in copyright and how long it is likely to continue to be in copyright.ChallengesThere will be collection gaps. The risk of bias is highlighted by the statement that libraries “are not, and have never been, socially or politically neutral institutions” (Gibson et al. 753). There has not been detailed research exploring these collection gaps, so the exact extent of exclusion or omission of information is not yet able to be quantified. There is arenewed professional imperative to position information centers as central locations for social justice work [which] has also turned our attention to the need to preserve materials that support a diverse and pluralistic society … [and] as a duty to steward unexplored histories. (Sheffield 573)Material may not be in the collection because it was not collected, or because it was not created. For example, in the past not everyone could afford a camera which means they may not have photographed or videoed their family, or public events. Not every grave had a headstone so someone may not have their grave recorded. Public libraries recognise these gaps, and in some areas library staff create or commission content to help with these omissions. For example, oral histories can be recorded to include stories which were not available in other ways, and photographs can be taken of current events to make sure a wider exploration of local stories are recorded in the local studies collection.Conclusion (and Opportunities)Grant White states, in relation to local studies that thesurvival of the artefact is only ever significant when it can be accessed by someone who can see meaning in it. The collection is in fact much more than the material sitting upon the shelves, it is access to it. Access which keeps it current in the community memory rather than as a separated, isolated adjunct. It is also the participation of the community in the creation of the collection, feeding it with its experience, reflections and memories. (98)This access is crucial, and with digitisation and digital collecting the access can increasingly be at a distance, without actually visiting a library. This increasing online access, especially through aggregated sites such as Trove, will hopefully enable research exploring the similarities and differences of regional areas, as connections can be made, and not only by people who can afford to travel to different places to do research. Digitisation, digital collecting, effective cataloguing and use of metadata can open up access to collections, just as digital preservation, preservation of other formats and conservation can help make sure that these materials are available into the future. Connecting to skilled staff who manage these collections is another way of exploring access as there will be information not recorded anywhere you can find, but which the staff may know because of their experience and knowledge of the collection as well as their knowledge of the community they work in.If you have been using public library local studies collections for research, it is helpful if you can share this research back with the public library, helping to build their collection for other people who are researching the region, even if they are exploring different topics. It may be a printed book you are providing, but more public libraries are able to accept donations of ebooks, or other online content. This can be a helpful way for you to contribute to the collections which have assisted in your research.ReferencesBateman, Shirley. “Innovation in Local Studies Collections and Programs: How Melbourne Library Service Is Fostering Community Pride.” Australasian Public Libraries and Information Services 25.1 (2012): 12–18.Dewe, Michael. Ed. Local Studies Collection Management. London: Ashgate, 2002.Forsyth, Ellen, Ngarie Macqueen, and Daniel Nitsikopoulos. Contemporary Collecting: Collecting Instagram for Local Studies. ALIA Information Online, 2019.Gibson, Amelia N., Renate L. Chancellor, Nicole A. Cooke, Sarah Park Dahlen, Shari A. Lee, and Yasmeen L. Shorish. “Libraries on the Frontlines: Neutrality and Social Justice.” Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal 36.8 (2017): 751–66.Gregg, Alison. “Our Heritage: The Role of Archives and Local Studies Collections.” Australasian Public Libraries and Information Services 15.3 (2002): 126–32.Heap, Amy, and Bob Pymm. “Wagga Wagga Women’s Wireless and the Web: Local Studies and New Technologies.” The Australian Library Journal 58.1 (2009): 5–16.Johnston, Clinton. “Capture and Release: Cataloguing Cultural Heritage at Marrickville Library and History Services.” The Australian Library Journal 62.3 (2013): 218–23.Leigh, Carol. “From Filing Cabinet to Cultural Centre: Creating a Community History Centre in Wanneroo Western Australia.” Australasian Public Libraries and Information Services 25.2 (2012): 83–88.MacRitchie, John. “The Manly Art of Local Studies Blogging: A New Approach to Old Stories.” Australasian Public Libraries and Information Services 25.2 (2012): 89–93.McCausland, Sigrid. “Archives for the People: Public Libraries and Archives in New South Wales.” The Australian Library Journal 64.4 (2015): 270.Reid, Peter H., and Caroline Macafee. “The Philosophy of Local Studies in the Interactive Age.” Journal of Librarianship and Information Science 39.3 (2007): 126–41.Sheffield, Rebecka T. “More than Acid-Free Folders: Extending the Concept of Preservation to Include the Stewardship of Unexplored Histories.” Library Trends 64.3 (2016): 572.Sherratt, Tim. “Asking Better Questions: History, Trove and the Risks That Count.” Copyfight. Ed. Phillipa McGuinness. Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2015. 112–24.State Library of New South Wales. NSW Public Libraries Local Studies Audit. 2014.“Trove.” Trove 7 Apr. 2019 <https://trove.nla.gov.au/>.White, Grant. “Message in a Bottle: Community Memory in the Local Studies Collection.” APLIS 13.3 (2000): 6.Whitelaw, Mitchell. “TroveMosaic: Exploring Trove Images.” TroveMosaic: Exploring Trove Images 7 Apr. 2019 <http://mtchl.net/TroveMosaic/>.

Image 1: A Little Free Library. Image credit: Nadine Kozak.IntroductionLittle Free Libraries give people a reason to stop and exchange things they love: books. It seemed like a really good way to build a sense of community.Dannette Lank, Little Free Library steward, Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, 2013 (Rumage)Against a backdrop of stagnant literacy rates and enduring perceptions of urban decay and the decline of communities in cities (NCES, “Average Literacy”; NCES, “Average Prose”; Putnam 25; Skogan 8), legions of Little Free Libraries (LFLs) have sprung up across the United States between 2009 and the present. LFLs are small, often homemade structures housing books and other physical media for passersby to choose a book to take or leave a book to share with others. People have installed the structures in front of homes, schools, libraries, churches, fire and police stations, community gardens, and in public parks. There are currently 50,000 LFLs around the world, most of which are in the continental United States (Aldrich, “Big”). LFLs encompass building in multiple senses of the term; LFLs are literally tiny buildings to house books and people use the structures for building neighbourhood social capital. The organisation behind the movement cites “building community” as one of its three core missions (Little Free Library). Rowan Moore, theorising humans’ reasons for building, argues desire and emotion are central (16). The LFL movement provides evidence for this claim: stewards erect LFLs based on hope for increased literacy and a desire to build community through their altruistic actions. This article investigates how LFLs build urban community and explores barriers to the endeavour, specifically municipal building and right of way ordinances used in attempts to eradicate the structures. It also examines local responses to these municipal actions and potential challenges to traditional public libraries brought about by LFLs, primarily the decrease of visits to public libraries and the use of LFLs to argue for defunding of publicly provided library services. The work argues that LFLs build community in some places but may threaten other community services. This article employs qualitative content analysis of 261 stewards’ comments about their registered LFLs on the organisation’s website drawn from the two largest cities in a Midwestern state and an interview with an LFL steward in a village in the same state to analyse how LFLs build community. The two cities, located in the state where the LFL movement began, provide a cross section of innovators, early adopters, and late adopters of the book exchanges, determined by their registered charter numbers. Press coverage and municipal documents from six cities across the US gathered through a snowball sample provide data about municipal challenges to LFLs. Blog posts penned by practising librarians furnish some opinions about the movement. This research, while not a representative sample, identifies common themes and issues around LFLs and provides a basis for future research.The act of building and curating an LFL is a representation of shared beliefs about literacy, community, and altruism. Establishing an LFL is an act of civic participation. As Nico Carpentier notes, while some civic participation is macro, carried out at the level of the nation, other participation is micro, conducted in “the spheres of school, family, workplace, church, and community” (17). Ruth H. Landman investigates voluntary activities in the city, including community gardening, and community bakeries, and argues that the people associated with these projects find themselves in a “denser web of relations” than previously (2). Gretchen M. Herrmann argues that neighbourhood garage sales, although fleeting events, build an enduring sense of community amongst participants (189). Ray Oldenburg contends that people create associational webs in what he calls “great good places”; third spaces separate from home and work (20-21). Little Free Libraries and Community BuildingEmotion plays a central role in the decision to become an LFL steward, the person who establishes and maintains the LFL. People recount their desire to build a sense of community and share their love of reading with neighbours (Charter 4684; Charter 8212; Charter 9437; Charter 9705; Charter 16561). One steward in the study reported, “I love books and I want to be able to help foster that love in our neighbourhood as well” (Charter 4369). Image 2: A Little Free Library, bench, water fountain, and dog’s water bowl for passersby to enjoy. Image credit: Nadine Kozak.Relationships and emotional ties are central to some people’s decisions to have an LFL. The LFL website catalogues many instances of memorial LFLs, tributes to librarians, teachers, and avid readers. Indeed, the first Little Free Library, built by Todd Bol in 2009, was a tribute to his late mother, a teacher who loved reading (“Our History”). In the two city study area, ten LFLs are memorials, allowing bereaved families to pass on a loved one’s penchant for sharing books and reading (Charter 1235; Charter 1309; Charter 4604; Charter 6219; Charter 6542; Charter 6954; Charter 10326; Charter 16734; Charter 24481; Charter 30369). In some cases, urban neighbours come together to build, erect, and stock LFLs. One steward wrote: “Those of us who live in this friendly neighborhood collaborated to design[,] build and paint a bungalow themed library” to match the houses in the neighbourhood (Charter 2532). Another noted: “Our neighbor across the street is a skilled woodworker, and offered to build the library for us if we would install it in our yard and maintain it. What a deal!” (Charter 18677). Community organisations also install and maintain LFLs, including 21 in the study population (e.g. Charter 31822; Charter 27155).Stewards report increased communication with neighbours due to their LFLs. A steward noted: “We celebrated the library’s launch on a Saturday morning with neighbors of all ages. We love sitting on our front porch and catching up with the people who stop to check out the books” (Charter 9673). Another exclaimed:within 24 hours, before I had time to paint it, my Little Free Library took on a life of its own. All of a sudden there were lots of books in it and people stopping by. I wondered where these books came from as I had not put any in there. Little kids in the neighborhood are all excited about it and I have met neighbors that I had never seen before. This is going to be fun! (Charter 15981)LFLs build community through social interaction and collaboration. This occurs when neighbours come together to build, install, and fill the structures. The structures also open avenues for conversation between neighbours who had no connection previously. Like Herrmann’s neighbourhood garage sales, LFLs create and maintain social ties between neighbours and link them by the books they share. Additionally, when neighbours gather and communicate at the LFL structure, they create a transitory third space for “informal public life”, where people can casually interact at a nearby location (Oldenburg 14, 288).Building Barriers, Creating CommunityThe erection of an LFL in an urban neighbourhood is not, however, always a welcome sight. The news analysis found that LFLs most often come to the attention of municipal authorities via citizen complaints, which lead to investigations and enforcement of ordinances. In Kansas, a neighbour called an LFL an “eyesore” and an “illegal detached structure” (Tapper). In Wisconsin, well-meaning future stewards contacted their village authorities to ask about rules, inadvertently setting off a six-month ban on LFLs (Stingl; Rumage). Resulting from complaints and inquiries, municipalities regulated, and in one case banned, LFLs, thus building barriers to citizens’ desires to foster community and share books with neighbours.Municipal governments use two major areas of established code to remove or prohibit LFLs: ordinances banning unapproved structures in residents’ yards and those concerned with obstructions to right of ways when stewards locate the LFLs between the public sidewalk and street.In the first instance, municipal ordinances prohibit either front yard or detached structures. Controversies over these ordinances and LFLs erupted in Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, in 2012; Leawood, Kansas, in 2014; Shreveport, Louisiana, in 2015; and Dallas, Texas, in 2015. The Village of Whitefish Bay banned LFLs due to an ordinance prohibiting “front yard structures,” including mailboxes (Sanburn; Stingl). In Leawood, the city council argued that an LFL, owned by a nine-year-old boy, violated an ordinance that forbade the construction of any detached structures without city council permission. In Shreveport, the stewards of an LFL received a cease and desist letter from city council for having an “accessory structure” in the front yard (LaCasse; Burris) and Dallas officials knocked on a steward’s front door, informing her of a similar breach (Kellogg).In the second instance, some urban municipalities argued that LFLs are obstructions that block right of ways. In Lincoln, Nebraska, the public works director noted that the city “uses the area between the sidewalk and the street for snow storage in the winter, light poles, mailboxes, things like that.” The director continued: “And I imagine these little libraries are meant to congregate people like a water cooler, but we don’t want people hanging around near the road by the curb” (Heady). Both Lincoln in 2014 and Los Angeles (LA), California, in 2015, cited LFLs for obstructions. In Lincoln, the city notified the Southminster United Methodist Church that their LFL, located between the public sidewalk and street, violated a municipal ordinance (Sanburn). In LA, the Bureau of Street Services notified actor Peter Cook that his LFL, situated in the right of way, was an “obstruction” that Cook had to remove or the city would levy a fine (Moss). The city agreed at a hearing to consider a “revocable permit” for Cook’s LFL, but later denied its issuance (Condes).Stewards who found themselves in violation of municipal ordinances were able to harness emotion and build outrage over limits to individuals’ ability to erect LFLs. In Kansas, the stewards created a Facebook page, Spencer’s Little Free Library, which received over 31,000 likes and messages of support. One comment left on the page reads: “The public outcry will force those lame city officials to change their minds about it. Leave it to the stupid government to rain on everybody’s parade” (“Good”). Children’s author Daniel Handler sent a letter to the nine-year-old steward, writing as Lemony Snicket, “fighting against librarians is immoral and useless in the face of brave and noble readers such as yourself” (Spencer’s). Indeed, the young steward gave a successful speech to city hall arguing that the body should allow the structures because “‘lots of people in the neighborhood used the library and the books were always changing. I think it’s good for Leawood’” (Bauman). Other local LFL supporters also attended council and spoke in favour of the structures (Harper). In LA, Cook’s neighbours started a petition that gathered over 100 signatures, where people left comments including, “No to bullies!” (Lopez). Additionally, neighbours gathered to discuss the issue (Dana). In Shreveport, neighbours left stacks of books in their front yards, without a structure housing them due to the code banning accessory structures. One noted, “I’m basically telling the [Metropolitan Planning Commission] to go sod off” (Friedersdorf; Moss). LFL proponents reacted with frustration and anger at the perceived over-reach of the government toward harmless LFLs. In addition to the actions of neighbours and supporters, the national and local press commented on the municipal constraints. The LFL movement has benefitted from a significant amount of positive press in its formative years, a press willing to publicise and criticise municipal actions to thwart LFL development. Stewards’ struggles against municipal bureaucracies building barriers to LFLs makes prime fodder for the news media. Herbert J. Gans argues an enduring value in American news is “the preservation of the freedom of the individual against the encroachments of nation and society” (50). The juxtaposition of well-meaning LFL stewards against municipal councils and committees provided a compelling opportunity to illustrate this value.National media outlets, including Time (Sanburn), Christian Science Monitor (LaCasse), and The Atlantic, drew attention to the issue. Writing in The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf critically noted:I wish I was writing this to merely extol this trend [of community building via LFLs]. Alas, a subset of Americans are determined to regulate every last aspect of community life. Due to selection bias, they are overrepresented among local politicians and bureaucrats. And so they have power, despite their small-mindedness, inflexibility, and lack of common sense so extreme that they’ve taken to cracking down on Little Free Libraries, of all things. (Friedersdorf, n.p.)Other columnists mirrored this sentiment. Writing in the LA Times, one commentator sarcastically wrote that city officials were “cracking down on one of the country’s biggest problems: small community libraries where residents share books” (Schaub). Journalists argued this was government overreach on non-issues rather than tackling larger community problems, such as income inequality, homelessness, and aging infrastructure (Solomon; Schaub). The protests and negative press coverage led to, in the case of the municipalities with front yard and detached structure ordinances, détente between stewards and councils as the latter passed amendments permitting and regulating LFLs. Whitefish Bay, Leawood, and Shreveport amended ordinances to allow for LFLs, but also to regulate them (Everson; Topil; Siegel). Ordinances about LFLs restricted their number on city blocks, placement on private property, size and height, as well as required registration with the municipality in some cases. Lincoln officials allowed the church to relocate the LFL from the right of way to church property and waived the $500 fine for the obstruction violation (Sanburn). In addition to the amendments, the protests also led to civic participation and community building including presentations to city council, a petition, and symbolic acts of defiance. Through this protest, neighbours create communities—networks of people working toward a common goal. This aspect of community building around LFLs was unintentional but it brought people together nevertheless.Building a Challenge to Traditional Libraries?LFL marketing and communication staff member Margaret Aldrich suggests in The Little Free Library Book that LFLs are successful because they are “gratifyingly doable” projects that can be accomplished by an individual (16). It is this ease of building, erecting, and maintaining LFLs that builds concern as their proliferation could challenge aspects of library service, such as public funding and patron visits. Some professional librarians are in favour of the LFLs and are stewards themselves (Charter 121; Charter 2608; Charter 9702; Charter 41074; Rumage). Others envision great opportunities for collaboration between traditional libraries and LFLs, including the library publicising LFLs and encouraging their construction as well as using LFLs to serve areas without, or far from, a public library (Svehla; Shumaker). While lauding efforts to build community, some professional librarians question the nomenclature used by the movement. They argue the phrase Little Free Libraries is inaccurate as libraries are much more than random collections of books. Instead, critics contend, the LFL structures are closer to book swaps and exchanges than actual libraries, which offer a range of services such as Internet access, digital materials, community meeting spaces, and workshops and programming on a variety of topics (American Library Association; Annoyed Librarian). One university reference and instruction librarian worries about “the general public’s perception and lumping together of little free libraries and actual ‘real’ public libraries” (Hardenbrook). By way of illustration, he imagines someone asking, “‘why do we need our tax money to go to something that can be done for FREE?’” (Hardenbrook). Librarians holding this perspective fear the movement might add to a trend of neoliberalism, limiting or ending public funding for libraries, as politicians believe that the localised, individual solutions can replace publicly funded library services. This is a trend toward what James Ferguson calls “responsibilized” citizens, those “deployed to produce governmentalized results that do not depend on direct state intervention” (172). In other countries, this shift has already begun. In the United Kingdom (UK), governments are devolving formerly public services onto community groups and volunteers. Lindsay Findlay-King, Geoff Nichols, Deborah Forbes, and Gordon Macfadyen trace the impacts of the 2012 Localism Act in the UK, which caused “sport and library asset transfers” (12) to community and volunteer groups who were then responsible for service provision and, potentially, facility maintenance as well. Rather than being in charge of a “doable” LFL, community groups and volunteers become the operators of much larger facilities. Recent efforts in the US to privatise library services as governments attempt to cut budgets and streamline services (Streitfeld) ground this fear. Image 3: “Take a Book, Share a Book,” a Little Free Library motto. Image credit: Nadine Kozak. LFLs might have real consequences for public libraries. Another potential unintended consequence of the LFLs is decreasing visits to public libraries, which could provide officials seeking to defund them with evidence that they are no longer relevant or necessary. One LFL steward and avid reader remarked that she had not used her local public library since 2014 because “I was using the Little Free Libraries” (Steward). Academics and librarians must conduct more research to determine what impact, if any, LFLs are having on visits to traditional public libraries. ConclusionLittle Free Libraries across the United States, and increasingly in other countries, have generated discussion, promoted collaboration between neighbours, and led to sharing. In other words, they have built communities. This was the intended consequence of the LFL movement. There, however, has also been unplanned community building in response to municipal threats to the structures due to right of way, safety, and planning ordinances. The more threatening concern is not the municipal ordinances used to block LFL development, but rather the trend of privatisation of publicly provided services. While people are celebrating the community built by the LFLs, caution must be exercised lest central institutions of the public and community, traditional public libraries, be lost. Academics and communities ought to consider not just impact on their local community at the street level, but also wider structural concerns so that communities can foster many “great good places”—the Little Free Libraries and traditional public libraries as well.ReferencesAldrich, Margaret. “Big Milestone for Little Free Library: 50,000 Libraries Worldwide.” Little Free Library. Little Free Library Organization. 4 Nov. 2016. 25 Feb. 2017 <https://littlefreelibrary.org/big-milestone-for-little-free-library-50000-libraries-worldwide/>.Aldrich, Margaret. The Little Free Library Book: Take a Book, Return a Book. Minneapolis, MN: Coffee House Press, 2015.Annoyed Librarian. “How to Protect Little Free Libraries.” Library Journal Blog 9 Jul. 2015. 26 Mar. 2017 <http://lj.libraryjournal.com/blogs/annoyedlibrarian/2015/07/09/how-to-protect-little-free-libraries/>.American Library Association. “Public Library Use.” State of America’s Libraries: A Report from the American Library Association (2015). 25 Feb. 2017 <http://www.ala.org/tools/libfactsheets/alalibraryfactsheet06>.Bauman, Caroline. “‘Little Free Libraries’ Legal in Leawood Thanks to 9-year-old Spencer Collins.” The Kansas City Star 7 Jul. 2014. 25 Feb. 2017 <http://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article687562.html>.Burris, Alexandria. “First Amendment Issues Surface in Little Free Library Case.” Shreveport Times 5 Feb. 2015. 25 Feb. 2017 <http://www.shreveporttimes.com/story/news/local/2015/02/05/expert-use-zoning-law-clashes-first-amendment/22922371/>.Carpentier, Nico. Media and Participation: A Site of Ideological-Democratic Struggle. Bristol: Intellect, 2011.Charter 121. “The World Map.” Little Free Library (2017). 26 Mar. 2017 <https://littlefreelibrary.org/ourmap/>.Charter 1235. “The World Map.” Little Free Library (2017). 26 Mar. 2017 <https://littlefreelibrary.org/ourmap/>.Charter 1309. “The World Map.” Little Free Library (2017). 26 Mar. 2017 <https://littlefreelibrary.org/ourmap/>.Charter 2532. “The World Map.” Little Free Library (2017). 26 Mar. 2017 <https://littlefreelibrary.org/ourmap/>.Charter 2608. “The World Map.” Little Free Library (2017). 26 Mar. 2017 <https://littlefreelibrary.org/ourmap/>.Charter 4369. “The World Map.” Little Free Library (2017). 26 Mar. 2017 <https://littlefreelibrary.org/ourmap/>.Charter 4604. “The World Map.” Little Free Library (2017). 26 Mar. 2017 <https://littlefreelibrary.org/ourmap/>.Charter 4684. “The World Map.” Little Free Library (2017). 26 Mar. 2017 <https://littlefreelibrary.org/ourmap/>.Charter 6219. “The World Map.” Little Free Library (2017). 26 Mar. 2017 <https://littlefreelibrary.org/ourmap/>.Charter 6542. “The World Map.” Little Free Library (2017). 26 Mar. 2017 <https://littlefreelibrary.org/ourmap/>.Charter 6954. “The World Map.” Little Free Library (2017). 26 Mar. 2017 <https://littlefreelibrary.org/ourmap/>.Charter 8212. “The World Map.” Little Free Library (2017). 26 Mar. 2017 <https://littlefreelibrary.org/ourmap/>.Charter 9437. “The World Map.” Little Free Library (2017). 26 Mar. 2017 <https://littlefreelibrary.org/ourmap/>.Charter 9673. “The World Map.” Little Free Library (2017). 26 Mar. 2017 <https://littlefreelibrary.org/ourmap/>.Charter 9702. “The World Map.” Little Free Library (2017). 26 Mar. 2017 <https://littlefreelibrary.org/ourmap/>.Charter 9705. “The World Map.” Little Free Library (2017). 26 Mar. 2017 <https://littlefreelibrary.org/ourmap/>.Charter 10326. “The World Map.” Little Free Library (2017). 26 Mar. 2017 <https://littlefreelibrary.org/ourmap/>.Charter 15981. “The World Map.” Little Free Library (2017). 26 Mar. 2017 <https://littlefreelibrary.org/ourmap/>.Charter 16561. “The World Map.” Little Free Library (2017). 26 Mar. 2017 <https://littlefreelibrary.org/ourmap/>.Charter 16734. “The World Map.” Little Free Library (2017). 26 Mar. 2017 <https://littlefreelibrary.org/ourmap/>.Charter 18677. “The World Map.” Little Free Library (2017). 26 Mar. 2017 <https://littlefreelibrary.org/ourmap/>.Charter 24481. “The World Map.” Little Free Library (2017). 26 Mar. 2017 <https://littlefreelibrary.org/ourmap/>.Charter 27155. “The World Map.” Little Free Library (2017). 26 Mar. 2017 <https://littlefreelibrary.org/ourmap/>.Charter 30369. “The World Map.” Little Free Library (2017). 26 Mar. 2017 <https://littlefreelibrary.org/ourmap/>.Charter 31822. “The World Map.” Little Free Library (2017). 26 Mar. 2017 <https://littlefreelibrary.org/ourmap/>.Charter 41074. “The World Map.” Little Free Library (2017). 26 Mar. 2017 <https://littlefreelibrary.org/ourmap/>.Condes, Yvonne. “Save the Little Library!” MomsLA 10 Aug. 2015. 25 Feb. 2017 <http://momsla.com/save-the-micro-library/>.Dana. “The Tenn-Mann Library Controversy, Part 3.” Read with Dana (30 Jan. 2015). 25 Feb. 2017 <https://readwithdana.wordpress.com/2015/01/30/the-tenn-mann-library-controversy-part-three/>.Everson, Jeff. “An Ordinance to Amend and Reenact Chapter 106 of the Shreveport Code of Ordinances Relative to Outdoor Book Exchange Boxes, and Otherwise Providing with Respect Thereto.” City of Shreveport, Louisiana 9 Oct. 2015. 25 Feb. 2017 <http://ftpcontent4.worldnow.com/ksla/pdf/LFLordinance.pdf>.Ferguson, James. “The Uses of Neoliberalism.” Antipode 41.S1 (2009): 166-84.Findlay-King, Lindsay, Geoff Nichols, Deborah Forbes, and Gordon Macfadyen. “Localism and the Big Society: The Asset Transfer of Leisure Centres and Libraries—Fighting Closures or Empowering Communities.” Leisure Studies (2017): 1-13.Friedersdorf, Conor. “The Danger of Being Neighborly without a Permit.” The Atlantic 20 Feb. 2015. 25 Feb. 2017 <https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/02/little-free-library-crackdown/385531/>.Gans, Herbert J. Deciding What’s News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek, and Time. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2004.“Good Luck Spencer.” Spencer’s Little Free Library Facebook Page 25 Jun. 2014. 26 Mar. 2017 <https://www.facebook.com/Spencerslittlefreelibrary/photos/pcb.527531327376433/527531260709773/?type=3>.Hardenbrook, Joe. “A Little Rant on Little Free Libraries (AKA Probably an Unpopular Post).” Mr. Library Dude (9 Apr. 2014). 25 Feb. 2017 <https://mrlibrarydude.wordpress.com/2014/04/09/a-little-rant-on-little-free-libraries-aka-probably-an-unpopular-post/>.Harper, Deb. “Minutes.” The Leawood City Council 7 Jul. 2014. <http://www.leawood.org/pdf/cc/min/07-07-14.pdf>. Heady, Chris. “City Wants Church to Move Little Library.” Lincoln Journal Star 9 Jul. 2014. 25 Feb. 2017 <http://journalstar.com/news/local/city-wants-church-to-move-little-library/article_7753901a-42cd-5b52-9674-fc54a4d51f47.html>. Herrmann, Gretchen M. “Garage Sales Make Good Neighbors: Building Community through Neighborhood Sales.” Human Organization 62.2 (2006): 181-191.Kellogg, Carolyn. “Officials Threaten to Destroy a Little Free Library in Texas.” Los Angeles Times (1 Oct. 2015). 25 Feb. 2017 <http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-little-free-library-texas-20150930-story.html>.LaCasse, Alexander. “Why Are Some Cities Cracking Down on Little Free Libraries.” Christian Science Monitor (5 Feb. 2015). 25 Feb. 2017 <http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2015/0205/Why-are-some-cities-cracking-down-on-little-free-libraries>.Landman, Ruth H. Creating the Community in the City: Cooperatives and Community Gardens in Washington, DC Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1993. Little Free Library. Little Free Library Organization (2017). 25 Feb. 2017 <https://littlefreelibrary.org/>.Lopez, Steve. “Actor’s Curbside Libraries Is a Smash—for Most People.” LA Times 3 Feb. 2015. 25 Feb. 2017 <http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-0204-lopez-library-20150204-column.html>.Moore, Rowan. Why We Build: Power and Desire in Architecture. New York: Harper Design, 2013.Moss, Laura. “City Zoning Laws Target Little Free Libraries.” Mother Nature Network 25 Aug. 2015. 25 Feb. 2017 <http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/stories/city-zoning-laws-target-little-free-libraries>.National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Average Literacy and Numeracy Scale Scores of 25- to 65-Year Olds, by Sex, Age Group, Highest Level of Educational Attainment, and Country of Other Education System: 2012, table 604.10. 25 Feb. 2017 <https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d15/tables/dt15_604.10.asp?current=yes>.National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Average Prose, Document, and Quantitative Literacy Scores of Adults: 1992 and 2003. National Assessment of Adult Literacy. 25 Feb. 2017 <https://nces.ed.gov/naal/kf_demographics.asp>.Oldenburg, Ray. The Great Good Place: Cafés, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community. New York: Marlowe & Company, 1999.“Our History.” Little Free Library. Little Free Library Organization (2017). 25 Feb. 2017 <https://littlefreelibrary.org/ourhistory/>.Putnam, Robert D. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001.Rumage, Jeff. “Little Free Libraries Now Allowed in Whitefish Bay.” Whitefish Bay Patch (8 May 2013). 25 Feb. 2017 <http://patch.com/wisconsin/whitefishbay/little-free-libraries-now-allowed-in-whitefish-bay>.Sanburn, Josh. “What Do Kansas and Nebraska Have against Small Libraries?” Time 10 Jul. 2014. 25 Feb. 2017 <http://time.com/2970649/tiny-libraries-violating-city-ordinances/>.Schaub, Michael. “Little Free Libraries on the Wrong Side of the Law.” LA Times 4 Feb. 2015. 25 Feb. 2017 <http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-little-free-libraries-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-law-20150204-story.html>.Shumaker, David. “Public Libraries, Little Free Libraries, and Embedded Librarians.” The Embedded Librarian (28 April 2014) 26 Mar. 2017 <https://embeddedlibrarian.com/2014/04/28/public-libraries-little-free-libraries-and-embedded-librarians/>.Siegel, Julie. “An Ordinance to Amend Section 16.13 of the Municipal Code with Regard to Exempt Certain Little Free Libraries from Front Yard Setback Requirements.” Village of Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin (5 Aug. 2013).Skogan, Wesley G. Police and Community in Chicago: A Tale of Three Cities. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.Solomon, Dan. “Dallas Is Regulating ‘Little Free Libraries’ for Some Reason.” Texas Monthly (14 Sept. 2016). 25 Feb. 2017 <http://www.texasmonthly.com/the-daily-post/dallas-regulating-little-free-libraries-reason/>.“Spencer’s Little Free Library.” Facebook 15 Jul. 2014. 25 Feb. 2017 <https://www.facebook.com/Spencerslittlefreelibrary/photos/pcb.527531327376433/527531260709773/?type=3>.Steward, M. Personal Interview. 7 Feb. 2017.Stingl, Jim. “Village Slaps Endnote on Little Libraries.” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 11 Nov. 2012: 1B, 7B.Streitfeld, David. “Anger as a Private Company Takes over Libraries.” The New York Times (26 Sept. 2010). 25 Feb. 2017 <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/business/27libraries.html>.Svehla, Louise. “Little Free Libraries—The Possibilities Are Endless.” Public Libraries Online (8 Mar. 2013). 25 Feb. 2017 <http://publiclibrariesonline.org/2013/03/little-free-libraries-the-possibilities-are-endless/>.Tapper, Jake. “Boy Fights Council to Save His Library.” CNN 4 Jul. 2014. 25 Feb. 2017 <http://thelead.blogs.cnn.com/2014/07/04/boy-fights-to-save-his-library/>.Topil, Greg. “Little Free Libraries in Lincoln.” City of Lincoln, Nebraska (n.d.). 25 Feb. 2017 <http://lincoln.ne.gov/City/pworks/engine/row/little-library.htm>.

The focus of this survey is to investigate the status of secondary school libraries in Bangladesh. From the online survey, 91 responses were received. In general, the survey revealed that a significant number of secondary schools have a school library but lack of reading materials and inadequate funding are common. Most of the school libraries provide traditional services such as book lending, in-house book and newspaper reading and only a few have ICT facilities and services, for example, computer, internet and online catalogue search. The finding of this survey has original value and suggestions may help to resolve issues that may adversely impact school library development in Bangladesh.

Durham University's Sudan Archive was founded in 1957 by former members of the Sudan Government under the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium, and by staff from Durham University, including the first director of the Oriental Museum, T.W. Thacker (Cory & Forbes 1983). Since the initial call for donations, the Sudan Archive has now collected 800 boxes of documents and photographs, mainly from former Sudan Government officials. This material now forms an integral part of Durham University Library's special collections (Sudan Archive Catalogue). The archive holds a wide variety of documents, from personal communications and photographs, to official reports mainly pertaining to political and social issues from early twentieth-century Sudan and neighbouring countries. It also includes a wealth of material relevant to the archaeology of both the Sudan and neighbouring countries (e.g. Egypt, Israel, Syria) (Figure 1), yet only a limited amount of the potentially relevant material has been used by archaeologists. The Sudan Archive remains a largely untapped resource for archaeological research. This situation is probably to be explained partly by the description of the archive as a historical and political collection; moreover, a search of the existing catalogue for the term ‘archaeology’ returns only four results, whereas about 700 documents are directly relevant to the subject. An additional problem is that the spellings of both archaeological sites and locations are inconsistent; for example, Meroë also appears asMeroe, MeroweandBakarwiyyeh. To remedy these issues and to make the material more accessible, a recent project has identified over 1000 individual references to archaeological sites or themes and catalogued them in a database (Figure 2).

German-speaking naturalists working in southeastern Australia in the mid-19th century relied heavily on the expertise of First Nations intermediaries who acted as guides, collectors, traders and translators (Clarke 2008, Olsen and Russell 2019). Many of these naturalists went to Australia because of the research opportunities offered by the British Empire at a time when the German nation states did not have colonies of their own. Others sought to escape political upheaval at home. They were welcome employees for colonial government agencies due to their training in the emerging research-oriented natural sciences that the reformed German universities offered at a time when British universities were still providing a broad general education (Home 1995, Kirchberger 2000). Wilhelm von Blandowski (1822–1878 ) and Gerard Krefft (1830–1881 ), who both worked in colonial Victoria and New South Wales, are among this group. Throughout their work, they corresponded extensively with naturalists in Berlin, exchanging specimens and ideas. But the preserved Australian animals, plants and rock samples, as well as the written and drawn records of animals and landscapes now held at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin (MfN), are much more than objects of scientific interest. They also contain information about Australia's First Nations. The collections provide evidence of their role in collecting as well as their knowledge of the natural world, which has long been overlooked and, at least in part deliberately, made invisible by Western knowledge systems (e.g., Das and Lowe 2018, Ashby 2020). People data have been recognised as crucial for linking such collection objects with expeditions, publications, archival material and correspondence (Groom et al. 2020, Groom et al. 2022). It can thus potentially help reconstruct invisibilized Indigenous histories and knowledge. However, while the MfN keeps information about European collectors and other non-indigenous agents associated with their specimens in internal catalogues, databases and wikis, Indigenous actors remain largely absent from these repositories, which reproduce the colonial archive 'along the archival grain' (Stoler 2009). With this in mind, we discuss in our presentation the complexities of using persistent identifiers and tools, such as Wikidata, to improve the integration and linkage of people data in the work currently being undertaken by the MfN and the Berlin's Australian Archive project to digitise and make accessible the museum’s collections. Drawing upon the guidance provided by the FAIR*1 and CARE*2 principles for data (Wilkinson et al. 2016, Carroll et al. 2020), and learning from the 2012 ATSILIRN Protocols for Libraries, Archives and Information Services*3, the 2019 Tandanya Adelaide Declaration and the 2020 AIATSIS Code of Ethics*4, we address the potential of these efforts in terms of collection accessibility, and also highlight the challenges and limitations of this approach in the context of colonial collections.

Special Care NoticeThis article discusses trauma and violence inflicted upon the Indigenous peoples of Tasmania through the processes of colonisation. Content within this article may be distressing to some readers. IntroductionThis article looks briefly at the collection, consultation, and digital sharing of stories essential to the histories of the First Nations peoples of Australia. Focusing on materials held in Sydney, New South Wales two case studies—the object known as the Proclamation Board and the George Augustus Robinson Papers—explore how materials can be shared with Aboriginal peoples of the region now known as Tasmania. Specifically, the authors of this article (a Palawa man and an Australian woman of European descent) ask how can the idea of the privileging of Indigenous voices, within Eurocentric cultural collections, be transformed from rhetoric to reality? Moreover, how can we navigate this complex work, that is made even more problematic by distance, through the utilisation of knowledge networks which are geographically isolated from the collections holding stories crucial to Indigenous communities? In seeking to answer these important questions, this article looks at how cultural, emotional, and intellectual ownership can be divested from the physical ownership of a collection in a way that repatriates—appropriately and sensitively—stories of Aboriginal Australia and of colonisation. Holding Stories, Not Always Our OwnCultural institutions, including libraries, have, in recent years, been drawn into discussions centred on the notion of digital disruption and “that transformative shift which has seen the ongoing realignment of business resources, relationships, knowledge, and value both facilitating the entry of previously impossible ideas and accelerating the competitive impact of those same impossible ideas” (Franks and Ensor n.p.). As Molly Brown has noted, librarians “are faced, on a daily basis, with rapidly changing technology and the ways in which our patrons access and use information. Thus, we need to look at disruptive technologies as opportunities” (n.p.). Some innovations, including the transition from card catalogues to online catalogues and the provision of a wide range of electronic resources, are now considered to be business as usual for most institutions. So, too, the digitisation of great swathes of materials to facilitate access to collections onsite and online, with digitising primary sources seen as an intermediary between the pillars of preserving these materials and facilitating access for those who cannot, for a variety of logistical and personal reasons, travel to a particular repository where a collection is held.The result has been the development of hybrid collections: that is, collections that can be accessed in both physical and digital formats. Yet, the digitisation processes conducted by memory institutions is often selective. Limited resources, even for large-scale digitisation projects usually only realise outcomes that focus on making visually rich, key, or canonical documents, or those documents that are considered high use and at risk, available online. Such materials are extracted from the larger full body of records while other lesser-known components are often omitted. Digitisation projects therefore tend to be devised for a broader audience where contextual questions are less central to the methodology in favour of presenting notable or famous documents online only. Documents can be profiled as an exhibition separate from their complete collection and, critically, their wider context. Libraries of course are not neutral spaces and this practice of (re)enforcing the canon through digitisation is a challenge that cultural institutions, in partnerships, need to address (Franks and Ensor n.p.). Indeed, our digital collections are as affected by power relationships and the ongoing impacts of colonisation as our physical collections. These power relationships can be seen through an organisation’s “processes that support acquisitions, as purchases and as the acceptance of artefacts offered as donations. Throughout such processes decisions are continually made (consciously and unconsciously) that affect what is presented and actively promoted as the official history” (Thorpe et al. 8). While it is important to acknowledge what we do collect, it is equally important to look, too, at what we do not collect and to consider how we continually privilege and exclude stories. Especially when these stories are not always our own, but are held, often as accidents of collecting. For example, an item comes in as part of a larger suite of materials while older, city-based institutions often pre-date regional repositories. An essential point here is that cultural institutions can often become comfortable in what they collect, building on existing holdings. This, in turn, can lead to comfortable digitisation. If we are to be truly disruptive, we need to embrace feeling uncomfortable in what we do, and we need to view digitisation as an intervention opportunity; a chance to challenge what we ‘know’ about our collections. This is especially relevant in any attempts to decolonise collections.Case Study One: The Proclamation BoardThe first case study looks at an example of re-digitisation. One of the seven Proclamation Boards known to survive in a public collection is held by the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, having been purchased from Tasmanian collector and photographer John Watt Beattie (1859–1930) in May 1919 for £30 (Morris 86). Why, with so much material to digitise—working in a program of limited funds and time—would the Library return to an object that has already been privileged? Unanswered questions and advances in digitisation technologies, created a unique opportunity. For the First Peoples of Van Diemen’s Land (now known as Tasmania), colonisation by the British in 1803 was “an emotionally, intellectually, physically, and spiritually confronting series of encounters” (Franks n.p.). Violent incidents became routine and were followed by a full-scale conflict, often referred to as the Black War (Clements 1), or more recently as the Tasmanian War, fought from the 1820s until 1832. Image 1: Governor Arthur’s Proclamation to the Aborigines, ca. 1828–1830. Image Credit: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Call No.: SAFE / R 247.Behind the British combatants were various support staff, including administrators and propagandists. One of the efforts by the belligerents, behind the front line, to win the war and bring about peace was the production of approximately 100 Proclamation Boards. These four-strip pictograms were the result of a scheme introduced by Lieutenant Governor George Arthur (1784–1854), on the advice of Surveyor General George Frankland (1800–38), to communicate that all are equal under the rule of law (Arthur 1). Frankland wrote to Arthur in early 1829 to suggest these Proclamation Boards could be produced and nailed to trees (Morris 84), as a Eurocentric adaptation of a traditional method of communication used by Indigenous peoples who left images on the trunks of trees. The overtly stated purpose of the Boards was, like the printed proclamations exhorting peace, to assert, all people—black and white—were equal. That “British Justice would protect” everyone (Morris 84). The first strip on each of these pictogram Boards presents Indigenous peoples and colonists living peacefully together. The second strip shows “a conciliatory handshake between the British governor and an Aboriginal ‘chief’, highly reminiscent of images found in North America on treaty medals and anti-slavery tokens” (Darian-Smith and Edmonds 4). The third and fourth strips depict the repercussions for committing murder (or, indeed, any significant crime), with an Indigenous man hanged for spearing a colonist and a European man hanged for shooting an Aboriginal man. Both men executed in the presence of the Lieutenant Governor. The Boards, oil on Huon pine, were painted by “convict artists incarcerated in the island penal colony” (Carroll 73).The Board at the State Library of New South Wales was digitised quite early on in the Library’s digitisation program, it has been routinely exhibited (including for the Library’s centenary in 2010) and is written about regularly. Yet, many questions about this small piece of timber remain unanswered. For example, some Boards were outlined with sketches and some were outlined with pouncing, “a technique [of the Italian Renaissance] of pricking the contours of a drawing with a pin. Charcoal was then dusted on to the drawing” (Carroll 75–76). Could such a sketch or example of pouncing be seen beneath the surface layers of paint on this particular Board? What might be revealed by examining the Board more closely and looking at this object in different ways?An important, but unexpected, discovery was that while most of the pigments in the painting correlate with those commonly available to artists in the early nineteenth century there is one outstanding anomaly. X-ray analysis revealed cadmium yellow present in several places across the painting, including the dresses of the little girls in strip one, uniform details in strip two, and the trousers worn by the settler men in strips three and four (Kahabka 2). This is an extraordinary discovery, as cadmium yellows were available “commercially as an artist pigment in England by 1846” and were shown by “Winsor & Newton at the 1851 Exhibition held at the Crystal Palace, London” (Fiedler and Bayard 68). The availability of this particular type of yellow in the early 1850s could set a new marker for the earliest possible date for the manufacture of this Board, long-assumed to be 1828–30. Further, the early manufacture of cadmium yellow saw the pigment in short supply and a very expensive option when compared with other pigments such as chrome yellow (the darker yellow, seen in the grid lines that separate the scenes in the painting). This presents a clearly uncomfortable truth in relation to an object so heavily researched and so significant to a well-regarded collection that aims to document much of Australia’s colonial history. Is it possible, for example, the Board has been subjected to overpainting at a later date? Or, was this premium paint used to produce a display Board that was sent, by the Tasmanian Government, to the 1866 Intercolonial Exhibition in Melbourne? In seeking to see the finer details of the painting through re-digitisation, the results were much richer than anticipated. The sketch outlines are clearly visible in the new high-resolution files. There are, too, details unable to be seen clearly with the naked eye, including this warrior’s headdress and ceremonial scarring on his stomach, scars that tell stories “of pain, endurance, identity, status, beauty, courage, sorrow or grief” (Australian Museum n.p.). The image of this man has been duplicated and distributed since the 1830s, an anonymous figure deployed to tell a settler-centric story of the Black, or Tasmanian, War. This man can now be seen, for the first time nine decades later, to wear his own story. We do not know his name, but he is no longer completely anonymous. This image is now, in some ways, a portrait. The State Library of New South Wales acknowledges this object is part of an important chapter in the Tasmanian story and, though two Boards are in collections in Tasmania (the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart and the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston), each Board is different. The Library holds an important piece of a large and complex puzzle and has a moral obligation to make this information available beyond its metropolitan location. Digitisation, in this case re-digitisation, is allowing for the disruption of this story in sparking new questions around provenance and for the relocating of a Palawa warrior to a more prominent, perhaps even equal role, within a colonial narrative. Image 2: Detail, Governor Arthur’s Proclamation to the Aborigines, ca. 1828–1830. Image Credit: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Call No.: SAFE / R 247.Case Study Two: The George Augustus Robinson PapersThe second case study focuses on the work being led by the Indigenous Engagement Branch at the State Library of New South Wales on the George Augustus Robinson (1791–1866) Papers. In 1829, Robinson was granted a government post in Van Diemen’s Land to ‘conciliate’ with the Palawa peoples. More accurately, Robinson’s core task was dispossession and the systematic disconnection of the Palawa peoples from their Country, community, and culture. Robinson was a habitual diarist and notetaker documenting much of his own life as well as the lives of those around him, including First Nations peoples. His extensive suite of papers represents a familiar and peculiar kind of discomfort for Aboriginal Australians, one in which they are forced to learn about themselves through the eyes and words of their oppressors. For many First Nations peoples of Tasmania, Robinson remains a violent and terrible figure, but his observations of Palawa culture and language are as vital as they are problematic. Importantly, his papers include vibrant and utterly unique descriptions of people, place, flora and fauna, and language, as well as illustrations revealing insights into the routines of daily life (even as those routines were being systematically dismantled by colonial authorities). “Robinson’s records have informed much of the revitalisation of Tasmanian Aboriginal culture in the twentieth century and continue to provide the basis for investigations of identity and deep relationships to land by Aboriginal scholars” (Lehman n.p.). These observations and snippets of lived culture are of immense value to Palawa peoples today but the act of reading between Robinson’s assumptions and beyond his entrenched colonial views is difficult work.Image 3: George Augustus Robinson Papers, 1829–34. Image Credit: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, A 7023–A 7031.The canonical reference for Robinson’s archive is Friendly Mission: The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson, 1829–1834, edited by N.J.B. Plomley. The volume of over 1,000 pages was first published in 1966. This large-scale project is recognised “as a monumental work of Tasmanian history” (Crane ix). Yet, this standard text (relied upon by Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers) has clearly not reproduced a significant percentage of Robinson’s Tasmanian manuscripts. Through his presumptuous truncations Plomley has not simply edited Robinson’s work but has, quite literally, written many Palawa stories out of this colonial narrative. It is this lack of agency in determining what should be left out that is most troubling, and reflects an all-too-familiar approach which libraries, including the State Library of New South Wales, are now urgently trying to rectify. Plomley’s preface and introduction does not indicate large tranches of information are missing. Indeed, Plomley specifies “that in extenso [in full] reproduction was necessary” (4) and omissions “have been kept to a minimum” (8). A 32-page supplement was published in 1971. A new edition, including the supplement, some corrections made by Plomley, and some extra material was released in 2008. But much continues to be unknown outside of academic circles, and far too few Palawa Elders and language revival workers have had access to Robinson’s original unfiltered observations. Indeed, Plomley’s text is linear and neat when compared to the often-chaotic writings of Robinson. Digitisation cannot address matters of the materiality of the archive, but such projects do offer opportunities for access to information in its original form, unedited, and unmediated.Extensive consultation with communities in Tasmania is underpinning the digitisation and re-description of a collection which has long been assumed—through partial digitisation, microfilming, and Plomley’s text—to be readily available and wholly understood. Central to this project is not just challenging the canonical status of Plomley’s work but directly challenging the idea non-Aboriginal experts can truly understand the cultural or linguistic context of the information recorded in Robinson’s journals. One of the more exciting outcomes, so far, has been working with Palawa peoples to explore the possibility of Palawa-led transcriptions and translation, and not breaking up the tasks of this work and distributing them to consultants or to non-Indigenous student groups. In this way, people are being meaningfully reunited with their own histories and, crucially, given first right to contextualise and understand these histories. Again, digitisation and disruption can be seen here as allies with the facilitation of accessibility to an archive in ways that re-distribute the traditional power relations around interpreting and telling stories held within colonial-rich collections.Image 4: Detail, George Augustus Robinson Papers, 1829–34. Image Credit: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, A 7023–A 7031.As has been so brilliantly illustrated by Bruce Pascoe’s recent work Dark Emu (2014), when Aboriginal peoples are given the opportunity to interpret their own culture from the colonial records without interference, they are able to see strength and sophistication rather than victimhood. For, to “understand how the Europeans’ assumptions selectively filtered the information brought to them by the early explorers is to see how we came to have the history of the country we accept today” (4). Far from decrying these early colonial records Aboriginal peoples understand their vital importance in connecting to a culture which was dismantled and destroyed, but importantly it is known that far too much is lost in translation when Aboriginal Australians are not the ones undertaking the translating. ConclusionFor Aboriginal Australians, culture and knowledge is no longer always anchored to Country. These histories, once so firmly connected to communities through their ancestral lands and languages, have been dispersed across the continent and around the world. Many important stories—of family history, language, and ways of life—are held in cultural institutions and understanding the role of responsibly disseminating these collections through digitisation is paramount. In transitioning from physical collections to hybrid collections of the physical and digital, the digitisation processes conducted by memory institutions can be—and due to the size of some collections is inevitably—selective. Limited resources, even for large-scale and well-resourced digitisation projects usually realise outcomes that focus on making visually rich, key, or canonical documents, or those documents considered high use or at risk, available online. Such materials are extracted from a full body of records. Digitisation projects, as noted, tend to be devised for a broader audience where contextual questions are less central to the methodology in favour of presenting notable documents online, separate from their complete collection and, critically, their context. Our institutions carry the weight of past collecting strategies and, today, the pressure of digitisation strategies as well. Contemporary librarians should not be gatekeepers, but rather key holders. In collaborating across sectors and with communities we open doors for education, research, and the repatriation of culture and knowledge. We must, always, remember to open these doors wide: the call of Aboriginal Australians of ‘nothing about us without us’ is not an invitation to collaboration but an imperative. Libraries—as well as galleries, archives, and museums—cannot tell these stories alone. Also, these two case studies highlight what we believe to be one of the biggest mistakes that not just libraries but all cultural institutions are vulnerable to making, the assumption that just because a collection is open access it is also accessible. Digitisation projects are more valuable when communicated, contextualised and—essentially—the result of community consultation. Such work can, for some, be uncomfortable while for others it offers opportunities to embrace disruption and, by extension, opportunities to decolonise collections. For First Nations peoples this work can be more powerful than any simple measurement tool can record. Through examining our past collecting, deliberate efforts to consult, and through digital sharing projects across metropolitan and regional Australia, we can make meaningful differences to the ways in which Aboriginal Australians can, again, own their histories.Acknowledgements The authors acknowledge the Palawa peoples: the traditional custodians of the lands known today as Tasmania. The authors acknowledge, too, the Gadigal people upon whose lands this article was researched and written. We are indebted to Dana Kahabka (Conservator), Joy Lai (Imaging Specialist), Richard Neville (Mitchell Librarian), and Marika Duczynski (Project Officer) at the State Library of New South Wales. Sincere thanks are also given to Jason Ensor of Western Sydney University.ReferencesArthur, George. “Proclamation.” The Hobart Town Courier 19 Apr. 1828: 1.———. Proclamation to the Aborigines. Graphic Materials. Sydney: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, SAFE R / 247, ca. 1828–1830.Australian Museum. “Aboriginal Scarification.” 2018. 11 Jan. 2019 <https://australianmuseum.net.au/about/history/exhibitions/body-art/aboriginal-scarification/>.Brown, Molly. “Disruptive Technology: A Good Thing for Our Libraries?” International Librarians Network (2016). 26 Aug. 2018 <https://interlibnet.org/2016/11/25/disruptive-technology-a-good-thing-for-our-libraries/>.Carroll, Khadija von Zinnenburg. Art in the Time of Colony: Empires and the Making of the Modern World, 1650–2000. Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2014.Clements, Nicholas. The Black War: Fear, Sex and Resistance in Tasmania. St Lucia, U of Queensland P, 2014.Crane, Ralph. “Introduction.” Friendly Mission: The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson, 1829-1834. 2nd ed. Launceston and Hobart: Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, and Quintus Publishing, 2008. ix.Darian-Smith, Kate, and Penelope Edmonds. “Conciliation on Colonial Frontiers.” Conciliation on Colonial Frontiers: Conflict, Performance and Commemoration in Australia and the Pacific Rim. Eds. Kate Darian-Smith and Penelope Edmonds. New York: Routledge, 2015. 1–14.Edmonds, Penelope. “‘Failing in Every Endeavour to Conciliate’: Governor Arthur’s Proclamation Boards to the Aborigines, Australian Conciliation Narratives and Their Transnational Connections.” Journal of Australian Studies 35.2 (2011): 201–18.Fiedler, Inge, and Michael A. Bayard. Artist Pigments, a Handbook of Their History and Characteristics. Ed. Robert L. Feller. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986. 65–108. Franks, Rachel. “A True Crime Tale: Re-Imagining Governor Arthur’s Proclamation Board for the Tasmanian Aborigines.” M/C Journal 18.6 (2015). 1 Feb. 2019 <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/1036>.Franks, Rachel, and Jason Ensor. “Challenging the Canon: Collaboration, Digitisation and Education.” ALIA Online: A Conference of the Australian Library and Information Association, 11–15 Feb. 2019, Sydney.Kahabka, Dana. Condition Assessment [Governor Arthur’s Proclamation to the Aborigines, ca. 1828–1830, SAFE / R247]. Sydney: State Library of New South Wales, 2017.Lehman, Greg. “Pleading Robinson: Reviews of Friendly Mission: The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson (2008) and Reading Robinson: Companion Essays to Friendly Mission (2008).” Australian Humanities Review 49 (2010). 1 May 2019 <http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p41961/html/review-12.xhtml?referer=1294&page=15>. Morris, John. “Notes on A Message to the Tasmanian Aborigines in 1829, popularly called ‘Governor Davey’s Proclamation to the Aborigines, 1816’.” Australiana 10.3 (1988): 84–7.Pascoe, Bruce. Dark Emu. Broome: Magabala Books, 2014/2018.Plomley, N.J.B. Friendly Mission: The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson, 1829–1834. Hobart: Tasmanian Historical Research Association, 1966.Robinson, George Augustus. Papers. Textual Records. Sydney: Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW, A 7023–A 7031, 1829–34. Thorpe, Kirsten, Monica Galassi, and Rachel Franks. “Discovering Indigenous Australian Culture: Building Trusted Engagement in Online Environments.” Journal of Web Librarianship 10.4 (2016): 343–63.

A study that aimed to identify the perceptions, habits and uses of information by students at a public university in Brazil is presented. A questionnaire composed of nine questions was disseminated online via the social network Facebook, and 216 completed questionnaires were returned. The results do not differ much from those found in other countries among university students, and in general, show a striking preference for information in digital format, and that which is mostly accessed by searches conducted from Google and Google Scholar search engines. There is a concomitant and striking neglect in the use of library catalogs, printed information sources, and even the high quality reference databases to which university students have access subsidized by the Brazilian government. A lack of familiarity with the terms used to describe information sources was identified, implying that the relationship between the use of Google Scholar and digital repositories is unknown, and most respondents pointed to the directions of their teachers as the "quality filter" for information and they do not have their own mechanisms for evaluating it. The use made of the university library by the respondents is limited, and there is a worrying lack of awareness of the roles and potential contributions of librarians.

IntroductionIn regional Australia and New Zealand, museums and art galleries are increasingly becoming primary sites of cultural engagement. They are one of the key tourist attractions for regional towns and expected to generate much needed tourism revenue. In 2017 in New South Wales alone, there were three million visitors to regional galleries and museums (MGNSW 13). However, apart from those (partially) funded by local councils, they are often run on donations, good will, and the enthusiasm of volunteers. Regional museums and galleries provide some paid, and more unpaid, employment for ageing populations. While two-thirds of Australia’s population lives in capital cities, the remainder who live in regional towns are likely to be in the 60+ age cohort because people are choosing to retire away from the bustling, growing cities (ABS). At last count, there were about 3000 museums and galleries in Australia with about 80% of them located in regional areas (Scott). Over the last 40 years, this figure has tripled from the 1000 regional and provincial museums estimated by Peter Piggott in his 1975 report (24). According to a 2014 survey (Shaw and Davidson), New Zealand has about 470 museums and galleries and about 70% are located outside capital cities. The vast majority, 85%, have less than five, full-time paid staff, and more than half of these were run entirely by ageing volunteers. They are entrusted with managing the vast majority of the history and heritage collections of Australia and New Zealand. These ageing volunteers need a diverse range of skills and experience to care for and interpret collections. How do you find the time and budget for professional development for both paid staff and volunteers? Many professional development events are held in capital cities, which are often a significant distance from the regional museum—this adds substantially to the costs of attending and the time commitment required to get there. In addition, it is not uncommon for people working in regional museums to be responsible for everything—from security, collection management, conservation, research, interpretation and public programs to changing the light bulbs. While there are a large number of resources available online, following a manual is often more difficult than learning from other colleagues or learning in a more formal educational or vocational environment where you can receive timely feedback on your work. Further, a foundational level of prior knowledge and experience is often required to follow written instructions. This article will suggest some strategies for low cost professional development and networking. It involves planning, thinking strategically and forming partnerships with others in the region. It is time to harness the power of modern communications technology and use it as a tool for professional development. Some models of professional development in regional areas that have been implemented in the past will also be reviewed. The focus for this article is on training and professional development for workers in regional museums, heritage sites and keeping places. Regional art galleries have not been included because they tend to have separate regional networks and training opportunities. For example, there are professional development opportunities provided through the Art Galleries Association of Australia and their state branches. Regional galleries are also far more likely to have one or more paid staff members (Winkworth, “Fixing the Slums” 2). Regional Museums, Volunteers, and Social CapitalIt is widely accepted that regional museums and galleries enhance social capital and reduce social isolation (Kelly 32; Burton and Griffin 328). However, while working in a regional museum or gallery can help to build friendship networks, it can also be professionally isolating. How do you benchmark what you do against other places if you are two or more hours drive from those places? How do you learn from other colleagues if all your colleagues are also isolated by the ‘tyranny of distance’ and struggling with the same lack of access to training? In 2017 in New South Wales alone, there were 8,629 active volunteers working in regional museums and galleries giving almost five million hours, which Museums and Galleries NSW calculated was worth over $150 million per annum in unpaid labour (MGNSW 1). Providing training and professional development to this group is an investment in Australia’s social and cultural capital.Unlike other community-run groups, the museums and heritage places which have emerged in regional Australia and New Zealand are not part of a national or state branch network. Volunteers who work for the Red Cross, Scouts or Landcare benefit from being part of a national organisation which provides funding, support workers, a website, governance structure, marketing, political advocacy and training (Winkworth, “Let a Thousand Flowers” 11). In Australia and New Zealand, this role is undertaken by the Australian Museums and Galleries Association AMaGA (formerly Museums Australia) and Museums Aotearoa respectively. However, both of these groups operate at the macro policy level, for example organising annual conferences, publishing a journal and developing Indigenous policy frameworks, rather than the local, practical level. In 1995, due to their advocacy work, Landcare Australia received $500 million over five years from the federal government to fund 5000 Landcare groups, which are run by 120,000 volunteers (Oppenheimer 177). They argued successfully that the sustainable development of land resources started at the local level. What do we need to do to convince government of the need for sustainable development of our local and regional museum and heritage resources?Training for Volunteers Working in Regional Museums: The Current SituationAnother barrier to training for regional museum workers is the assumption that the 70:20:10 model of professional development should apply. That is, 70% of one’s professional development is done ‘on the job’ by completing tasks and problem-solving; 20% is achieved by learning from mentors, coaches and role models and 10% is learnt from attending conferences and symposia and enrolling in formal courses of study. However, this model pre-supposes that there are people in your workplace whom you can learn from and who can show you how to complete a task, and that you are not destroying or damaging a precious, unique object if you happen to make a mistake.Some museum volunteers come with skills in research, marketing, administration, customer service or photography, but very few come with specific museum skills like writing exhibition text, registering an acquisition or conserving artefacts. These skills need to be taught. As Kylie Winkworth has written, museum management now requires a [...] skills set, which is not so readily found in small communities, and which in many ways is less rewarding for the available volunteers, who may have left school at 15. We do not expect volunteer librarians to catalogue books, which are in any case of low intrinsic value, but we still expect volunteers in their 70s and 80s to catalogue irreplaceable heritage collections and meet ever more onerous museum standards. That so many volunteers manage to do this is extraordinary. (“Let a Thousand Flowers” 13)Workers in regional museums are constantly required to step outside their comfort zones and learn new skills with minimal professional support. While these challenging experiences can be very rewarding, they are also potentially damaging for our irreplaceable material cultural heritage.Training for museum professionals has been on the agenda of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) since 1947 (Boylan 62). However, until 1996, their work focused on recommending curricula for new museum professionals and did not include life-long learning and on-going professional development. ICOM’s International Committee for the Training of Personnel (ICTOP) and the ICOM Executive has responded to this in their new curricula—ICOM Curricula Guidelines for Professional Museum Development, but this does not address the difficulties staff or volunteers working in regional areas face in accessing training.In some parts of Australia, there are regional support and professional development programs in place. For example, in Queensland, there is the Museum Development Officer (MDO) network. However, because of the geographic size of the state and the spread of the museums, these five regionally based staff often have 60-80 museums or keeping places in their region needing support and so their time and expertise is spread very thinly. It is also predominantly a fee-for-service arrangement. That is, the museums have to pay for the MDO to come and deliver training. Usually this is done by the MDO working with a local museum to apply for a Regional Arts Development Fund (RADF) grant. In Victoria there is a roving curator program where eligible regional museums can apply to have a professional curator come and work with them for a few days to help the volunteers curate exhibitions. The roving curator can also provide advice on “develop[ing] high quality exhibitions for diverse audiences” via email, telephone and networking events. Tasmania operates a similar scheme but their two roving curators are available for up to 25 days of work each year with eligible museums, provided the local council makes a financial contribution. The New South Wales government supports the museum advisor program through which a museum professional will come to your museum for up to 20 days/year to give advice and hands-on training—provided your local council pays $7000, an amount that is matched by the state government—for this service. In 2010, in response to recommendations in the Dunn Report (2007), the Collections Council of Australia (CCA) established a pilot project with the City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder in Western Australia and $120,000 in funding from the Myer Foundation to trial the provision of a paid Collections Care Coordinator who would provide free training, expertise and support to local museums in the region. Tragically, CCA was de-funded by the Cultural Ministers Council the same year and the roll-out of a hub and spoke regional model was not supported by government due to the lack of an evidence base (Winkworth, “Let a Thousand Flowers” 18). An evaluation of the trial project would have tested a different model of regional training and added to the evidence base.All these state-based models (except the aborted Collections Care hub in Western Australia) require small regional museums to compete with each other for access to a museum professional and to successfully apply for funding, usually from their local council or state government. If they are successful, the training that is delivered is a one-off, as they are unlikely to get a second slice of the regional pie.An alternative to this competitive, fly-in fly-out, one-off model of professional development is to harness the technology and resources of local libraries and other cultural facilities in regional areas. This is what the Sydney Opera House Trust did in March 2019 to deliver their All about Women program of speakers via live streaming to 37 satellite sites throughout Australia and New Zealand.Harnessing Technology and Using Regional Library Infrastructure to Provide Training: ScenarioImagine the following scenario. It is a Monday morning in a regional library in Dubbo, New South Wales. Dubbo is 391 km or five hours drive by car from the nearest capital city (Sydney) and there are 50 regional museums within a 100 km radius. Ten people are gathered in a meeting room at the library watching a live stream of the keynote speakers who are presenting at their national museums conference. They are from five regional museums where they work as volunteers or part-time paid staff. They cannot afford to pay $2000, or more, to attend the conference, but they are happy to self-fund to drive for an hour or two to link up with other colleagues to listen to the presentations. They make notes and tweet in their questions using the conference twitter handle and hashtag. They have not been exposed to international speakers in the industry before and the ideas presented are fresh and stimulating. When the conference breaks for morning tea, they take a break too and get to know each other over a cuppa (provided free of charge by the library). Just as the networking sessions at conferences are vitally important for the delegates, they are even more important to address social isolation amongst this group. When they reconvene, they discuss their questions and agree to email the presenters with the questions that are unresolved. After the conference keynote sessions finish, the main conference (in the capital city) disperses into parallel sessions, which are no longer available via live stream.To make the two-hour drive more worthwhile and continue their professional development, they have arranged to hold a significance assessment workshop as well. Each museum worker has brought along photographs of one item in their collection that they want to do more research on. Some of them have also brought the object, if it is small and robust enough to travel. They have downloaded copies of Significance 2.0 and read it before they arrived. They started to write significance reports but could not fully understand how to apply some of the criteria. They cannot afford to pay for professional workshop facilitators, but they have arranged for the local studies librarian to give them an hour of free training on using the library’s resources (online and onsite) to do research on the local area and local families. They learn more about Trove, Papers Past and other research tools which are available online. This is hands-on and computer-based skills training using their own laptops/tablets or the ones provided by the library. After the training with the librarian, they break into two groups and read each other’s significance reports and make suggestions. The day finishes with a cuppa at 2.30pm giving them time to drive home before the sun sets. They agree to exchange email addresses so they can keep in touch. All the volunteers and staff who attended these sessions in regional areas feel energised after these meetings. They no longer feel so isolated and like they are working in the dark. They feel supported just knowing that there are other people who are struggling with the same issues and constraints as they are. They are sick of talking about the lack of budget, expertise, training and resources and want to do something with what they have.Bert (fictional name) decides that it is worth capitalising on this success. He emails the people who came to the session in Dubbo to ask them if they would like to do it again but focus on some different training needs. He asks them to choose two of the following three professional development options. First, they can choose to watch and discuss a recording of the keynote presentations from day two of the recent national conference. The conference organisers have uploaded digital recordings of the speakers’ presentations and the question time to the AMaGA website. This is an option for local libraries that do not have sufficient bandwidth to live stream video. The local library technician will help them cast the videos to a large screen. Second, they can each bring an object from their museum collection that they think needs conservation work. If the item is too fragile or big to move, they will bring digital photographs of it instead. Bert consulted their state-based museum and found some specialist conservators who have agreed to Skype or Facetime them in Dubbo free of charge, to give them expert advice about how to care for their objects, and most importantly, what not to do. The IT technician at Dubbo Library can set up their meeting room so that they can cast the Skype session onto a large smart screen TV. One week before the event, they will send a list of their objects and photographs of them to the conservator so that she can prepare, and they can make best use of her time. After this session, they will feel more confident about undertaking small cleaning and flattening treatments and know when they should not attempt a treatment themselves and need to call on the experts. Third, they could choose to have a training session with the council’s grants officer on writing grant applications. As he assesses grant applications, he can tell them what local councils look for in a successful grant application. He can also inform them about some of the grants that might be relevant to them. After the formal training, there will be an opportunity for them to exchange information about the grants they have applied for in the past—sometimes finding out what’s available can be difficult—and work in small groups to critique each other’s grant applications.The group chooses options two and three, as they want more practical skills development. They take a break in the middle of the day for lunch, which gives them the opportunity to exchange anecdotes from their volunteer work and listen to and support each other. They feel validated and affirmed. They have gained new skills and don’t feel so isolated. Before they leave, Alice agrees to get in touch with everyone to organise their next regional training day.Harnessing Technology and Using Regional Library Infrastructure to Provide Training: BenefitsThese scenarios need not be futuristic. The training needs are real, as is the desire to learn and the capacity of libraries to support regional groups. While funding for regional museums has stagnated or declined in recent years, libraries have been surging ahead. In August 2018, the New South Wales Government announced an “historic investment” of $60 million into all 370 public libraries that would “transform the way NSW’s public libraries deliver much-needed services, especially in regional areas” (Smith). Libraries are equipped and charged with the responsibility of enabling local community groups to make best use of their resources. Most state and national museum workers are keen to share their expertise with their regional colleagues: funding and distance are often the only barriers. These scenarios allow national conference keynote speakers to reach a much larger audience than the conference attendees. While this strategy might reduce the number of workers from regional areas who pay to attend conferences, the reality is that due to distance, other volunteer commitments, expense and family responsibilities, they probably would not attend anyway. Most regional museums and galleries and their staff might be asset-rich, but they are cash-poor, and the only way their workers get to attend conferences is if they win a bursary or grant. In 2005, Winkworth said: “the future for community museums is to locate them within local government as an integral part of the cultural, educational and economic infrastructure of the community, just like libraries and galleries” (“Fixing the Slums” 7). Fourteen years on, very little progress has been made in this direction. Those museums which have been integrated into the local council infrastructure, such as at Orange and Wagga Wagga in western New South Wales, are doing much better than those that are still stuck in ‘cultural poverty’ and trying to operate independently.However, the co-location and convergence of museums, libraries and archives is only successful if it is well managed. Helena Robinson has examined the impact on museum collection management and interpretation of five local government funded, converged collecting institutions in Australia and New Zealand and found that the process is complex and does not necessarily result in “optimal” cross-disciplinary expertise or best practice outcomes (14158).ConclusionRobinson’s research, however, did not consider community-based collecting institutions using regional libraries as sites for training and networking. By harnessing local library resources and making better use of existing communications technology it is possible to create regional hubs for professional development and collegiate support, which are not reliant on grants. If the current competitive, fly-in fly-out, self-funded model of providing professional development and support to regional museums continues, then the future for our cultural heritage collections and the dedicated volunteers who care for them is bleak. Alternatively, the scenarios I have described give regional museum workers agency to address their own professional development needs. This in no way removes the need for leadership, advocacy and coordination by national representative bodies such as AMaGA and Museums Aotearoa. If AMaGA partnered with the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) to stream their conference keynote sessions to strategically located regional libraries and used some of their annual funding from the Department of Communication and the Arts to pay for museum professionals to travel to some of those sites to deliver training, they would be investing in the nation’s social and cultural capital and addressing the professional development needs of regional museum workers. This would also increase the sustainability of our cultural heritage collections, which are valuable economic assets.ReferencesAustralian Bureau of Statistics. “2071.0—Census of Population and Housing: Reflecting Australia—Snapshot of Australia, 2016”. Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2017. 17 Mar. 2019 <https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/2071.0~2016~Main%20Features~Snapshot%20of%20Australia,%202016~2>.Boylan, Patrick. “The Intangible Heritage: A Challenge and an Opportunity for Museums and Museum Professional Training.” International Journal of Intangible Heritage 1 (2006): 53–65.Burton, Christine, and Jane Griffin. “More than a Museum? Understanding How Small Museums Contribute to Social Capital in Regional Communities.” Asia Pacific Journal of Arts & Cultural Management 5.1 (2008): 314–32. 17 Mar. 2019 <http://apjacm.arts.unimelb.edu.au/article/view/32>.Dunn, Anne. The Dunn Report: A Report on the Concept of Regional Collections Jobs. Adelaide: Collections Council of Australia, 2007.ICOM Curricula Guidelines for Professional Museum Development. 2000. <http://museumstudies.si.edu/ICOM-ICTOP/comp.htm>.Kelly, Lynda. “Measuring the Impact of Museums on Their Communities: The Role of the 21st Century Museum.” New Roles and Issues of Museums INTERCOM Symposium (2006): 25–34. 17 Mar. 2019 <https://media.australianmuseum.net.au/media/dd/Uploads/Documents/9355/impact+paper+INTERCOM+2006.bb50ba1.pdf>.Museums and Galleries New South Wales (MGNSW). 2018 NSW Museums and Galleries Sector Census. Museums and Galleries of New South Wales. Data and Insights—Culture Counts. Sydney: MGNSW, 2019. 17 Mar. 2019 <https://mgnsw.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/2018-NSW-Museum-Gallery-Sector-Census.pdf>Oppenheimer, Melanie. Volunteering: Why We Can’t Survive without It. Sydney: U of New South Wales P, 2008.Pigott, Peter. Museums in Australia 1975. Report of the Committee of Inquiry on Museums and National Collections Including the Report of the Planning Committee on the Gallery of Aboriginal Australia. Canberra: Australian Government Printing Service, 1975. 17 Mar. 2019 <https://apo.org.au/node/35268>.Public Sector Commission, Western Australia. 70:20:10 Framework Learning Philosophy. Perth: Government of Western Australia, 2018. 17 Mar. 2019 <https://publicsector.wa.gov.au/centre-public-sector-excellence/about-centre/702010-framework>.Robinson, Helena. “‘A Lot of People Going That Extra Mile’: Professional Collaboration and Cross-Disciplinarity in Converged Collecting Institutions.” Museum Management and Curatorship 31 (2016): 141–58.Scott, Lee. National Operations Manager, Museums Australia, Personal Communication. 22 Oct. 2018.Shaw, Iain, and Lee Davidson, Museums Aotearoa 2014 Sector Survey Report. Wellington: Victoria U, 2014. 17 Mar. 2019 <http://www.museumsaotearoa.org.nz/sites/default/files/documents/museums_aotearoa_sector_survey_2014_report_-_final_draft_oct_2015.pdf>.Smith, Alexandra. “NSW Libraries to Benefit from $60 Million Boost.” Sydney Morning Herald 24 Aug. 2018. 17 Mar. 2019 <https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/nsw-libraries-to-benefit-from-60-million-boost-20180823-p4zzdj.html>. Winkworth, Kylie. “Fixing the Slums of Australian Museums; or Sustaining Heritage Collections in Regional Australia.” Museums Australia Conference Paper. Canberra: Museums Australia, 2005. ———. “Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom: Museums in Regional Australia.” Understanding Museums—Australian Museums and Museology. Eds. Des Griffin and Leon Paroissien. Canberra: National Museum of Australia, 2011. 17 Mar. 2019 <https://nma.gov.au/research/understanding-museums/KWinkworth_2011.html>.

IntroductionContemporary societies are increasingly becoming sites in which it is more difficult for people to respectfully negotiate disagreements about human diversity. This is exemplified by people who must oppose oppressive social conventions that marginalise them because they identify as belonging to one or more minority groups. One of the key factors in this dynamic is how people’s being in particular sites impacts their being as a person. The “fate of the stranger” is shaped by the spaces they inhabit and people are labelled as “insiders or outsiders” (Amin Land 2); for many people this means our societies are sites of dissatisfaction. For example, in some sites asylum seekers and refugees are referred to as “co-habitant and potential citizen,” while in other sites they are referred to as “impure and threats” (Amin Land 2). This process of defining a person’s being is also experienced by people who are “multi-abled, multi-sexed, multi-sexual, or multi-faith” (Garbutt 275). This article provides a reading of the Human Library in relation to contemporary understandings of space from human geographers such as Ash Amin, as a way of rethinking our everyday spaces as sites for protesting the marginalisation of difference. It primarily draws on my researching and organising Human Libraries across Australia.Protest can employ both instrumental and expressive forms of activism. Instrumental activism aims to change law or policy, gain improvements in living conditions, and win important human services. Expressive activism is often understood as a continuum of political acts extending from lawful demonstrations through to violent activities. Recent studies demonstrate that protest has developed beyond such conventional forms (Dalton, Van Sickle, and Weldon). Contemporary protest includes such things as: acts of spontaneity (Snow and Moss); advocating rights via cultural rather than political protest (Bruce); and activating spatial politics by engaging in urban public spaces to highlight long-standing socio-spatial inequalities (Marom).These examples demonstrate the tension that exists within contemporary protest. While some people accuse expressive activism of being “a thing-for-itself that is not aimed at producing results”, others recognise that “both expressive and instrumental activism are necessary and important” (Maddison and Scalmer 69-71). Far from being self-interested, protest that adopts expressive activism offers its practitioners an important tool:Expressive activism is oriented towards the construction, reconstruction and/or transformation of norms, values, identities and ways of living and being. It is not just about ‘who we are’ […] but also about ‘how we are’ in the world, consequently requiring evaluation of ‘what we do’ and ‘how we do it’. (Stammers 164-165)This understanding of expressive activism provides a useful lens for reading the Human Library as a means of rethinking everyday spaces as sites for protesting the marginalisation of difference. This is particularly so because the Human Library, as an activist organisation dedicated to increasing respect for difference, is situated within the contemporary anti-prejudice movement (Stammers; Chesters and Welsh; Watson "'You Shouldn't Have to Suffer'").Introducing the Human LibraryHuman Libraries transform the spaces provided by traditional libraries into spaces that challenge contemporary socio-spatial dynamics. Human Libraries provide people (Readers) with a safe space in which they can choose another person (a volunteer known as a Human Book) and engage in a conversation or ‘reading’ about the way that people perceive and experience difference. Readers choose their Human Books from a catalogue of titles and descriptions which are developed by each Human Book.and express something about how they identify. For example, titles include such things as belonging to sexual minority groups, living with physical or mental impairment, or belonging to different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Each ‘reading’ is defined by three rules: 1) you may raise any topic or ask any question; 2) a ‘reading’ is a dialogue so Human Books ask their Readers questions too; and 3) each person may decline to answer any question and to end the reading at any time. Using this method, Human Libraries protest the way in which socio-spatial norms marginalise people who are different. They enact a form of expressive activism that reconstructs the way that norms are used in local sites to marginalise different ways of living and being. This reconstruction of the relationship between norms and sites enables people to be “who we are” and “how we are” without having to be inauthentic about “what we do” and “how we do it” (Stammers 164-165).The first Human Library took place at the Roskilde Festival (Denmark) in the summer of 2000 and as an international activist organisation within the anti-prejudice movement, has since become active in over 80 countries and used in a variety of local community sites thus demonstrating its ability to “transcend borders and be adapted to different situations” (Abergel et al. 13). It now operates in such diverse settings as local libraries, universities, schools, music and cultural festivals and workplaces. Participants’ (Organisers, Readers and Human Books) reflections on their experiences of engaging in Human Libraries helps to illustrate how they perceive Human Libraries as sites that challenge socio-spatial norms.Human Libraries enable people to create sites that reverse our usual social interactions. The following phrases, used by participants to describe their contact with the Human Library, illustrate this. An Organiser, whose local government job requires her to develop projects that encourage interactions between in-groups and out-groups, explains that Human Libraries bring people who usually live “on the margins […] into the centre of the page” and that “the powerful people […] who are usually in the centre” are required to listen to different experiences. Likewise, Human Books describe themselves as being “totally open” in order to encourage their Readers to ask about topics that society labels as “taboo”. Readers illustrate how they encounter Human Libraries in ways that the other spaces in their day-to-day lives function. One Reader talks about “stumbling upon” a Human Library within a community event and describes this as “a kind of a stroke of brilliance to catch people at a place like that rather than in a more conventional library setting”. Other Readers emphasise the significance of this type of encounter when they explain that they “probably wouldn’t just go and bother someone in the street” and that participating in a Human Library has provided a type of conversation “that doesn’t happen in any other way”. The outcome of this is highlighted by a Reader who explains that she pushed herself “to go beyond […] just a polite social conversation” because the Human Library “lays it all out there and says, we’re here to talk” (Watson "'You Shouldn't Have to Suffer'" 124-132). These descriptions of people’s experiences of Human Libraries demonstrate how they perceive Human Libraries as spaces that enable them to have conversations with people they would not normally speak to about topics they would usually feel unable to speak about. Their examples are better appreciated when considered along with the scholarship on the interconnectedness of space and intergroup relations.The Interconnectedness of Space and Intergroup RelationsA multiplicity of spaces shape people’s everyday lives. The everyday refers to the “flow of routine” often defined by such mundane habitual practices as going to work, crossing streets and shopping (Dirksmeier and Helbrecht 495). Who a person is, where a person lives, the spaces a person can enter and move about, and how a person is treated in those spaces are intertwined. Belonging is not an abstract concept; as people move in and out of different spaces they demonstrate how belonging is “experienced differentially, and the pleasures and powers it confers are not distributed evenly but [are] linked to relations of inequality and practices of social exclusion” (Noble and Poynting 490). This warns us against romanticizing the urban space of the city and regarding it over-simplistically as neutral and accessible to all, as a space of open flow and untroubled human interaction and as a natural catalyst for proximate reflexivity (Noble and Poynting; Amin and Thrift; Amin Land; Priest et al.).Acknowledging the negative impacts inherent in the interconnectedness of the city and intergroup relations, some scholars have moved their attention from examining integration at the macrospatial level of society to studying the microecology of segregation (Clack, Dixon, and Tredoux; Dixon, Tredoux and Clack; Alexander and Tredoux; Priest et al.; Thomas; Dandy and Pe-Pua; Dixon and Durrheim; Durrheim et al.). This shifts the focus from a primary interest in the city and the neighbourhood to a closer examination of people’s everyday life spaces. This focus examines how members of different groups “share proximity and co-presence” (Clack, Dixon, and Tredoux 2) and engage in informal practices that uphold barriers (Alexander and Tredoux; Dixon and Durrheim). For example, people were observed as they shared spaces such as beaches, school cafeterias and university class rooms and were found to use these spaces in ways that enacted segregation along lines of race, ethnicity, age, and gender. In examples such as these, everyday life spaces are seen to function in ways that (re)instate borders around difference through everyday spatial practices and they act as sites in which “informal segregation practices can be enacted and reproduced” (Priest et al. 32). The shift in scholarly interest to the microecology of segregation serves my interest in how we might use everyday spaces as sites to contest segregation. The following discusses three everyday spaces that serve this interest.The Space of the Everyday UrbanThe macrospatial terrain of the world’s cities and towns is increasingly defined by difference and their public spaces are often spaces of “visibility and encounter between strangers” (Amin "Ethnicity" 967). Negotiating difference is a natural part of living in these large urban spaces and it is an increasingly more common experience in, what was previously, the typically homogenous setting of rural communities. This process of negotiation occurs most noticeably within the microecology of the “everyday urban,” a context defined by the interconnection of everyday spaces and intergroup relations (Alexander and Tredoux; Durrheim et al.; Dixon and Durrheim). It is here that we find “the micropolitics of everyday social contact and encounter” (Amin "Ethnicity" 959). These everyday spaces include our streets, parks, malls, and cafes, and they are often described as shared spaces of freedom, mingling, and serendipitous encounters. However, while spaces such as these can place people from diverse backgrounds and groups in close proximity, it is important not to overstate their effectiveness in helping people negotiate difference (Wise; Noble "Cosmopolitan Habits"; Priest et al.; Valentine "Living"). This is the case because urban public spaces can carry a reverse side to the provision of proximity. They are often “spaces of transit with very little contact between strangers” (Amin "Ethnicity" 967). As such, urban public spaces do not naturally serve our need to negotiate our everyday encounters with others (Amin and Thrift; Amin, Massey, and Thrift; Rosaldo; Amin "Ethnicity").This illuminates the need to rethink our everyday public spaces and start to unsettle and shift how some spaces act to perpetuate negative and habitual socio-spatial norms which encourage avoidance rather than provide spaces to contest inequality and inequity (Alexander and Tredoux; Durrheim et al.; Clack, Dixon, and Tredoux; Dixon and Durrheim; Wise). Participants at Human Libraries demonstrate that they recognise this when they explain that they do not feel able to approach and speak with people who are different in everyday spaces such as the street, public transport and shops. They point out that they feel that socio-spatial norms dictate that it is rude, impolite or intrusive to approach strangers and people who are different in public spaces and to begin a conversation, especially about difference (Watson "'You Shouldn't Have to Suffer'"). Examples such as this signal how everyday urban spaces embody socio-spatial norms and practices that impede people’s capacity to engage in everyday acts that protest the marginalisation of difference. This clarifies why “even in the most carefully designed and inclusive spaces, the marginalised and the prejudiced stay away” (Amin "Ethnicity" 968). This alerts us to the need to better appreciate what occurs in other everyday spaces in which people associate even more closely.Spaces and the MicropublicOther everyday spaces in which people spend a significant amount of time are spaces of association, referred to as micropublics (Amin "Ethnicity"; Noble "Cosmopolitan Habits"). They include those places in which we work, study, play sports, and recreate. Micropublics function as spaces of habitual engagement, interdependence and “prosaic negotiations” (Amin "Ethnicity" 969). For example, we attend our place of work on a daily basis which requires us to communicate and interact with our colleagues as well as navigate other forms of elementary social etiquette. In this way, micropublics often bring people from diverse backgrounds and identity groups together in spaces that require them to interact with people who are different to themselves. In practice, however, the contact people undertake in their micropublics tends to be illusory and includes practices of informal segregation (Dixon and Durrheim; Alexander and Tredoux; Clack, Dixon, and Tredoux). This highlights that “co-presence and collaboration are two very different things” and that micropublics do not immediately serve as sites for protesting the marginalisation of difference (Amin Land 59).Participants at Human Libraries share experiences taken from their own work places and schools and suggest that the codes of civility that are enforced within these micropublics make it difficult, if not impossible, to engage in certain conversations. For example, Readers at Human Libraries disclose that they do not feel comfortable discussing issues of physical impairment or mental illness with colleagues who live with disability and mental illness. Similarly, high school students explain that they feel unable to discuss what it means to be gay, lesbian or bisexual with their fellow-students who identity as LGBTQI (Watson "'You Shouldn't Have to Suffer'"). Examples such as these demonstrate how micropublics embody “degrees and modalities of familiarity and strangeness” (Noble "Strange Familiarities" 33) and that even though they may embody degrees of collaboration and contribute to a shift in the way people develop various forms of familiarity, they do not naturally lend themselves to protesting the way in which codes of civility camouflage disrespect for difference. These experiences alert us to the way that our everyday spaces and the norms attached to them contribute to defining what it means to be and to belong.Spaces and BeingPeople’s experiences of marginalisation in public spaces illuminates how people’s freedom to be in particular spaces and their being – their humanity – are intimately connected. This happens as people who are made to feel that they should not be in a space are sent the message that they do not have the right to be at all (Noble and Poynting). Valentine ("Prejudice" 531) explains how this is demonstrated by the way some people speak about other people who are different in relation to public and private spaces:Individuals stated that they believed in individual freedom and were not prejudiced against minority groups and yet saw no contradiction in then expressing hostility towards seeing lesbians and gay men kissing on the street, or women wearing the hijab in their neighbourhood or feeling uncomfortable at the sight of a disabled person in public or being inconvenienced by disabled access provisions.This response reveals how some people frame acceptance of minority groups using the criteria of invisibility and how spatial norms define “appropriate embodied ways of being in public space” (Valentine "Prejudice" 532). This exemplifies how some people regard it as tolerable for minority groups to express their difference at home but not in public because this would be considered as imposing “their way of life” upon majority people, thus transgressing spatial norms about appropriate embodied ways of being in public spaces.People who participate at Human Libraries as Readers illustrate this dynamic when they share how, during the course of their everyday lives, they have come in contact with people with disabilities or met people who identify as gay, lesbian or transgender and have recognised negative feelings within themselves such as discomfort, embarrassment, or have refused to recognise a person’s authentic identity. They also admit to hiding these feelings in public but expressing them once they return home (Watson "'You Shouldn't Have to Suffer'"; Kudo et al.). Similarly, people who volunteer as Human Books speak about their experiences of being in public spaces and feeling unsafe or the target of negative treatment. For example, Human Books who identify as gay comment that they need to do a “safety check” before showing signs of physical affection in public; Human Books whose physical appearance does not align with social constructs of gender relate that they have been banned from using public toilets; and Human Books with eating disorders speak about being labelled as “crazy” (Watson "'You Shouldn't Have to Suffer'"; Watson "Being a Human Book"). Behaviours such as these demonstrate how people who are different are defined and treated as lesser beings in public spaces and are relegated to segregated micropublics such as their homes as well as groups and clubs dedicated to particular minorities.Conclusion: Rethinking Our SpacesThe above discussion includes a number of findings that are informative when thinking about how our everyday spaces might act as sites for protesting the marginalisation of difference. The following offers a concluding discussion about how we might approach such a project, paying particular attention to what we can learn from the Human Library.Firstly, Human Libraries exemplify the need to develop sites that protest the way in which our everyday public spaces do not naturally serve our need to negotiate our everyday encounter with difference (Noble and Poynting; Amin and Thrift; Amin Strangers; Priest et al.). Readers indicate that Human Libraries are spaces that make it possible for them to meet people they don’t feel able to approach in other everyday public spaces. As such, Human Libraries illuminate the importance of developing sites that protest social and spatial norms by enabling “encounter between strangers” (Amin "Ethnicity" 967).Secondly, Human Libraries protest the space of the micropublic as sites that are illusory, superficial, and bearers of informal segregation (Clack, Dixon, and Tredoux; Dixon, Tredoux and Clack; Alexander and Tredoux; Priest et al.; Thomas; Dandy and Pe-Pua; Dixon and Durrheim; Durrheim et al.). They achieve this by being sites in which no topic or question is taboo and that welcome and value respectful conversations about difference. Readers are able to speak to Human Books about differences such as what it is like to live with physical impairment, to be lesbian and/or to be an immigrant or a refugee. Their conversations are much deeper than the superficial conversations they feel restricted to within the confines of their everyday micropublics which enables them to protest codes of civility that render conversations about the marginalisation of difference as unacceptable (Watson "'You Shouldn't Have to Suffer'"; Watson "Being a Human Book").Thirdly, Human Libraries provide sites that protest the way in which other spaces define people who are different as lesser beings because Human Libraries are spaces in which every person has the right to be their authentic self. They are spaces that make it possible for people to be 'who we are’ by authentically being ‘how we are’ (Stammers 164-165). They shed a light on the way that a person’s being is sometimes distorted by how they experience being in a particular space and in doing so protest spatial norms that divide, marginalise and diminish people by marginalising them via the criteria of invisibility (Clack, Dixon, and Tredoux; Dixon and Durrheim; Thomas). For this reason, Human Libraries can be regarded as safe spaces to meet people who are different and bring people from the margins of society to its centre as sites that protest the marginalisation of difference.ReferencesAbergel, Ronni, et al. Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover? The Living Library Organiser's Guide. Budapest: Council of Europe 2005.Alexander, Lameez, and Colin Tredoux. "The Spaces between Us: A Spatial Analysis of Informal Segregation at a South African University." Journal of Social Issues 66.2 (2010): 367-86.Amin, Ash. "Ethnicity and the Multicultural City: Living with Diversity." Environment and Planning A 34.6 (2002): 959-80.———. Land of Strangers. Cambridge: Polity, 2012.———, D. Massey, and Nigel Thrift. Cities for the Many Not the Few. Bristol: Policy P, 2000.———, and Nigel Thrift. Cities: Reimagining the Urban. Cambridge: Polity, 2002.Bruce, Katherine Mcfarland. "LGBT Pride as a Cultural Protest Tactic in a Southern City." Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 42.5 (2013): 608-35.Clack, Beverley, John Dixon, and Colin Tredoux. "Eating Together Apart: Patterns of Segregation in a Multi-Ethnic Cafeteria." Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology 15.1 (2005): 1-16.Dalton, Russell, Alix Van Sickle, and Steven Weldon. "The Individual–Institutional Nexus of Protest Behaviour." Brit. J. Polit. Sci. 40.1 (2010): 51-73.Dandy, Justine, and Rogelia Pe-Pua. "Beyond Mutual Acculturation." Zeitschrift für Psychologie 221.4 (2013): 232-41.Dirksmeier, Peter, and Ilse Helbrecht. "Everyday Urban Encounters as Stratification Practices." City 19.4 (2015): 486-98.Dixon, John, and Kevin Durrheim. "Contact and the Ecology of Racial Division: Some Varieties of Informal Segregation." British Journal of Social Psychology 42.1 (2003): 1-23.———, Colin Tredoux, and Beverley Clack. "On the Micro-Ecology of Racial Division: A Neglected Dimension of Segregation." South African Journal of Psychology 35.3 (2005): 395-411.Durrheim, Kevin, et al. "From Exclusion to Informal Segregation: The Limits to Racial Transformation at the University of Natal." Social Dynamics 30.1 (2004): 141-69.Garbutt, Rob. "The Living Library: Some Theoretical Approaches to a Strategy for Activating Human Rights and Peace." Activating Human Rights and Peace: Universal Responsibility Conference 2008 Conference Proceedings. Ed. Rob Garbutt.Kudo, Kazuhiro, et al. "Bridging Difference through Dialogue: Preliminary Findings of the Outcomes of the Human Library in a University Setting." 2011 Shanghai International Conference on Social Science. Maddison, Sarah, and Sean Scalmer. Activist Wisdom: Practical Knowledge and Creative Tension in Social Movements. Sydney: UNSW P, 2006.Marom, Nathan. "Activising Space: The Spatial Politics of the 2011 Protest Movement in Israel." Urban Studies 50.13 (2013): 2826-41.Noble, Greg. "Cosmopolitan Habits: The Capacities and Habitats of Intercultural Conviviality." Body & Society 19.2-3 (2013): 162-85.———. "Strange Familiarities: A Response to Ash Amin's Land of Strangers." Identities 20.1 (2013): 31-36.———, and Scott Poynting. "White Lines: The Intercultural Politics of Everyday Movement in Social Spaces." Journal of Intercultural Studies 31.5 (2010): 489-505.Priest, Naomi, et al. "Patterns of Intergroup Contact in Public Spaces: Micro-Ecology of Segregation in Australian Communities." Societies 4.1 (2014): 30-44.Rosaldo, R. "Cultural Citizenship, Inequality and Multiculturalism." Race, Identity, and Citizenship. Eds. R. Torres, L. Miron, and J. Inda. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999.Snow, David A., and Dana M. Moss. "Protest on the Fly: Toward a Theory of Spontaneity in the Dynamics of Protest and Social Movements." American Sociological Review 79.6 (2014): 1122-43.Stammers, Neil. Human Rights and Social Movements. London: Pluto P, 2009.Thomas, Mary E. "‘I Think It's Just Natural’: The Spatiality of Racial Segregation at a US High School." Environment and Planning A 37.7 (2005): 1233-48.Valentine, Gill. "Living with Difference: Reflections on Geographies of Encounter." Progress in Human Geography 32.3 (2008): 323-37.———. "Prejudice: Rethinking Geographies of Oppression." Social & Cultural Geography 11.6 (2010): 519-37.Watson, Greg. "Being a Human Book: Conversations for Rupturing Prejudice." Rites of Spring. Ed. Julie Lunn. Perth: Black Swan P, 2017.———. "'You Shouldn't Have to Suffer for Being Who You Are': An Examination of the Human Library Strategy for Challenging Prejudice and Increasing Respect for Difference." Curtin University, 2015.Wise, Amanda. "Hope in a Land of Strangers." 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IntroductionThere are two types of Africa. The first is a place where people and cultures live. The second is the image of Africa that has been invented through colonial knowledge and power. The colonial image of Africa, as the Other of Europe, a land “enveloped in the dark mantle of night” was supported by western states as it justified their colonial practices (Hegel 91). Any evidence that challenged the myth of the Dark Continent was destroyed, removed or ignored. While the looting of African natural resources has been studied, the looting of African knowledges hasn’t received as much attention, partly based on the assumption that Africans did not produce knowledge that could be stolen. This article invalidates this myth by examining the legacy of Ethiopia’s indigenous Ge’ez literature, and its looting and abduction by powerful western agents. The article argues that this has resulted in epistemic violence, where students of the Ethiopian indigenous education system do not have access to their books, while European orientalists use them to interpret Ethiopian history and philosophy using a foreign lens. The analysis is based on interviews with teachers and students of ten Ge’ez schools in Ethiopia, and trips to the Ethiopian manuscript collections in The British Library, The Princeton Library, the Institute of Ethiopian Studies and The National Archives in Addis Ababa.The Context of Ethiopian Indigenous KnowledgesGe’ez is one of the ancient languages of Africa. According to Professor Ephraim Isaac, “about 10,000 years ago, one single nation or community of a single linguistic group existed in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and the Horn of Africa” (The Habesha). The language of this group is known as Proto-Afroasiatic or Afrasian languages. It is the ancestor of the Semitic, Cushitic, Nilotic, Omotic and other languages that are currently spoken in Ethiopia by its 80 ethnic groups, and the neighbouring countries (Diakonoff). Ethiopians developed the Ge’ez language as their lingua franca with its own writing system some 2000 years ago. Currently, Ge’ez is the language of academic scholarship, studied through the traditional education system (Isaac, The Ethiopian). Since the fourth century, an estimated 1 million Ge’ez manuscripts have been written, covering religious, historical, mathematical, medicinal, and philosophical texts.One of the most famous Ge’ez manuscripts is the Kebra Nagast, a foundational text that embodied the indigenous conception of nationhood in Ethiopia. The philosophical, political and religious themes in this book, which craft Ethiopia as God’s country and the home of the Ark of the Covenant, contributed to the country’s success in defending itself from European colonialism. The production of books like the Kebra Nagast went hand in hand with a robust indigenous education system that trained poets, scribes, judges, artists, administrators and priests. Achieving the highest stages of learning requires about 30 years after which the scholar would be given the rare title Arat-Ayina, which means “four eyed”, a person with the ability to see the past as well as the future. Today, there are around 50,000 Ge’ez schools across the country, most of which are in rural villages and churches.Ge’ez manuscripts are important textbooks and reference materials for students. They are carefully prepared from vellum “to make them last forever” (interview, 3 Oct. 2019). Some of the religious books are regarded as “holy persons who breathe wisdom that gives light and food to the human soul”. Other manuscripts, often prepared as scrolls are used for medicinal purposes. Each manuscript is uniquely prepared reflecting inherited wisdom on contemporary lives using the method called Tirguamme, the act of giving meaning to sacred texts. Preparation of books is costly. Smaller manuscript require the skins of 50-70 goats/sheep and large manuscript needed 100-120 goats/sheep (Tefera).The Loss of Ethiopian ManuscriptsSince the 18th century, a large quantity of these manuscripts have been stolen, looted, or smuggled out of the country by travellers who came to the country as explorers, diplomats and scientists. The total number of Ethiopian manuscripts taken is still unknown. Amsalu Tefera counted 6928 Ethiopian manuscripts currently held in foreign libraries and museums. This figure does not include privately held or unofficial collections (41).Looting and smuggling were sponsored by western governments, institutions, and notable individuals. For example, in 1868, The British Museum Acting Director Richard Holms joined the British army which was sent to ‘rescue’ British hostages at Maqdala, the capital of Emperor Tewodros. Holms’ mission was to bring treasures for the Museum. Before the battle, Tewodros had established the Medhanialem library with more than 1000 manuscripts as part of Ethiopia’s “industrial revolution”. When Tewodros lost the war and committed suicide, British soldiers looted the capital, including the treasury and the library. They needed 200 mules and 15 elephants to transport the loot and “set fire to all buildings so that no trace was left of the edifices which once housed the manuscripts” (Rita Pankhurst 224). Richard Holmes collected 356 manuscripts for the Museum. A wealthy British woman called Lady Meux acquired some of the most illuminated manuscripts. In her will, she bequeathed them to be returned to Ethiopia. However, her will was reversed by court due to a campaign from the British press (Richard Pankhurst). In 2018, the V&A Museum in London displayed some of the treasures by incorporating Maqdala into the imperial narrative of Britain (Woldeyes, Reflections).Britain is by no means the only country to seek Ethiopian manuscripts for their collections. Smuggling occurred in the name of science, an act of collecting manuscripts for study. Looting involved local collaborators and powerful foreign sponsors from places like France, Germany and the Vatican. Like Maqdala, this was often sponsored by governments or powerful financers. For example, the French government sponsored the Dakar-Djibouti Mission led by Marcel Griaule, which “brought back about 350 manuscripts and scrolls from Gondar” (Wion 2). It was often claimed that these manuscripts were purchased, rather than looted. Johannes Flemming of Germany was said to have purchased 70 manuscripts and ten scrolls for the Royal Library of Berlin in 1905. However, there was no local market for buying manuscripts. Ge’ez manuscripts were, and still are, written to serve spiritual and secular life in Ethiopia, not for buying and selling. There are countless other examples, but space limits how many can be provided in this article. What is important to note is that museums and libraries have accrued impressive collections without emphasising how those collections were first obtained. The loss of the intellectual heritage of Ethiopians to western collectors has had an enormous impact on the country.Knowledge Grabbing: The Denial of Access to KnowledgeWith so many manuscripts lost, European collectors became the narrators of Ethiopian knowledge and history. Edward Ullendorff, a known orientalist in Ethiopian studies, refers to James Bruce as “the explorer of Abyssinia” (114). Ullendorff commented on the significance of Bruce’s travel to Ethiopia asperhaps the most important aspect of Bruce’s travels was the collection of Ethiopic manuscripts… . They opened up entirely new vistas for the study of Ethiopian languages and placed this branch of Oriental scholarship on a much more secure basis. It is not known how many MSS. reached Europe through his endeavours, but the present writer is aware of at least twenty-seven, all of which are exquisite examples of Ethiopian manuscript art. (133)This quote encompasses three major ways in which epistemic violence occurs: denial of access to knowledge, Eurocentric interpretation of Ethiopian manuscripts, and the handling of Ge’ez manuscripts as artefacts from the past. These will be discussed below.Western ‘travellers’, such as Bruce, did not fully disclose how many manuscripts they took or how they acquired them. The abundance of Ethiopian manuscripts in western institutions can be compared to the scarcity of such materials among traditional schools in Ethiopia. In this research, I have visited ten indigenous schools in Wollo (Lalibela, Neakutoleab, Asheten, Wadla), in Gondar (Bahita, Kuskwam, Menbere Mengist), and Gojam (Bahirdar, Selam Argiew Maryam, Giorgis). In all of the schools, there is lack of Ge’ez manuscripts. Students often come from rural villages and do not receive any government support. The scarcity of Ge’ez manuscripts, and the lack of funding which might allow for the purchasing of books, means the students depend mainly on memorising Ge’ez texts told to them from the mouth of their teacher. Although this method of learning is not new, it currently is the only way for passing indigenous knowledges across generations.The absence of manuscripts is most strongly felt in the advanced schools. For instance, in the school of Qene, poetic literature is created through an in-depth study of the vocabulary and grammar of Ge’ez. A Qene student is required to develop a deep knowledge of Ge’ez in order to understand ancient and medieval Ge’ez texts which are used to produce poetry with multiple meanings. Without Ge’ez manuscripts, students cannot draw their creative works from the broad intellectual tradition of their ancestors. When asked how students gain access to textbooks, one student commented:we don’t have access to Birana books (Ge’ez manuscripts written on vellum). We cannot learn the ancient wisdom of painting, writing, and computing developed by our ancestors. We simply buy paper books such as Dawit (Psalms), Sewasew (grammar) or Degwa (book of songs with notations) and depend on our teachers to teach us the rest. We also lend these books to each other as many students cannot afford to buy them. Without textbooks, we expect to spend double the amount of time it would take if we had textbooks. (Interview, 3 Sep. 2019)Many students interrupt their studies and work as labourers to save up and buy paper textbooks, but they still don’t have access to the finest works taken to Europe. Most Ge’ez manuscripts remaining in Ethiopia are locked away in monasteries, church stores or other places to prevent further looting. The manuscripts in Addis Ababa University and the National Archives are available for researchers but not to the students of the indigenous system, creating a condition of internal knowledge grabbing.While the absence of Ge’ez manuscripts denied, and continues to deny, Ethiopians the chance to enrich their indigenous education, it benefited western orientalists to garner intellectual authority on the field of Ethiopian studies. In 1981, British Museum Director John Wilson said, “our Abyssinian holdings are more important than our Indian collection” (Bell 231). In reaction, Richard Pankhurst, the Director of Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa, responded that the collection was acquired through plunder. Defending the retaining of Maqdala manuscripts in Europe, Ullendorff wrote:neither Dr. Pankhurst nor the Ethiopian and western scholars who have worked on this collection (and indeed on others in Europe) could have contributed so significantly to the elucidation of Ethiopian history without the rich resources available in this country. Had they remained insitu, none of this would have been possible. (Qtd. in Bell 234)The manuscripts are therefore valued based on their contribution to western scholarship only. This is a continuation of epistemic violence whereby local knowledges are used as raw materials to produce Eurocentric knowledge, which in turn is used to teach Africans as though they had no prior knowledge. Scholars are defined as those western educated persons who can speak European languages and can travel to modern institutions to access the manuscripts. Knowledge grabbing regards previous owners as inexistent or irrelevant for the use of the grabbed knowledges.Knowledge grabbing also means indigenous scholars are deprived of critical resources to produce new knowledge based on their intellectual heritage. A Qene teacher commented: our students could not devote their time and energy to produce new knowledges in the same way our ancestors did. We have the tradition of Madeladel, Kimera, Kuteta, Mielad, Qene and tirguamme where students develop their own system of remembering, reinterpreting, practicing, and rewriting previous manuscripts and current ones. Without access to older manuscripts, we increasingly depend on preserving what is being taught orally by elders. (Interview, 4 Sep. 2019)This point is important as it relates to the common myth that indigenous knowledges are artefacts belonging to the past, not the present. There are millions of people who still use these knowledges, but the conditions necessary for their reproduction and improvement is denied through knowledge grabbing. The view of Ge’ez manuscripts as artefacts dismisses the Ethiopian view that Birana manuscripts are living persons. As a scholar told me in Gondar, “they are creations of Egziabher (God), like all of us. Keeping them in institutions is like keeping living bodies in graveyards” (interview, 5 Oct. 2019).Recently, the collection of Ethiopian manuscripts by western institutions has also been conducted digitally. Thousands of manuscripts have been microfilmed or digitised. For example, the EU funded Ethio-SPaRe project resulted in the digital collection of 2000 Ethiopian manuscripts (Nosnitsin). While digitisation promises better access for people who may not be able to visit institutions to see physical copies, online manuscripts are not accessible to indigenous school students in Ethiopia. They simply do not have computer or internet access and the manuscripts are catalogued in European languages. Both physical and digital knowledge grabbing results in the robbing of Ethiopian intellectual heritage, and denies the possibility of such manuscripts being used to inform local scholarship. Epistemic Violence: The European as ExpertWhen considered in relation to stolen or appropriated manuscripts, epistemic violence is the way in which local knowledge is interpreted using a foreign epistemology and gained dominance over indigenous worldviews. European scholars have monopolised the field of Ethiopian Studies by producing books, encyclopaedias and digital archives based on Ethiopian manuscripts, almost exclusively in European languages. The contributions of their work for western scholarship is undeniable. However, Kebede argues that one of the detrimental effects of this orientalist literature is the thesis of Semiticisation, the designation of the origin of Ethiopian civilisation to the arrival of Middle Eastern colonisers rather than indigenous sources.The thesis is invented to make the history of Ethiopia consistent with the Hegelian western view that Africa is a Dark Continent devoid of a civilisation of its own. “In light of the dominant belief that black peoples are incapable of great achievements, the existence of an early and highly advanced civilization constitutes a serious anomaly in the Eurocentric construction of the world” (Kebede 4). To address this anomaly, orientalists like Ludolph attributed the origin of Ethiopia’s writing system, agriculture, literature, and civilisation to the arrival of South Arabian settlers. For example, in his translation of the Kebra Nagast, Budge wrote: “the SEMITES found them [indigenous Ethiopians] negro savages, and taught them civilization and culture and the whole scriptures on which their whole literature is based” (x).In line with the above thesis, Dillman wrote that “the Abyssinians borrowed their Numerical Signs from the Greeks” (33). The views of these orientalist scholars have been challenged. For instance, leading scholar of Semitic languages Professor Ephraim Isaac considers the thesis of the Arabian origin of Ethiopian civilization “a Hegelian Eurocentric philosophical perspective of history” (2). Isaac shows that there is historical, archaeological, and linguistic evidence that suggest Ethiopia to be more advanced than South Arabia from pre-historic times. Various Ethiopian sources including the Kebra Nagast, the works of historian Asres Yenesew, and Ethiopian linguist Girma Demeke provide evidence for the indigenous origin of Ethiopian civilisation and languages.The epistemic violence of the Semeticisation thesis lies in how this Eurocentric ideological construction is the dominant narrative in the field of Ethiopian history and the education system. Unlike the indigenous view, the orientalist view is backed by strong institutional power both in Ethiopia and abroad. The orientalists control the field of Ethiopian studies and have access to Ge’ez manuscripts. Their publications are the only references for Ethiopian students. Due to Native Colonialism, a system of power run by native elites through the use of colonial ideas and practices (Woldeyes), the education system is the imitation of western curricula, including English as a medium of instruction from high school onwards. Students study the west more than Ethiopia. Indigenous sources are generally excluded as unscientific. Only the Eurocentric interpretation of Ethiopian manuscripts is regarded as scientific and objective.ConclusionEthiopia is the only African country never to be colonised. In its history it produced a large quantity of manuscripts in the Ge’ez language through an indigenous education system that involves the study of these manuscripts. Since the 19th century, there has been an ongoing loss of these manuscripts. European travellers who came to Ethiopia as discoverers, missionaries and scholars took a large number of manuscripts. The Battle of Maqdala involved the looting of the intellectual products of Ethiopia that were collected at the capital. With the introduction of western education and use of English as a medium of instruction, the state disregarded indigenous schools whose students have little access to the manuscripts. This article brings the issue of knowledge grapping, a situation whereby European institutions and scholars accumulate Ethiopia manuscripts without providing the students in Ethiopia to have access to those collections.Items such as manuscripts that are held in western institutions are not dead artefacts of the past to be preserved for prosperity. They are living sources of knowledge that should be put to use in their intended contexts. Local Ethiopian scholars cannot study ancient and medieval Ethiopia without travelling and gaining access to western institutions. This lack of access and resources has made European Ethiopianists almost the sole producers of knowledge about Ethiopian history and culture. For example, indigenous sources and critical research that challenge the Semeticisation thesis are rarely available to Ethiopian students. Here we see epistemic violence in action. Western control over knowledge production has the detrimental effect of inventing new identities, subjectivities and histories that translate into material effects in the lives of African people. In this way, Ethiopians and people all over Africa internalise western understandings of themselves and their history as primitive and in need of development or outside intervention. African’s intellectual and cultural heritage, these living bodies locked away in graveyards, must be put back into the hands of Africans.AcknowledgementThe author acknowledges the support of the Australian Academy of the Humanities' 2019 Humanities Travelling Fellowship Award in conducting this research.ReferencesBell, Stephen. “Cultural Treasures Looted from Maqdala: A Summary of Correspondence in British National Newspapers since 1981.” Kasa and Kasa. Eds. Tadesse Beyene, Richard Pankhurst, and Shifereraw Bekele. Addis Ababa: Ababa University Book Centre, 1990. 231-246.Budge, Wallis. 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