PANEL ON NATIONAL LIBRARIES' INTERNATIONAL ACTIVITIES

COMMENTS FROM NATIONAL LIBRARIANS OF OTHER COUNTRIES (followed by discussions)

[Yakov Shraiberg]

We have another 10 minutes. It would be very useful to have opinions from re-presentatives of other national libraries.

[Andris Vilks, National Librarian of Latvia]

I prepared a short paper about the information technologies in the National Libraries in the Baltic States in the context of international relationships. I would like to shorten this paper and say only two things.

Specifically, for some national libraries in Eastern Europe, we have to esta-blish full national exchange programs for publications among countries, particu-larly among national libraries. But, currently, activities are mostly coming from one direction in terms of collection, journals, publications, consultations, train-ing, etc.; it is difficult to find activities coming from the other direction. Our experience in working with Western countries is rather limited, but it has been good. For example, from our involvement with Swedish national and university libraries, we found out that the problems and weakness are rather common in all libraries. Although professional consultations are very important, we need to do more training. We have organized seminars, although very few, and contem-plated future cooperative projects. For developing countries in Eastern Europe, conferences such as NIT and others are helpful for developing cooperation between countries. From our region, first of all, I have been personally involved in cooperative projects between Baltic states. All three National Libraries in the Baltics have signed agreements for some rather large projects. We have the same attitudes toward cooperation. I am very hopeful that more of these will happen in the near future. Thank you.

[M. Wali, National Librarian of Nigeria]

We have a very complicated environment in Nigeria, and I think that this is very typical in many former English colonies in West Africa. Most of the library agencies emerged historically to tackle specific problems. For example, when the British traders came in, library agents were supported by the traders, then the British decided to settle in its administration, then they began to educate local people, and consequently educational institutions began to emerge. Then they decided to leave; the colony achieved independence, which required a number of infrastructures to manage the administrative structure in those areas. Since there was nothing at all in the modern sense for the colony, therefore, for each kind of institution, there has to be a legislation which would provide the framework for its existence, for its institution, and for its mission. Thus, in fact, many institu-tions were established by law. Universities were established by law, and the library is also one of those institutions, which was also established by law. Every-thing is governed by regulations, which define the mission and the budget. All libraries comply with the regulations, and the authority, and the budget is provided for that.

Each federal institution is working independently of the other. They are jea-lous of their independence and funding, etc., so that nobody is interested in cooperation. Few can do much to change this. In order for the agencies to work together, we shall need to have a strategic framework, since they are competing for the same source of funds. From 1966 to the present, we have about six or seven administrations, and each has many changes within its administration. This present administration came about in August; there have been three or four changes in ministers, so that you have all sorts of problems. You are trying to run an organization, but you are governed by this kind of frustration at the higher level, facing uncertainty and change. Also at the upper level, you are dealing with policy changes and budget cuts. So, the situation is very difficult. Despite all these problems, we have to manage to cope and make progress.

[Richard Hsieh]

I would like to respond on two points. Point number one: librarians' role is to preserve a country's knowledge base and also to help end-users to access the highest quality information anywhere in the world. There are many countries that seem to spend a lot of money supporting domestic journals and databases. Will the fiscal priority of librarians in these countries be to subscribe to the highest quality journals for its users? Or to distribute their national journals and databases regardless of quality to end-users? The next point is that I can appre-ciate the fiscal troubles of many newly developed countries and, thus, their national libraries. Although librarians in these countries have fiscal troubles, often major fiscal troubles, so do libraries everywhere. We need an international strategy to deal with this issue now.

[Yakov Shraiberg]

We would like to thank everyone for a most productive session.