Category Archives: Uncategorized

A brief video interview about my book, International and comparative librarianship: concepts and methods for global studies, done during the August 2019 IFLA World Library and Information Conference in Athens, has been released by IFLA.  In the interview, I give … Continue reading →

Alarm in South Africa Alarm bells started ringing in the South African library profession in late May 2019 when news broke that the National Librarian and CEO of the National Library of South Africa (NLSA), Professor Rocky Ralebipi-Simelang, who had … Continue reading →

Today I chanced to see a post on Barbara Fister’s blog, Library Babel Fish, on the site of the American magazine, Inside higher ed.  Ms Fister subtitles her blog “a college librarian’s take on technology”. I generally like her posts, … Continue reading →

In an earlier post I referred to the development approach known in the development literature as “transformational aid” (Riddell 2014), and which in our context of LIS I prefer to call systemic aid (Lor 2019, sec. 12.7). This involves interventions aimed … Continue reading →

In August 2014 IFLA’s Library History Special Interest Group (SIG) held a post-Congress Satellite Conference on the History of Librarianship at the École Normale Supérieure des Sciences de l’Information et des Bibliothèques (Enssib) in Lyon. Attempts to publish the papers … Continue reading →

From August 2018 LIASA-in-Touch, the newsletter of the Library and Information Association of South Africa (LIASA), carries a column entitled “Global gleanings”, in which I highlight recent publications of professional and scholarly interest as well as quaint snippets from the … Continue reading →

Pitfalls and Challenges in International and Comparative LIS Research: proposal for an IFLA satellite meeting Today, 24 August 2019, a meeting of the Standing Committee of IFLA’s Section for Library Theory and Research (LTR) discussed a proposal I had submitted. … Continue reading →

Some years ago I acquired a Google Scholar profile. I added a photograph of myself, a brief CV, and some keywords describing my research interests. Google Scholar now builds a list of all my publications and on an ongoing basis … Continue reading →

For those of us interested in LIS development in the countries of the South, two annual reports were published this week that are worth looking at: INASP’s 2017/18 digital annual review, entitled Building equitable knowledge ecosystems, and Lubuto Library Partners’ … Continue reading →

In 2013 I published an article in Libri about the alarming number of cases in which community libraries had been deliberately set alight in South African townships and informal settlements. Reportedly, this was done by individuals or groups from the … Continue reading →