Meeting Summary

Alfred Kagan, Convener

The IFLA Social Responsibilities Discussion Group had its first official meeting on Sunday, 8;30-10:20 for business and to discuss the growing gap between the information rich and the information poor both between countries and within countries. The large turnout from a diverse number of countries showed significant interest in this topic and the broad purposes of the Group. Al Kagan noted the recent American Library Association meeting where the ALA Social Responsibilities Round Table organized a program on "Social Responsibility Around the World" with speakers from progressive library organizations in Austria, Germany, South Africa, Sweden and the United Kingdom. These groups are forming an international network of progressive library organizations. For information on these organizations and further information, see the website at http://www.germany.net/teilnehmer/100.115158/adresse.htm.

Six discussion papers were prepared for this meeting but unfortunately only one of the authors was able to be present. For this reason, only the abstracts were read and a wide-ranging discussion took place. The sub-topics of the papers under the general theme of the information gap were: rural libraries in India (Kaplana Dasgupta, India), literacy in libraries (Josephine Andersen, South Africa), human resource development (Dennis Ocholla, South Africa), fees for library services (Kristine Abelsnes, Norway), North-South library cooperation (Ismail Abdullahi, US), and the electronic information gap (Alfred Kagan, US). Several speakers from the floor stressed the need for action, including the need to influence IFLA policies and programs. It was noted that segeral IFLA sections are addressing related themes, and that the Discussion Group might become a focal point for collecting information on what the various bodies are doing and helping to coordinate activities.

The Discussion Group plans on establishing a webpage on IFLANET. For further information, contact Al Kagan, Africana Unit, Room 328, University of Illinois Library, 1408 W. Gregory Drive, Urbana, IL 61801, USA, e-mail: akagan@uiuc.edu.