LIBRARIES AND THE GLOBAL INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE

Mrs Nancy John

Second Vice-President

International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA)

Netherlands

Of all the roles that librarians and libraries play, two are critical to modern society as we know it. The first is the role of the library as the place where the information seeker can access information without restriction - the access role. The second role has been the world-wide effort of libraries to archive, protect and provide ongoing access to information and the world's cultural heritage for the long term - the preservation role. These two fundamental roles have differentiated libraries from all other institutions.

Because of these two roles, librarians are a keystone species (1) in the world-wide electronic information ecology. We and our institutions (libraries) are essential to the creation of a healthy global information infrastructure: with rich public and private domains; multilingual in character; with library users secure in their private and confidential use of information; with society placing its trust in the library; and where globalization is a recognised value and opportunity.

In the print environment, these theoretical roles of libraries (access and preservation) have been relatively secure, although the funding to fulfil societal aims has been a constant world-wide problem. In the electronic environment, suddenly many of the library's traditional roles, such as selection (filtering), lending (free sharing), and preservation (copying and archiving) are being endangered. Some are at risk because of laws that inhibit the open, reasonable and fair use of information, while others are undermined by the application of technical solutions that give little thought to the social and cultural value of individual information seekers and the wide-ranging needs of the worlds information hungry.

Librarians have assured open, ongoing access to information through the careful, thoughtful development of standards and professional practices, as well as tools, that respect not only information seekers but also information creators and suppliers. Librarians are developing techniques to assure permanent addresses for electronic information resources on the move -- a permanence their creators can not. Librarians are selecting materials with regard to quality and appropriateness while respecting the differing needs of users -- something software filters and search engines can not. Librarians are archiving electronic files and providing ongoing intellectual access and a way to cite information that others can not. Finally, libraries as public institutions are providing many of the worlds information needy with a friendly, secure, free, anonymous (but not unaccountable) way to identify and use electronic information. Technical solutions that do not support the integral role that librarians and libraries play are doomed to fail.

The issues of free access and freedom of expression are foremost values when it comes to the ethics of information. In this year as we celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, our rededication to these values with renewed strength is particularly apt. IFLA (The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) has established a programme office in Copenhagen to deal with free access to information and freedom of expression (FAIFE). The FAIFE effort is further supported by an international panel of experts in these areas -- experts who prepared FAIFE's first working plan at the 1998 IFLA General Conference. A companion committee on copyright and other legal matters (CLM) has also been established, and it is addressing the legal framework that supports open access and a strong public domain in its work

plan.

The other species in this information ecology must give librarians the tools we need to continue to balance the right of readers and authors, consumers and publishers, information seekers and information. These include most importantly the political, social and legal basis on which to continue our keystone species role. These essential roles of the (public) library are well noted in the UNESCO Public Library Manifesto, as valid in the electronic world as in the world of print. UNESCO has done much to help further the traditional access and preservation roles of libraries through technology. Now is the time for UNESCO to help libraries and society so that we may apply these same librarian values to the access to and preservation of the global information infrastructure.

(1) Nardi, Bonnie and Vickie O'Day. Information ecologies. Cambridge, Mass:

MIT Press, 1998.