FEATURE
Asia
Information needs can’t be generalised
Siân Harris finds out what some of the key information issues are for librarians and researchers across Asia
M
uch discussion about scholarly research focuses on the western world. Top research institutions in the west are very good at publicising what they do beyond
national borders and Europe and North America are home to many international publishing houses. But the picture this gives of research publishing is far from complete. In Asia, many of the challenges faced by librarians and researchers are like those faced elsewhere in the world. Issues of budgets, information literacy of students and choosing resources are similar around the world. However, there are many information needs and challenges that are specific to each country.
For example, it’s easy to assume that all researchers in all countries turn to broadly the same set of research resources – even if their institutions don’t subscribe to them all. However, it’s simply not the case. This issue was illustrated at the ALPSP conference last year when Choon Shil Lee, professor of library & information science at Sookmyung Women’s University, South Korea spoke about a range of country-wide medical information resources, all of which had western analogues but all of which focused on research from South Korea.
She spoke about a publishing landscape in the country where there are no major commercial scholarly publishers and very few subscription-based titles. The projects she’s
Jessie Satyanesan, chief librarian, Mohandas College of Engineering & Technology, Kerala, India
We serve engineering subjects, biotechnology, social sciences and humanities. This is not a research-oriented institution. However, the students use both print and online journals for their assignments, seminars and projects. We are now fully automated, with an online public access catalogue and all the library resources may be accessed from any online terminal in the campus. The library has developed a library portal, and resources in various subjects may be accessed. As curriculum requirements changed, we have moved gradually to online subscription resources.
Our students use Google and other forms of online resources, including IEEE print resources. We have also developed
18 Research Information FEB/MAR 2012
a digital library, which provides access to free e-resources. However, users may not find the resources they need in their library because it is difficult for one library to subscribe to several databases because of the cost involved. They may have to get the information from other libraries and external sources through interlibrary loans – and this can include some textbooks that are prescribed for their course. Because of the impact of mobile technology we expect future access to information through the mobile applications in libraries and other forms of emerging technology. I plan to introduce emerging technologies in our libraries in the future.
involved in include bringing together many of the disparate journals in the country – many in Korean – and enabling them to be searched together, as well as enabling the many open- access titles to be indexed in Google Scholar.
Different languages
Language is also a challenge for many librarians and researchers. In some countries, English – which is commonly used for scholarly publishing – is widely spoken and taught. In others, the fact that so much scholarly information is in English is seen as a major barrier to students, if not for their professors. ‘Language is not much of a challenge for my collegues and me who got doctoral degrees from English-speaking countries such as the USA, UK and Australia but, for students, language barriers are still the main problem,’ observed Chutima Sacchanand, a professor of library and information studies (LIS) at Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University in Thailand. She estimates that literature published in Thailand, in Thai, makes up around 30 per cent of the resources she accesses. These experiences were echoed by Mitsuhiro Oda, a professor of library and information
studies at Aoyama Gakuin
University, Japan but currently a visiting professor at Loughborough University, UK. He sees language as the main information hurdle, likening it to crossing hazardous water. ‘We have to translate and interpret research information from Japanese to English, and vice versa,’ he explained. ‘Roughly three quarters of the resources I use for my research are published in Japan, in Japanese.’ In Singapore, however, the situation is very different, as Joseph Kennedy, research librarian, law & business at Singapore Management University, pointed out: ‘Since English is the language of business and we are primarily a business school located in an English-speaking country, language is not a huge challenge. The language issue may be more for users who come from other parts of
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