The Role of The Library in the WSF Process

by Mikael Böök
book@kaapeli.fi

As far as libraries and librarians are concerned, the situation has both evolved and ripened a good deal since the WSF in Mumbai 2004. This is one conclusion from NIGD's workshop on "The Role of The Library in the WSF Process" in Bamako, on Sunday, 22 January, 2006.

Support from librarians, as a professional group, should be just as necessary to the WSF as is, say, the contributions of journalists and translators. A positive sign was the open-mindedness, and even enthusiasm, by which library and information specialists from Mali, and other African countries, embraced the WSF and the ideas from this workshop.

Groups of librarians from different countries should now take on the task of generating adequate documentation of the WSF process for their libraries, starting with the WSF in Nairobi (January 2007).

Librarians could provide the global justice movement with a documentation service corresponding to the interpretation service offered by BABELS, which did the, indispensable, interpretation from English to French and French to English during our workshop in Bamako. The corresponding service on the side of the library community could be called BIBELS, added Antonio Martins from ATTAC Brazil.

In addition to discussing the role of the libraries in the WSF process, the workshop also confronted the general question: what would be an adequate public library service in today's African countries?(Not speaking about the need to take a fresh look at the role of libraries in the other parts of the world!)

Progressive African Library & Information Activists' Group (PALIAct), is one of the (new) groups which try to answer that question. Local instances of PALIAct are about to be formed, beginning in Kenya and Ghana. The two Kenyan participants in the workshop, Esther Obachi and Mary Wanjohi, are both involved in PALIAct. They are planning a follow-up workshop for the WSF in Nairobi 2007.

Other African initiatives present at the workshop were, Communication pour une Développement Durable (CDD), represented by Lorimpo Kambaté from Togo, and Open Knowledge Network (OKN) represented by Peter Benjamin from South Africa.

Mamadou Konoba Keita (director of the national library of Mali), Lamine Camara (secretary of the Malian library association AMBAD), and Anne Abdrahamane (from the medical faculty library of the university in Bamako) presented the situation of libraries in Mali. Their presentations, and other material from their workshop will be included in the forthcoming special issue of Information for Social Change, edited by Kingsley Oghojafor from Nigeria, and its present writer.

More about the library workshop in Bamako and news on the preparations for Nairobi 2007 can be found at: "nigd/libraries/bamako-nairobi"