Role of Indian public libraries to increase the awareness of the community on HIV/AIDS

Abstract

Today Indian society is at high risk. AIDS, the most devastating disease humankind has ever faced, has become a conflagration on the Indian subcontinent and nearly 5.134 million people in the country are estimated to be HIV-positive. There is a perceived need for public libraries to provide necessary information to make the community aware of the threat of HIV/AIDS. Today's challenge is to reinvent the public libraries to respond to community needs. This paper explores the avenues created by ICT-enabled networking processes in providing HIV/AIDS information to the unprivileged population in India. It concludes with a number of recommendations that are intended to address the core problems and thereby improve the overall situation.     

Exploring the competencies of information professionals for knowledge management in the information institutions of Bangladesh

The aim of the study is to explore the views of information professionals for knowledge management (KM) in the libraries/information institutions of Bangladesh.

This paper seeks to address the following research questions: How the information professionals of Bangladesh perceive the views of KM? What are likely to be the skills required by the information professionals of Bangladesh for KM in the libraries of Bangladesh? and what are likely to be the critical success factors for encouraging KM in the information institutions of Bangladesh?

The methodology includes a quantitative approach. The study has been conducted through a survey using a pre-structured questionnaire. A short and structured questionnaire was sent to 50 information professionals who had been working in different libraries in Bangladesh through email and/or by postal mail. The respondents were selected from six divisions of Bangladesh (25 respondents from Dhaka division, 5 each in Chittagong, Rajshahi, Khulna, Barishal and Sylhet divisions). Out of the 50 individuals sent the survey we received 30 responses, for a response rate 60%.

The results of the study show that that 93.24% of the respondents first read about KM in the literature, but none had taken any courses on KM. Only 6.76% of the respondents had attended a workshop on KM. Findings also yield most professionals believed that several competencies including those in: communication, facilitation, coaching, mentoring, networking, negotiating, consensus building, and team working were essential for KM in the libraries of Bangladesh. This paper also suggests some critical success factors for encouraging the information professionals to KM in the libraries of Bangladesh. It investigates the original views of the library and information professionals of Bangladesh regarding the skills and competences of information professionals for KM in the libraries of Bangladesh.

The department of Information Science and Library Management of Dhaka University and Rajshahi University should introduce KM course(s) either in the graduate level or in the post-graduate level.     

《全国公共图书馆“十二五”规划》关键词解读

《全国公共图书馆十二五规划》透露出了公共图书馆事业的发展重心,那就是保障广大人民群众尤其是农村基层、弱势人群的基本文化权益,其中的几个关键词“保基本、强基层、普遍均等、政府主导”道出了公共图书馆在“十二五”期间建设的基本思路和发展方向。参考文献3。     

Militarism and Memorializing at the Pro Football Hall of Fame

More than ever, entertainment industries work in concert with the US armed forces in the rhetorical production of militarism. This is especially the case in sport, where leagues such as the National Football League routinely make war imagery and military personnel a focal point of football culture. One such iteration of this relationship is the “Pro Football and the American Spirit” exhibit that is part of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Understood as an example of public memory, this exhibit reveals sport's capacity to normalize war and reduce the available models of citizenship in the United States.     

Aphasia and a Legacy of Violence: Disabling and Enabling Knowledge of the Past in Poland

Neighbors ignited a fierce debate in the Polish press over the remembrance of a WWII pogrom of Jewish Poles by gentile Poles. There were three different responses crafted by media commentators to recuperate the nation. I argue that the debate demonstrated an aphasic structural disorder that rendered knowledge of the past violence and its victims unrecognisable and its implications incomprehensible. My psychoanalytic reading shows that misrecognition of that knowledge to protect the fiction of the Polish gentile Self was the fundamental dynamic in the media commentaries. I examine the aphasic mechanisms of misrecognition and metonymy for insights into how ignorance is repeatedly legitimated and disregard is diffused and how the Self dependency on the Other is barred from recognition. I explicate how aphasia shapes memory and responses to a national rupture and subsequent recuperation.     

From Shelf to Spotlight: Rediscovering Modernist Books From Eastern Europe at The New York Public Library

This essay contextualizes the overall development of eastern European resources at the Library, highlighting some of the personalities who have contributed to building this internationally significant research resource. The development of the Baltic, east‐central European, and southern Slavic collections of The New York Public Library has been a neglected area of the Library's history. Reciprocity with institutions in the Slavic and Eastern European homelands played a vital part in the growth of the Library's holdings of materials in their languages until the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Library materials were acquired through local dealers, as gifts, and on international exchanges, as well as through personal visits to the region by library staff. Modernist books were an important part of these acquisition efforts.     

Collecting the Revolution: New Directions in Research

ABSTRACT

This essay reports on the latest efforts to assess the collections of materials relating to the Russian Revolution held in the Hoover Institution and the New York Public Library (NYPL). The first section reviews the presentations made by Bertrand Patenaude, Michael Herrick, and Robert Davis during the roundtable “Collecting the Revolution” at the annual meeting of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies in November 2017. The second presents additional information documenting the development of NYPL’s and Hoover’s collections located in The Wisconsin State Historical Society Archive and the Archive of the Russian State Library.     

In Memoriam Dr. Viktor Koressaar(1916–2002)

ABSTRACT

Dr. Viktor Koressaar, the former head of the Slavic and Baltic Division at the New York Public Library, died on October 25, 2002. Dr. Koressaar was also an active participant in various cultural activities of the Estonian exile communities in North America and Sweden. The article tells of some of his life experiences and a few of his publications.     

Holocaust-Denial Literature in Public Libraries

This study was undertaken to learn about public librarians' attitudes and opinions concerning the sometimes conflicting issues of intellectual freedom, collection balance, and controversial materials. The investigation focused on Holocaust-denial literature, a body of work which tries to dispute or deny outright the historical reality of the Holocaust. The results, while ambiguous in some areas, indicate that librarians are more open to Holocaust-revisionist literature than had been predicted and, regardless of outside pressures, would acquire and provide ready access to this material in their libraries.     

“You Don't Play,You Volunteer”: Narrative Public Memory Construction in Medal of Honor: Rising Sun

Narrative and ludological analysis suggests that Electronic Arts’ Medal of Honor: Rising Sun constructs a narrative of World War II that selectively retells history and constructs an Orientalist representation of the Japanese Empire. The gaming environment exists as an interactive museum that immerses gamers into history so that they experience warfare in their homes. Combining newsreels, fictional letters from home, and interviews with veterans of the “Good War,” Medal of Honor: Rising Sun retells a history that omits details of Japanese internment or atomic weapons. The intertwined themes of personal revenge for the loss of a family member and historical revenge for the attack on Pearl Harbor guide gamers through an “educational” experience of the war. Finally, its failure to simulate violence means that Medal of Honor: Rising Sun invites a critical blindness to commemorating war.