THE RIGHT TO KNOWLEDGE: REFLECTIONS ON THE BASIS OF A CONFERENCE ORGANISED BY LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE STUDENTS

Niels Ole Pors, Library Link Convenor

I have earlier on this site described the BOBCATSSS - conferences as unique simply because they are organised by library and information science students. Participants are professionals, researchers and students from mainly Western and Eastern Europe. The last one was run in Cracow in Poland, January 2000, and organised by students from Copenhagen, with the theme �Intellectual Property versus The Right to Knowledge�. The theme was divided into three different topics: Accessibility, Legal and Political Aspects, Technology, and is future-oriented and very pertinent in relation to the debate and the problems facing the profession.

The conference proceedings were ready at the start of the conference, and consists of approximately 30 papers. The geographical origin of the papers is:

Eastern Europe: 9 papers
Western Europe: 11
UK: 8
Scandinavia: 1
Other: 2

The BOBCATSSS conferences have never been - or intended to be - high profile research conferences. Still quite a lot of good papers and problems were presented. The selection process seems to be more rigorous than a couple of years ago. As with most other conferences the papers have a very broad interpretation of the different themes and topics. Overall - through the proceedings - you will get a broad overview of the problems facing part of the profession in relation to copyright problems, information literacy, intellectual freedom and the different kinds of gatekeeper roles in libraries in relation to the more problematic content of the net. The advantage is of course that you get a broad view from a multitude of different countries. There is a high representation of papers especially from Eastern Europe. I will not go into any details relating to the papers from West Europe and UK, but instead will emphasise some rather interesting topics from East Europe. Five or six years ago most of the papers from Eastern Europe at this kind of conferences tended to be rather descriptive in content, or describe intentions. It reflected, to a certain degree, the curricula at the LIS institutions.

Things have changed. From Slovenia you will find an unobtrusive study about public librarians� reaction to morally disputed questions on necrophilism, suicide and pictures of corpses. The study investigated aspects such as the librarians� verbal and non-verbal reactions and, of course, their helpfulness in relation to the questions. The results you can read for yourself. The important development is that the paper represents an empirical investigation into service quality. It is a pilot study, but rather interesting.

Another Slovenian empirical study investigates students� perception of, and familiarity with, aspects of the digital library and brings forward some reassuring conclusions. The study is based on a questionnaire.

Another questionnaire investigation concerning the Internet comes from Poland. On the basis of the information gathered by means of a questionnaire the paper reports on the perceived difficulties of using the Internet by Polish students. The difficulties are psychological and structural, but are also related to language skills and information literary. Still the study shows a marked increase in familiarity with and mastering of the Net by the students. Another Polish paper goes into detail about the economics of studying in Poland and the possible cost of seeking information. The paper also demonstrates that nearly 70 % of Polish university students are frequent users of the Internet. The paper deals with some of the possible consequences for students if a government proposal to introduce user fees is put in practice.

Did I mention that students wrote the papers mentioned above? The papers from the students are, of course not, flawless, but it is demonstrated through these and other papers that tremendous changes are taking place in Eastern Europe due both to the development of the technology and to changes in the learning style and the modernisation of curricula. The students are in good company with distinguished researchers and professionals from the UK and Western Europe. It should also be noted that the proceedings contain several interesting papers on information literacy, copyright problems, aspects of the Internet and legislation in relation to access to information. The details of the conference proceeding are:

Access 2000: Intellectual Property vs. The Right to Knowledge. Eds. Regine Johanne Banke et al. The Royal School of Library and Information Science, Copenhagen, 2000. 324 pages. ISBN: 87-7415-258-8. �15. Contact and order: [email protected]

Niels Ole Pors
Library Link Convenor

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