EDUCATION OF INFORMATION RESOURCES MANAGEMENT
IN A DEVELOPING CONTEXT
August 1992
Mokhtar BEN HENDA
Teacher Assistant. Institut Superieur de Documentation, TUNISIA
Abstract:
The following case study is an attempt to demonstrate how within a developing context, socio-economic factors could have impact on information management activity. Being a professional in an academic information institution, the experience which I am describing will not deal with the content of an educational program but will make analysis, within a precise context of a developing country like Tunisia, of the surrounding environment that affects the general orientation of an information management course programming.
BACKGROUND OF THE CASE
One of the latest phenomena that actually make the unanimity of the developing countries is the concept of the information society. These are, in fact, heavily investing in information know-how acquisition, information technology transfer, transborder data flow, scientific and technological information exchange, education and training. Many developing societies have been opened on NGOs and IGOs that strengthened the common belief of information as a source for development. That is the case of Tunisia, which has profited of the experience of the Arab League Documentation Center (ALDOC), the UNESCO, the Arab League Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ALESCO), the Arab Satellite (ARABSAT) ... to promote national skills and resources of information. That started with the training, in western schools, of tens of postgraduate information specialists who were later implicated into national educational programs conducting. For a long period of time, there were not any belief that information management could make a separate profession or could get isolated from journalistic field of interest. With the newly returning information specialists, a new conception of information professionalism started to emerge in the government and essentially in the university contexts. More and more qualification is required to handle information services which were all the time being managed by non qualified administrative staff.
It is, however, realistic to admit that the concept of information management did not yet acquire the peculiarities and job specifications which developed nations agreed upon. If the north American conception of information analysis establishes strong discernation between library science and information resource management; and if European definition of information analysis progressed towards the broader sense of information, most developing countries perception is still dominated by the classic librarian and documentation restrictions. Although there were a growing societal need for information in more and more diversified sectors, it has not yet bloomed into a clear identification of specialized information services.
Indeed, from the limited and second hand necessity for information expressed by some governmental instances, the academic and the private sectors also waked up on an urging need of scientific and technical information . The situation reached the state where existent information resources and manpower were overpassed by the local information requirements. The need to train locally information mid-level professionals became urgent. Post-graduate professionals trained abroad were charged to conduct the new education program. Once the experience initiated, the fact of combining the local conception of information services with the diversity of the trainers background, the limited infrastructure afforded and the legal context of information professionalism resulted in the following particular situation. These are four elements which I consider very determinant in building up a national information context where educational and professional activities might be promoted or condemned to stagnation.
THE INFORMATION SERVICES
An educational program is supposed to follow a precise guideline to cope with a pre-established objective inspired from a real societal need. That was presumably the pretension of creating a national institution of information studies which graduates and undergraduates are expected to fulfill vacancies in local institutions. The problem, however, is that at an entrepreneurial level, the need for information managers has never been clearly defined. Either in private sector or in government organizations, the task assigned to an information professional is unpredicted. An information specialist could be engaged as a record manager, a reference service responsible, an information counselor, an information desk server...or all of them together, without a previous job qualification selection. This situation indirectly influenced the information course programs where specialization was quite missing. All students took almost the same courses. The only distinction that already exists is the difference between archival topics and documentation subjects. This is, in a way, a common perception of information supports that prevails in developing societies : documentation is all related with books and periodicals, archives is all refers to administrative and unused papers. Many of the information professionals engaged by enterprises faced at the beginning difficulties in treating mail, bills and financial reports. Some were tempted to index them in card catalogues; others even threw them in caves and garbage deposits.
THE BACKGROUND DIVERSITY
Considering the respective schools where every actual educator has been formed, there was a large diversity of academic influence upon the national information school. It is admitted and officially approved that in information science, the impact of predominant currents of thought has created multiple conglomerations of schools following a common principle and adopting a relatively similar educational strategy. The American Library Association (ALA) is said to be more information technology oriented. The Association Internationale des Sciences de l`Information (AIESI) is supposed to be more theoretic in information planning. The Hispanic school supersedes in manuscripts and old funds management. Even within the same association, distinctive interests may characterize one school from another. Instead of the difference in general orientation, it becomes a question of deeper focus on one topic than another. It is for instance said that such a school is multi-media oriented meanwhile the other is much more investing in systems development strategies.
This is much more noted in developing countries where multiple foreign influences may coexist under protection of bilateral cooperation agreements, assistance for development projects.
The repercussion of such diversity on information educational programs was strongly felt and complained about by students who took the same courses with different teachers or whose final exams were corrected by teachers representing a different school.
This conflict , although concealed, was manifest through a set of known topics that make the difference between schools For example, the American trend establishes a difference between archival field of interest that covers inactive records and records management discipline which treats active documents. The French tendency, however, treats both of them in one course syllabus according to the theory of the three ages : active, semi-active and historic or dead records. In cataloguing, although similar, the different norms (ISBD, LCCR, AACR...) represent some basic differences that provoke students criticism. Some schools neglect non- book materials description in their curricula. Others treat only one classification system (DEWEY, UDC...). Some other schools apply their propre definitions for concepts like Information Brokers, Gatekeepers, Invisible Colleges, Information Counselors ... and teach them strictly in conformity with their own socio-cultural criteria. Some schools rely on informal sources of information meanwhile others prevent against uncertainty of sources in information gathering. I personally felt rejection from some of my students, while conducting an investigation on national information networking, to interview on an informal way grass-root users. They have been taught that paper questionnaires and officials comments are the only secure method against information noises and silences in information collecting. There has been even a linguistic problem for some colleagues who did not make the effort to translate some specific terminology from the language of the country where they studied to the local official languages. The Tunisian educational program is based on Arabic and French languages. Translating some technical terms is very important. There is an interesting research effort doing that since some terms could not simply be transliterated from one language to another. I still keep a copy of my Spanish diploma translated into English where the "official" translator converted the word "Biblioteconomia" into "Bibliotheconomy" !!! I personally found language difficulty the first time I spoke about CD-ROMs in my Arabic class.
All these differences in concepts definitions, terminology translations and strategies planning, when assembled within the same program, resulted in a fluctuant and unstable evolution of students assimilation of the new discipline. Even the practical workshops which they are asked to do in enterprises and libraries under supervision of other professionals, sometimes lead to conflictive situations between theory and practice.
The direct reason to this situation was ambivalent. First, the lack of a profound coordination between teachers themselves is a big handicap. Concessions in this context may be undermined as a submission of one school to another, then of one teacher to another. Second, the lack of an explicit and detailed national information policy let the educational orientation of the national information school swinging between individual choices and employers dictations.
INFRASTRUCTURE ENVIRONMENT
That was in a way a glimpse over the apparent part of the iceberg. If information science is still having some trouble in fixing its roots in some developing societies, the reason may go deeper to reach the whole socio-economic components. With the new international information order and according to the bilateral governments cooperation, technology is becoming an integral part of each society. It does not make any more difference to be a producer or an importer of technology in order to be equipped with technological devices. The classical information procedures and techniques are now superseded by more performant gadgets of multi-media tools. The information professional has to be technology literate to be able to use all the technicality required to solve his information management problems.
Educational programs are also urged to include demonstrations and training on sophisticated supports. This is in a way positive for developing countries because it promotes advanced information services. But when the resources required become unbalanced with the projected achievements, the handicap may result crucial. I am an information trainer who used for a while western very advanced information technology. Once back in a developing context, I could not afford more than a low scale microcomputer as a course support. I was obliged every time I talk about multi-media and electronic networking, to use paper schemes and projection machines. The question was why to talk about inexistant material. Well, it happens that some private enterprises acquire sophisticated technology or a government institution is donated a whole mainframe system. Our students, recruited in these organisms, have to have at least a theoretic basis of know-how skills. But they never progress considerably without further training generally accomplished in European specialized institutions. This has been for a while one of the critics addressed to the national school of information. We were reproached to form professionals who could not do more than formatting a soft disk. That was compensated partially by introducing in the course program two further models : two local professional training of two weeks and two months respectively for undergraduate and graduate students within professional (public and private) organizations. One month of summer course is also guaranteed for first half graduates in French specialized institutions to get them trained on on-site new information technology. That prepares them to real professional life once integrating the national job market.
THE LEGAL CONTEXT
Law in democratic societies is the catalyst for the promotion or the abolition of any kind of activity. The Tunisian information sector disposes of a set of legal texts that structure and organize its functioning. The disadvantage, however, is that these texts are almost totally journalism and mass-media oriented. The press code, the audiovisual media regulations and soforth related texts put much more accent on press and audio visual communication. Only one legal text dated July 1973, without later updating, was issued to structure the librarianship sector. It does not recognize neither the professionals reeducation nor the professional distinction between librarians, archivists and documentalists. The consequence is that no attempt could succeed to establish an appropriate job specification for any of those mentioned information professionals. The situation has been partially deblocked in 1988 when a law on archives has been adopted. Each organization (public and private) is now under obligation to manage and "pour" its historic records to the National Archives Deposits.
Organizations are then indirectly constrained to recruit information professionals. The educational program has been thence chiefly oriented towards archives management (the global sense). A changing mentality about archivists, as formerly called "caves dust cleaners" is becoming current. Some scenarios of arbitrary archival funds burning disappeared. The legal context, as proved, has then promoted one aspect of information professionalism. It has to think about promoting other categories like information managers in enterprises, information brokers, counselors and scientific and technical information specialists. It is perhaps up to the professionals themselves to act at level of education, research and publications, but in a developing context, law is more efficient and obligatory.
THE MORALTY OF THE STORY
The situation is that within the scope of the obsolete North-South Dialogue or the New International Information Order, always has existed a one way vertical cooperation. Treated information, educational programs, technical assistance ... are "downloaded" with scarce effort of readaptation. Once trying to readjust in the absence of an alternative, even the imported models get lost. All of us, actually teaching at the national school of information have obviously assimilated particular techniques of information handling, have been exposed to real professional experiences in the respective countries where we studied. But once back, neither on individual level nor as a group we could easily put into practice the same values and principles which we were trained on. The solutions or recommendations which I propose, after a personal experience in three different educational environments (European, American and African), could be resumed in the following :
1 - For western information schools, which still train and form graduates from the developing world, educational programs should include simulation of multiple information strategies. They should take into consideration that with their acquired influence on part of the developing world, a distinction between developing and developed contexts has to characterize their information management courses. That is not beneficial only for international students but also for natives who may be future information international experts and counselors.
2 - For local authorities of developing countries, an effort of readaptation is very essential. The readjustment or the readaptation can take form of several procedures :
2.1 - A national information policy that traces the real needs and requirements of information for the society.
2.2 - A literature translation into national languages.
2.3 - An imposing guideline for information science teaching in conformity with the national information policy dictations.
2.4 - A professional training for trainers and educators so that they update periodically their knowledge and experiences.
2.5 - A legal context that structures and promotes the professional life of information specialists and motivates their research efforts.