South East Asian Librarians end CONSAL conference with action to focus on Asia

26th May 1996

The 10th Congress of South East Asian Librarians (CONSAL-X), held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, ended with a strong plea for more Asian related material to be made more available in the region's libraries.

There was also a lot of recognition during the conference on the librarian's changing role, now that advances in Information Technology has changed the profession for ever. Librarians agreed that the Internet was not a "rival" to traditional libraries. In fact, embracing such new technology would provide opportunities for the library profession to become even more relevant to today's needs.

However the most promising development was the almost universal agreement that libraries had to speed up their acquisition of Asian related materials, and also material produced in the region, reducing dependence on international publishers. In professional and academic areas more is written about Asia from outside the region rather than within. This inevitably promotes an "outsiders" perception of the region and for Asian activity to be judged on the basis of Western standards. (See previous news item on Asian Values)

A significant step was made at the conference towards reversing the direction of flow, and that at some time in the future, Asian libraries will become more a provider of information than a consumer of it.

That's what proactivity is all about!

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