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Librarians and information experts hold a critical role in helping organizations research, document, collect, organize, store and use information for action. This dialogue features outstanding world experts in knowledge activism, who are knowledgeable and experienced on how information is power.
The following table of contents was developed to make the dialogue easier to navigate. Important themes and different discussions have been highlighted for archival purposes and for new users.
[Photo credit: jypsygen]
Definition of a Librarian
Development and the Future
| Archiving
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Intro
During the week of September 26 through October 2, 2007 outstanding world experts in knowledge activism - Saša Madacki (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Toni Samek (Canada) and Bert Verstappen (Switzerland) discussed with members of the New Tactics community the critical role of librarians and information experts in helping organizations research, document, collect, organize, store and use information for action. Unfortunately, Youk Chhang (Documentation Center of Cambodia, DC-Cam) was unable to join our discussion due to unexpected demands in far-flung villages related to the tribunal process where he had no internet access to participate during the featured week.
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| Saša Madacki, Toni Samek, Bert Verstappen and Youk Chhang | |||
Saša Madacki, Director of the Human Rights Centre at the University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Prior to taking over as director, he was the Head of Information Research and Library Department at the Human Rights Centre. In 2002, Saša participated in the New Tactics in Human Rights Central and East European Regional Training Workshop and wrote a tactical notebook on library and information services for the improvement of human rights work. Saša’s New Tactics Tactical Notebook: Making Sense of the Information Wilderness: Library and Information Services for the Improvement of Human Rights Work is available as a free download. For more information about the Human Rights Centre at the University of Sarajevo see: http://www.hrc.unsa.ba/en/osoblje.html
Toni Samek, educator and scholar at the School of Library and Information Studies, University of Alberta, Canada. For more information see: http://www.ualberta.ca/~asamek/toni.htm She has written An Introduction to Librarianship and Human Rights, a paper presented for Shared Dialogue and Learning: International Conference on Educating for Human Rights and Global Citizenship. Her recently released book, Librarianship and Human Rights: A 21st Century Guide, is available through CHANDOS (Oxford) Publishing (www.chandospublishing.com). The book provides eighteen strategies and over 100 examples of social action applied to library and information work. Plans are in process for a Spanish translation to be released in Buenos Aires in a special Latin American adaptation in 2008.
Bert Verstappen, Programme Coordinator at the Human Rights Information and Documentation Systems, International (HURIDOCS), a global capacity-building network of organisations that use documentation techniques, monitoring methods, information management systems and available technologies in the defence of human rights and the prevention of abuses. Among the many helpful resources and manuals Bert has written is the excellent, What is documentation, available at HURIDOCS website. For more information on HURIDOCS see: http://www.huridocs.org/
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OPENING POST OF THE DISCUSSION
Welcome to our first Monthly Featured Tactical Discussion. We are so pleased to highlight Philippe Duhamel’s interTactica blog post that beautifully summarizes our usual perceptions and biases about librarians. He also draws out key points from Saša Madacki’s tactical notebook that provide a perfect opening for pulling out some reactions for both our extraordinary resource practitioners and those participating in the discussion.
I must admit my prejudice. Those in the profession are the epitome of neutral, technical, and boring. Or so I thought.
Boy was I wrong. Blame early childhood experiences.
Forget the cold lady with the glasses who goes Shhh! behind mouldy bookcases. Get a read beyond stereotypes. Find out about a radical new breed of freedom fighters who can bolster knowledge democracy and boost your overall effectiveness.
My preconceived biases about librarians were first shaken in a New Tactics notebook entitled Making Sense of the Information Wilderness: Library and Information Services for the Improvement of Human Rights Work, by Saša Madacki, head librarian at the Human Rights Centre in Sarajevo. I discovered documentalists, information specialists, and archivists — however you want to call them — can actually be of use to us in the movement. Some even describe themselves as activists! I was blown away.
Beyond help to organize reference materials, I found in the tactical notebook many other ways librarians can assist our work, our organizations, and indeed the world. Let me share seven.
1. From wasteful ignorance to faster, better decisions. Sometimes, key decisions are postponed or never made because critical information is missing. Worse, you make a decision based on incorrect information, or facts that weren't checked properly. As a knowledge worker, a librarian can hunt decision-making facts faster, and better. Your document specialist can also identify research carried out elsewhere, to avoid unnecessary duplication. Don't waste time in ignorance. Find out early. Ask a librarian.
2. One copy makes the rounds. Your librarian can make sure there are no duplicates of costly subscriptions or materials around the office, managing resources so they are shared efficiently. This saves time and money. Hugely.
3. Go for the find, not the search. Most of us whose work depends partly on research usually spend over half of our time looking for stuff, online or otherwise. A librarian can cherry-pick for you the best reference material on a given subject. You're in a crunch to write a major project proposal? Your librarian can gather the statistical highlights, the documented evidence, the testimonies, freeing you up to do the other productive things. Like writing the actual proposal, and getting it out the door.
4. From blunders to homers. Some of your colleagues may make errors of fact or judgement that end up costing money or credibility. Or, because they don't know enough about your organization's culture, history and accomplishments, volunteers can make erroneous assertions or embarrassing statements. Your librarian can take charge of verifying facts for all internal reports, public statements and external publications. That can save the day.
5. From organizational amnesia to historical ownership. Say this big anniversary is coming up... You scramble to put together bits and pieces of your past achievements. Wow, sure looks like someone purposefully tucked away your historical photos in every imaginable places! A librarian can package your organizational memory for wider use. When a journalist or a researcher comes calling, you can be ready with your neat little folder. Your legacy is important. Make sure your contemporaries, and future generations, can access it.
6. From information overload to easy up-to-dateness. Your specialist can monitor your individual interests and keep tabs on the field for you. When a new book or interesting paper appears, you get an alert based on current files under your responsibility and your profile of interests.
7. From dusty archives to knowledge democracy. You may be spending too much time looking for information, instead of using it, and disseminating it. “Disseminating materials is the librarian’s foremost responsibility”, says Saša Madacki. Your librarian also doubles as a computer specialist. They can evaluate and manage the best possible software solutions for you. They can create databases to improve access to your internal records and key contacts, like membership, donors, and the media. They can train staff on how to use organizational databases and manage their own documents.
— Okay. Librarians are cool. Question: Now how do I get one?
Photo credit: ©2010 Carolyn Gallo
Human rights documentation: information management and security
Thanks everyone for a wonderful discussion so far! I’d like to add a bit more from the
perspective of the Benetech, where we work closely with human rights
organizations to help them document human rights situations.
As you read this post, I encourage you to think about information management and security
as critical components of the task of documenting human rights violations, and
ultimately of librarianship.
The challenge: human rights and social justice
groups throughout the world gather and collect large amounts of data, yet these
organizations often lack the resources to document human rights violations
systematically and securely.
The information
gathered by these groups was done so at great risk to themselves and to those
whose stories they document, but it remains on paper or in insecure electronic
formats. The result is that rich, raw information remains vulnerable to theft
and destruction. Often these formats prevent the information from being
effectively shared; worse, critical documentation is often lost to viruses,
computer theft, neglect and staff turnover.
Lost information is a problem with far-reaching implications. Social justice organizations know
that timely, accurate data distribution is one of their most powerful weapons
against human rights violations. NGOs gather information to draw attention to
the circumstances of victims, pressure perpetrators and encourage judicial
accountability. They also use field data to focus media attention and help
deliver justice in the form of truth commissions and tribunals. Without the
collection and use of such information, human rights campaigns have limited
chance of success.
As Ben noted, the Benetech Human Rights program has developed a tool called Martus, a
free, secure information management tool. Martus allows users to create a
searchable database that is highly customizable. The user can develop
standardized, customized templates for data entry, and share information with
other Martus users. It is flexible enough to allow sharing between a network of
field offices spread around the world, as well as between two co-workers in the
same office. Information can be shared securely (so that the information is
kept private) or made widespread and publicly viewable via a Martus Search Engine.
Martus is used by a diverse array of organizations, ranging from small NGOs to large
archive projects. Each has taken advantage of both the customizability of
Martus as well as the high level of security afforded by the tool. We work
closely with partners to develop an understanding of the information they have
and craft a structure of organization and data management. In this way, not
only is the information collection guaranteed a level of consistency and
detail, but the information becomes manageable. This also makes it more
likely that meaningful human rights data analysis can be done at a later point.
Another key aspect of human rights documentation, as Bert noted, is the highly sensitive nature of
the information involved. Increasingly, the computers of human rights
organizations are targeted by those who wish to destroy the information.
Martus has a high level of security built in. It automatically encrypts all
information on the local computer, and backs it up to remote servers each time you
connect to the internet. Because of this, even if your computer is stolen by
people who hope to access your data, all they get is encrypted 'bits and bytes',
and because Martus has backed up your data, it's not lost to your organization. As
an example, one of our partners in Colombia had her laptop stolen at
gunpoint. Martus worked in two ways: first, she could be sure that the thieves
were unable to access the sensitive information on her laptop, and
second, her organization was able to retrieve her data from the servers where it had been
backed up.
An example of a large Martus project is the Guatemala National Police Archives project. In
2005, the archives of the (now disbanded) Guatemalan National Police were
discovered in an abandoned warehouse. The warehouse was packed with over 80
million pages of documentation, including papers, books, photographs and floppy
disks. Some of the content dated back to the 1880s. The archives were damaged
by years of exposure to rainwater, animal droppings and decay. As the
Guatemalan Human Rights Ombudsman’s office works to clean the documents and
understand their contents, they are using Martus as a customizable database
that allows the data to be structured in multiple ways, in preparation for
later data analysis. The Martus team at Benetech has worked closely with the archive
team to develop the customization structure and plan for analysis. To date, they have have created over 30, 000 bulletins and backed them up over the internet to secure servers outside of the country.
Each human rights organization is unique, and has a unique collection of information. Our
goal is to help them collect, organize and manage their data, while ensuring
that it won’t be destroyed, whether by neglect, malicious intent, or any number
of other causes.
Read more about the Guatemala National Police Archives project here: http://www.hrdag.org/about/guatemala-police_arch_project.shtml
You can download Martus for free here:
www.martus.org
Since Martus is based on open source
technology, each improvement to the software benefits all users who can
download the latest release for free. Our partners and programmers in
the open source community are welcome to examine the Martus software code to ensure trust and transparency.
Vijaya (Jaya) Tripathi, Benetech