ABSTRACT
Thai library communities have been adopting international cataloging standards in managing their collections to various extents. However, applying these western-oriented standards in practice can be very challenging since these standards may not be compatible with local knowledge production and dissemination system and environment. Due to the dissonance between international standards and local practices, only a few Thai libraries are participating in a global collaborative bibliographic platform. The number of participating libraries is on a decline and the non-participating libraries are reluctant to join the global initiative mainly due to limited resources and technical difficulties. At the same time, libraries outside of Thailand who collect Thai materials are facing obstacles in acquiring and allocating resources in a fair manner primarily because of sociopolitical and economic reprioritization. While the bibliographic records of Thai materials in a global collaborative cataloging platform are limited, a number of libraries outside of Thailand rely on non-professional staff who are part of a Thai diaspora to manage their Thai collections. Some libraries outside of Thailand are hoping that there would be authoritative institutions in Thailand who could contribute trustworthy and reliable records in a global platform. The variety of collection development and cataloging practices have inevitably affected how users around the world access and use Thai materials. Based on the application of Merton’s Insiders and Outsiders doctrine, this presentation discusses the complexity of these abovementioned issues based on findings from a series of empirical studies in the recent years. These findings shed some light on the existence of social justice issues in library practices as consequences of western-oriented standardization.
KEYWORD
Social Justice, Collection Management, Cataloging Standards, Classification Systems, International Librarianship
Songphan Choemprayong1*, Hollie White2
1Department of Library Science, The Arc of Memory Research Unit, Faculty of Arts
Chulalongkorn University
Bangkok, Thailand
2Library, Archives, Records and Information Science
Curtin University
Perth, Australia
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