Search

An important aspect of ASIS&T's international outreach is service to indigenous populations, a need that has received greater recognition since Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's public apology in 2008 for past disruption of Native families. The emerging field of indigenous librarianship can contribute significantly to the process of reconciliation in Canada and other countries with similar colonial legacies. Indigenous librarianship requires reconsidering the organization, classification and representation of library materials from a perspective free of culture- and language-based assumptions. Key themes in indigenous librarianship include removing barriers to access, providing culturally relevant materials and services and departing from widely used knowledge organization systems such as the Dewey Decimal System to create classifications that reflect the Native worldview and epistemology. Successful examples include Australia's Pathways thesaurus project, the Maori Subject Headings from Aotearoa/New Zealand and the British Columbia First Nations Names Authority. Increased involvement by Indigenous people in information studies will enhance accurate representation of their cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]