Information Technology and the Marginalisation of Regional Cultures: Rambling Thoughts from the University of Calgary Experience.

In the past decade, significant advances in information technologies in the Euro-American world have fostered the creation of information monopolies. The prices imposed by the monopolies, whose products are largely in the English language, have caused academic libraries to focus almost exclusively on international scientific and cultural materials demanded by their researchers. This has resulted in an insidious and progressive marginalization of regional cultures. After careful consideration of this issue, the University of Calgary's 1998 Library of the Future Task Force recommended that the University of Calgary adopt an integrated approach to information that incorporates both production and consumption activities. The university would move to a "just for you" library and provide information through contracted electronic access whenever possible. To ensure that it becomes a net contributor to preservation and dissemination of knowledge rather than just a consumer of products of the information monopolies, the library will work to preserve primary materials by creating a digital archive of materials about and produced by Western Canada's Aboriginal communities, thus taking national and regional community needs into account. Whether the proposed policy change will succeed in reducing the marginalization of regional culture remains to be seen. (Contains 14 references.) (MN)