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Document Resume Ed 356 783 Ir 054 474 Title Ifla -DOCUMENT RESUME ED 356 783 IR 054 474 TITLE IFLA General Conference, 1992. Division of Libraries Serving the General Public: Section on Library Services to Multicultural Populations; Section on School Libraries; Section on Public Libraries. Papers. INSTITUTION International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, London (England). PUB DATE Sep 92 NOTE 134p.; Papers presented at the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) General Conference (58th, New Delhi, India, A,gust 30-September 3, 1992). Reproducibility of papers is poor. For additional conference papers, see IR 054 468-483. PUB TYPE Speeches/Conference Papers (150) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC06 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS American Indians; Case Studies; *Cultural Pluralism; Developing Nations; Developmental Programs; Foreign Countries; Illiteracy; Indigenous Populations; Information Technology; Library Cooperation; Library Instruction; Library Role; *Library Services; Library Surveys; Models; *Public Libraries; User Needs (Information); *Users (Information) IDENTIFIERS India; International Federation of Library Associations; Malaysia; *Multicultural Materials; Native Americans; Ontario; UNESCO; United States ABSTRACT Eleven papers delivered for the Division of Libraries Serving the General Public at the International Federationof Library Associations and Institutions 1992 annual meetingare presented. Most deal with library services to multicultural populations, including those of developing countries. The followingpapers are included: (1) "Library Provision to Indians Living in Malaysia" (K.S. ?fun); (2) "Library Services to Indians in Canada" (U. Prasada-Kole); (3) "Library Services to the Indian Population in the UnitedStates" (R. N. Sharma); (4) "The Southern Ontario Multilingual Pool:A Model for Cooperative Library Service Development" (S. Skrzeszewski); (5) "Meeting Information Needs of Slow, Average and GiftedLearners" (M. Kapoor); (6) "The Application of InformationTechnology (IT) in Public Libraries in Developing Countries" (P. Borchardt);(7) "The Role of the Public Library in Combating Illiteracy" (B.Thomas); (8) "The First UNESCO Library Pilot Project" (S.N. Khanna); (9) "'Transformation': The ODA Trainer Development Projectfor Central and State Training Institute Librarians in India" (M. Freeman);(10) "User Education around the World: The UNESCOSurvey of Library and Information User Education Programmes in Some DevelopingCountries" (0. Kokkonen); and (11) "Ask the SameQuestions and Get a Different Answer--A Case Study in Library Opening Hours Surveys" (J. Frylinck). Most papers are followed by references. (SLD) 4LA GENERALCONMENCENEW DELHI 1942 Libraries Serving the General Public Divuace: Sconce/RI: LibraryServices to Multicultural Populations U.S DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION ik-16ULTP- 1 OR of Educat.ona. Researcr and implove,nent 51 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION Joint Meeting with: CENTER ;ERIC) Th,s document has been reoroduced as ,e,:e,,ed from lee oe,son orgazat-oh 0,gmafing t Mho, changes pace oeeh made to ,,,,oro.e eoroducton Quatty WORKSHOP THEME (IFAPPLICABLE): e Ponts 01 v,ee or oomons staled 5 msaocu ment do not hecessawy reoresent otr.c.a, oERI posts oohcv t.. t.,C) Library Provision to Indians Living inMalaysia Ln by Khoo Siew Mun ;11 University of Malaya Library, Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia For internal use only: Meeting No:40 I REPRODUCE THIS "PERMISSION 0 BY SE yeeino MATERIAL HASBEEN GRANTED i1.L, Van.,:esernael Estimated number of participants in the meeting: RESOURCES EDUCATIONAL TO THE (ERIC)" oreT &IDA!'an.tr. INFORMATION CENTER Abstract Library Provision to Indians in Malaya Khoo Siew Mun, Chief Librarian University of Malaya Indian people have been living on the Malay peninsula for more than 2,000 years. In recent times many have them come to work on plantations and the majority are Tamil. They now count for ten percent of the population. School libraries services are provided at the 500 plus Tamil elementary schools. About ten percent of viblic/state libraries contain Tamil language materials. Large collections are held at the University of Malaya Library. Many Indians are now trilingual using Tamil, English and Malay. LIBRARY PROVISION TO INDIANS IN MALAYSIA Khoo Siew Mun Chief Librarian University of Malaya Paper presented to the IFLA Section on Library Services to MulticulturalPopulations Programme on Library Services to Indians Abroad IFLA General Conference on Library and Information Policy Perpectives New Delhi 30 August - 5 September 1992 University of Malaya Library Kuala Lumpur March 1992 11 LIBRARY PROVISION TO INDIANS INMALAYSIA Khoo Siew Mun Chief Librarian University of Malaya I. INTRODUCTION EARLY IMMIGRATION Historians have postulated thearrival of Indians to the Malay Peninsula over 2,000 years ago. They were birds of passage, and being mainlytraders and travellers, free and powerful, they flowed to and fromIndia, the Peninsula and the lands beyond. It was not till the beginningof the 19th century that consolidated blocks of emigration fromIndia took place, with the Peninsula as the targetdestination. The Malay Peninsula had been colonized, asBritish Malaya, beginning from 1786. Economic exploitation of the country soonbegan, initially with the cultivation ofplantation crops: spices, sugar cane, pepper andrubber; then later with primary production of mining and quarrying. These economic activities had to be supported byinfrastructures of road and rail transport. In combination, these activities needed large quantities of labour whichcould not be met locally. Throughout the 19th to the early 20th century, cheap, unskilled labour from South India wasrecruited into Malaya in large numbers through assistedemigration. The indenture contract system 'originated with a contract,usually written and voluntarily assumed, but inpractice it was often not a true contract at all'(Sandhu, p.55). The labourer in theory would be freed of his contractat the end of three years; but in reality remained indebted to work for a pittance for years on end, except whenrepatriated should he prove unsuitable. This system was abolished in 1910 and succeeded by a recruitment systemunder a headman, or kangany. The kangany recruitment system'began in the 1890s... remained unaltered inits fundamental aspects until 1938 when.it was abolished following a ban by the Indian government on emigration ofunskilled labour' (Sandhu. p.56-57). In addition to these two methodsof assisted labour to Malaya, were voluntary free labour,who like emigrants everywhere, left their home country for a variety of reasons - economic,political and social - in search of a better life. Amongst these were the better-educated and those with professional skills. 1 Altogether, the South Indian wasperhaps the most satisfactory type of labourer, for inaddition to being a British subject,accustomed to Brutish rule, he was a good worker, not too ambitiousand easily manageable. He had none of the self-reliance northe capacity of the Chinese, but he was the most amenable tothe comparativel-, lowly paid and ratherregimented life of estates and government projects. He ham well-behaved, docile and had neither the education northe enterprise to rise, aE the Chinese oftendid above the level of manual labour. These characteristics of the South Indian labourer made him all the moreindispensable as a worker (Sandhu, p.47). Throughout this period, while themajority still saw India as their permanent base, manyothers stayed to make Malaya their new home. They brought out wives andfamilies, or married locally into their owncommunity. Thus by the time of Independence, in 1957, Malaya had a sizeable settled community of nearly a million Indians, whose forbears had emigrated in the couple ofhundred preceding years. The bulk of early Indian emigration toMalaya had been of an ephemeral character, with approximately 4million entering and 2.8 million leaving the countrybetween 1860 and 1957' (Sandhu, p.68). The population after1957 has been largely a settled one, with the majoritybeing Malaysian citizens in their own right, throughoperation of law or through being born to nationals. SOCIO-ECONOMIC ASPPCTS Writing in 1965, Arasaratnam made thefollowing observation: The fact that the Indian elementin the Malaysian population arose primarily from the need forplantation labour and that this labour was lookedfor and was forthcoming from one particular region ofIndia [Tamil Nadu] to the exclusion of others haslent some homogeneity to the Malaysian Indians. It has resulted in the present position that about 80% ofIndians in Malaysia are Tamil-speakers, another 10% being Malayalees and Telugus from closely relatedlanguage- culture groups. The remaining 10% are northernIndians among whom Punjabis predominate(p.101). Studies of Indians, especially of the Tamil estatelabourer, testify to their economic poverty and relativeinability to more upward socially. From the mid-1960s, however, many factors have combined to better the lot ofIndians. Minimum wage legislation, unionization of estate labour, strengthening of the cooperative movement, and focussed 2 remedial policy consequent torevealing academic studies have helped. A fundamental factorhas been access to education. In the years followingIndependence, thousands of primary and secondaryschools have been built all over the country, in both urbanand rural areas. Fees were abolished, and consistentpublicity given, year after year, to urge parents to sendtheir children to school. Before Independence, only one universityadmitting a
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