Accessibility – and Accessibility
The concept ”accessibility” has an enormous impact in society and within the ALM (Archives, Libraries and Museums) sector, libraries have the strongest identity as cultural institutions with professional skills in making their collections accessible. The library at Nordiska museet started to contribute to Accessionskatalogen (the national catalogue of foreign literature accessable at Swedish research libraries) 1890 and 1925 to Internationale Volkskundliche Bibliographie (IVB). This last mentioned contribution has during the last years also been transformed into the database Svensk Etnologisk Bibliografi (SEB, Swedish Ethnologic Bibliography).
Both activities have been carried through as externally financed projects. However, recurrent bibliographical work can’t in the long run be looked upon as projects but must become an integrated part of a library’s regular activities. This fact as well as the increasing competition for grants makes it necessary to decide about the future of the Swedish contribution to IVB and, consequently, also about the future of SEB.
This situation brings up several questions. Which tools for information retrieval do students and researchers really need? Is an international database more or less effective than a printed bibliography? Are special bibliographies within ethnology, a discipline which crosses and intermingles with so many other, really needed? Is it worth washing gold in different kinds of literary contexts? Isn’t the scholar supposed to find his own path through general concepts and classifications? Finally, if these bibliographies are really needed, why then is the Swedish department of education and culture, or the institutions depending on its supplies, not willing to pay for them?
In the light of this threat of discontinuation there is cause not only for alarm but also for reminding of the ethnological gold, ready to be explored by scholars and students by themselves.
