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Power Is Information: South Africa’s Promotion of Access to Information Act in Context

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Context: Nature, Impact, and Role (CoLIS 2005)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 3507))

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Abstract

Information professionals in some developing countries are likely to view ‘context’ differently from those in developed countries. ‘Context’ becomes even more problematic when the searchers for information are ordinary citizens and the retrieval tool is a piece of national legislation that promotes access to information held by the state and the private sector. These and other difficulties become apparent in a case study of South Africa’s Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA), of 2000. Using this legislation, ‘context’ is examined from the perspective that power is access to information, which focuses on tensions in the struggle for access. The paper argues that an enabling context or culture of access is just as important as progressive information access legislation in developing countries. And it comments on the ‘remote contexts’ of Ingwersen and Jarvelin’s nested model of context stratification. Ways of extending this model and promoting a culture of access are recommended.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Science, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, 0002, Republic of South Africa

    Archie L. Dick

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  1. Archie L. Dick
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Strathclyde, Scotland

    Fabio Crestani

  2. Dept. of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Strathclyde, G1 1XH, Glasgow, Scotland, UK

    Ian Ruthven

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© 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Dick, A.L. (2005). Power Is Information: South Africa’s Promotion of Access to Information Act in Context. In: Crestani, F., Ruthven, I. (eds) Context: Nature, Impact, and Role. CoLIS 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3507. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11495222_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11495222_17

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-26178-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-32101-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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