Development of libraries of the Congress of Southeast Asian Librarians (CONSAL): 1996 to 1999

Abstract

The Congress of Southeast Asian Librarians (CONSAL) was formed in 1970 among a number of ASEAN countries with the vision of relationship building, sharing, cooperation and collaboration among member countries in the fields of librarianship, library and information sciences, documentation, information and related activities. In its 30th year since its formation, CONSAL has to date 10 members which includes the library associations and librarians of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. CONSAL holds a conference every three years in each member country by turn. As part of traditional proceedings, each member country provides a country report detailing library developments over the previous 3 years. The information reported so far is generally adhoc without any prescribed format or guidelines, with each country volunteering whatever information that is deemed appropriate. This paper reports a questionnaire survey that was administered to all CONSAL members just before the CONSAL XI conference in an attempt to collect a uniform set of statistics to report on the library developments in the region as a collective whole for the 4 year period from 1996 to 1999. The questionnaire design, findings and discussion of the survey data along with a number of recommendations for future CONSAL work is presented.