"Global Libraries"... FAVL mentioned in paper by Cody Yantis, LIS600 Global Libraries I.S.

Found on the Internet, here!

While FAVL, like IFLA, addresses human rights on an international level, it does so without the massive organizational support that IFLA garners, being, rather, a non-profit, grass roots community organization, started by a business professor from Santa Clara University. a brief but worthwhile aside, it is insightful to point out that the grass roots example of FAVL gestures at another element of Globalization to which Global Libraries must provide alternative. This is the idea of top-down versus bottom-up approaches. Returning to Prahalad, he shows that in business, as in libraries, for initiatives and ventures to succeed globally, one must begin at the bottom, rather than at the top, for the “trickle down” ideas of the past—whether they are applied to business ventures or information initiatives—have been proven to only benefit the elite at the top.¹⁶ One can see evidence of this idea even in the difference between IFLA’s approach—authoring a Resolution and publishing texts on information science—and FAVL’s approach—actually going into communities and constructing, managing, and supporting community libraries. This is not to say that IFLA’s efforts are in vain—quite the contrary—but it does illustrate the importance of approaching Global Libraries issues from the bottom-up, rather that the top-down, to avoid similar issues, inequalities, and oppressions that have arisen from the top-down ventures by corporations and multi-national organizations (which have shown the significant shortcomings—to put it lightly—of Globalization in the realm of human rights and general equality on a global scale).