Countries in the African continent are implementing strategies to overcome developmental and societal challenges to remain competitive in the new global knowledge-based economy. Libraries and archives can play an important role in this process through provision of information. Information in modern society is valued as an essential component in the daily lives of people, both at individual and organisational levels. Increasingly, we expect information to meet our needs through technological interventions or interactions. Indeed, recent technological developments have accentuated contemporary conceptions of the library and information field as an intersection of information, technology, people and society. This volume explores the opportunities and challenges encountered in the practice of contemporary libraries, archives and records management in the digital age. It cannot be overemphasized that the traditional traits and practices of libraries, archives and records management are constantly changing given the increased use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the different information management value chains. This book will serve as a premier reference source for organisations in both private and public sectors, researchers, information practitioners in industry, and postgraduate students in information management.

New York Times Notable Book: A story of six generations of a Jewish family, by an author Saul Bellow called “one of Israel’s world-class writers.” In this novel, a winner of both the National Jewish Book Award and the first Israeli Literature Prize, A. B. Yehoshua weaves a deeply affecting family saga and an portrait of Jewish life over the past two centuries. The story moves backward through time, unfolding over the course of five conversations. On a kibbutz in the Negev in 1982, a student describes her strange meeting with her boyfriend’s father, Judge Gavriel Mani. On German-occupied Crete in 1944, a Nazi soldier recounts his attempts to hunt down the Mani family. In Jerusalem in 1918, a Jewish lawyer in the British army briefs his commanding officer on the forthcoming trial of the political agitator Yosef Mani. In a village in southern Poland in 1899, a young doctor reports back to his father on his travels, and on his sister’s romance with Dr. Moshe Mani. And in Athens in 1848, Avraham Mani reveals the heartbreaking tale of the death of his son, Yonef, in Jerusalem. Alfred Kazin hailed Mr. Mani as “one of the most remarkable pieces of fiction I have ever read.” Named as one of the best books of the year by Publishers Weekly, it is both an absorbing tale and a powerful statement about family, faith, and the weight of history. Translated from the Hebrew by Hillel Halkin

Mining the World Wide Web: An Information Search Approach explores the concepts and techniques of Web mining, a promising and rapidly growing field of computer science research. Web mining is a multidisciplinary field, drawing on such areas as artificial intelligence, databases, data mining, data warehousing, data visualization, information retrieval, machine learning, markup languages, pattern recognition, statistics, and Web technology. Mining the World Wide Web presents the Web mining material from an information search perspective, focusing on issues relating to the efficiency, feasibility, scalability and usability of searching techniques for Web mining. Mining the World Wide Web is designed for researchers and developers of Web information systems and also serves as an excellent supplemental reference to advanced level courses in data mining, databases and information retrieval.