Role of Libraries, Information Centres and Archives in Poverty Reduction

Abstract

Information and knowledge are increasingly being recognised as effective means towards poverty alleviation, especially in developing countries. The available literatures show that traditional methods used to focus on addressing the problem from the outside. One of the approaches to reducing poverty is the appreciation of the poor people’s potential in reducing poverty through searching for and using appropriate information and knowledge. This approach could lead to the identification of different categories of the poor and address problems each category was facing accordingly. This article presents the opinions of the poor people who took part in a study on how they use information and knowledge to reduce poverty. The insistence on the poor accessing and using information and knowledge for poverty reduction is motivated by the fact that change should start with the conscious individual then to society. However, to deal with this relentless social scourge a truly joint effort is needed including governmental effort.