The cultural appraisal of efforts to alleviate information inequity

This article suggests that action to alleviate information inequity should be guided by the principles of contextualism, incrementalism, motivation of information users, and more knowledge of the absorptive process that is unique to each cultural group. To do this, information services should recognize cultural pluralism and the need to eliminate information poverty as viewed by the members of the groups being served. For some it may mean provision of information services to help in their assimilation into the mainstream, while for others it may mean provision of information services for greater cultural cohesion. Instead of the term “minority” or “disadvantaged,” the idea of a “cultural community” is advanced as the proper unit of analysis to identify significant numbers of potential users who may have distinct values, beliefs, and attitudes toward external information services. To grasp effectively the behavioral and cultural dimensions of information inequity, a national inventory of “cultural communities” is suggested using social mapping. This technique would include: a delineation of cultural groups, a description of the indigenous social/information organization, a plotted pattern of the movement of information within the group, the information values of the group, and an analytical description of the information poor within each group. These groups can then be visualized as a series of different information constituencies, with different information needs and different capacities for absorbing information.