This paper aims to investigate the roles of information professionals in local information departments. These roles were identified by interviewing the members of the Local Information Working Group of the Provincial University Library Network (PULINET) in Thailand. This study applied qualitative research methods, including the 23 interviews of the Local Information Working Group members and a qualitative observation. The need for investigation of the roles as perceived by local information professionals was prompted by the placement of local information departments in the provincial university libraries, which is different from the Western countries where similar work is carried out in public libraries. The activity theory was applied to understand the roles of these professionals as emerging within their community through the division of labor, norms as expressed in responsibilities, and actions as expressed in functions of local information professionals. The study has revealed eight professional roles including manager, curator, service provider, promoter, researcher, collaborator, learner, and educator that overlap with the roles identified in the library research of other countries. The study included a specific group of respondents – the members of a working group of the Thai provincial university library network. This group consists of the representatives of all Thai provincial university libraries and is producing the recommendations and standards for local information work, works with competence development and develops common local information resources. Thus, the results of interviews with its members are both limited to this group, but also can be generalized to a wider professional community of provincial university librarians.

Local information (LI) in Thailand covers resources related to Indigenous and local knowledge (ILK), and cultural heritage. Thailand’s provincial universities have the national responsibility of digitising LI, enforced through the Provincial University Library Network’s (PULINET’s) Local Information Working Group (LIWG). The aim of this study is to explore how the LIWG’s digitisation activities contribute to the shaping of LI as national concern and resource. Empirical data come from interviews with 23 LIWG professionals in 2016–2017. A qualitative content analysis is performed within an overall activity theory framework with emphasis on overt and unobtrosive manifestations of contradictions through a combination of Engeström’s and Blackler’s typologies. The results show that primary contradictions exist in the form of incompatible conceptions of LI between individual group members and the group’s consensus-oriented LI definition. Secondary contradictions emerge as incongruences between group members’ general conceptions of LI, and specific digitisation activities of the LIWG. In general, LI is conceptualised as dynamic, situated, collective, culture-nature integrated resources with strong applied-use value, in line with international ILK definitions and agendas. The actual LIWG activities, however, circumscribe this conception through a restricted focus on formal regional delimitations; prominent objects; societally desirable expressions; and an academic/research framing. Overall, the findings illustrate that the LIWG’s activities contribute to shape LI as a tool for national social and cultural unity that exclude marginalised groups and societally undesirable LI expressions. In these activities, the primary and secondary types of contradictions are hidden and counteracted, rather than used as constructive opportunities for learning, change, and development. The study provides a unique, internationally framed, perspective on LI and related digitisation activities in Thailand. Methodologically, the study is case specific, limited to a cross-section in time and to data from interview accounts of LIWG members.

This article aims to explore the aims, ways of working, and problems related to local information within a network of collaborating provincial university libraries in Thailand (PULINET). By applying a theoretical framework of the activity theory and qualitative approach to explore the interaction of activity systems involved in common projects, the article identifies contradictions within separate nodes, between the nodes, and between the collaborating systems. The results show how the collaborating participants overcome emerging difficulties by complying with cultural norms and supporting each other, and how the contradictions in the organization as well as in the transfer of competence and sharing of resources affect their collaboration. 

Purpose: This study aims to propose the four different typologies for understanding local information. Design/methodology/approach: This study applied a conceptual approach to analyze and clarify how the concept local information can be understood in wildly different ways. Furthermore, this study employed conceptual analysis of 36 studies. For the conceptual analysis, coding was applied to formulate and abstract four typologies for understanding local information with specific focus on the Thai cultural heritage setting. Findings: The four different typologies include local information as an array of different interpretations as diverse meanings of local, local information as cultural heritage, local information as subject of information management and situated local information. Research limitations/implications: This study mainly focuses relevant typologies for understanding local information in the Thai context. Originality/value: This study contributes and extends the literature in the local information field and the cultural heritage context. In addition, an eclectic strategy of using several alternative typologies for dealing with essentially contested concepts is suggested. This can be useful not only for supporting librarians working with local information but also in other practices dealing with broadly defined concepts. © 2021, Pussadee Nonthacumjane and Jan Michael Nolin.