Resource Practitioners

Saša Madacki is the Director of the Human Rights Centre at the University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Prior to taking over as director, he was the Head of Information Research and Library Department at the Human Rights Centre.

In 2002, Saša participated in the New Tactics in Human Rights Central and East European Regional Training Workshop and wrote a tactical notebook on library and information services for the improvement of human rights work. Saša’s New Tactics Tactical Notebook: Making Sense of the Information Wilderness: Library and Information Services for the Improvement of Human Rights Work is available as a free download.

For more information about the Human Rights Centre at the University of Sarajevo see: http://www.hrc.unsa.ba/en/osoblje.html

Saša’s previous experience include: Advisor to the Judicial Reform/Rule of Law Cluster at the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Serbia, Lecturer at the International Human Rights Courses at the Danish Institute of Human Rights, Referral Archivist in Federal Archives of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Humanities Librarian at the State Archives of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Research Librarian at the Soros Media Centre, Theatre History Researcher at the National Museum of Literature and Theatre Arts.

He has actively pursued library and information science projects. He has organized training sessions for the future Human Rights Librarians focusing on application of librarianship in the field of Human Rights.

He has written on theatre history of Sarajevo, destruction and deterioration of library materials, reconstruction of burned catalogues of National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Human Rights librarianship. Currently he is conducting a study of improvement of information flow and data exchange among human rights libraries in the Balkans. He also served as President of Division of Special and Faculty Libraries in Library Association of Bosnia and Herzegovina. His field of research includes knowledge management, digitization, library automation and impact of technology on human rights.

Saša is a lecturer at the Balkan Human Rights Network's School for Future Decision Makers, in the field of Human Rights and Technology and holds degree in Library Science and Comparative Literature from Faculty of Philosophy, University of Sarajevo.

Toni Samek is an educator and scholar at the School of Library and Information Studies, University of Alberta, Canada. For more information see: http://www.ualberta.ca/~asamek/toni.htm

• Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee Member, Canadian Association of University Teachers
• Editorial Advisory Board Member, International Review of Information Ethics
• Information Ethics Fellow, 2006-07, Center for Information Policy Research, School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
• Chair, Canadian Library Association's Advisory Committee on Intellectual Freedom
• Advisory Board Member, Information for Social Change

Toni has been working as an educator and scholar at the School of Library and Information Studies, University of Alberta since 1994. Prior to that, her library and other work experience comes from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, U.S.A. and the following all in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada: Halifax City Regional Library, Saint Mary University's International Education Centre, Nova Scotia's Department of Solicitor General, ForceTen Computer Services Limited, and Sight & Sound Productions Limited.

She holds a Doctor of Philosophy (Library and Information Studies) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a Master of Library and Information Studies from DalhousieUniversity, and an Honours Bachelor of Arts from the University of Toronto.

Her teaching, research, and service interests include critical librarianship, intercultural information ethics, global information justice, human rights, intellectual freedom, social responsibility, library history, and library education.

In January 2001, she developed and introduced a graduate course at the University of Alberta titled “Intellectual Freedom and Social Responsibility in Librarianship”. The course runs annually. Of the approximately 15 (a disappointing number) stand-alone intellectual freedom courses currently offered in North American library and information schools, this is the only course that provides a direct and upfront link between the concepts of social responsibility and intellectual freedom. Indeed, the course begins with discussion and exploration of intellectual freedom as a “contested” concept.

Toni is the author of numerous publications including the 2001 book Intellectual Freedom and Social Responsibility in American Librarianship, 1967-1974, published by McFarland & Company Inc, Publishers, U.S.A. (In 2003, the book was published in Japanese translation by the Kyoto University Library and Information Science Study Group.) The historical work examines the American Library Association’s profound and contentious professional identity crisis during the Vietnam conflict. The book’s present day relevance is most notable in its treatment of library neutrality and librarianship in time of war, revolution, and social change.

In 2007, she released her latest book Librarianship and Human Rights: A 21st Century Guide through CHANDOS (Oxford) Publishing. See www.chandospublishing.com for details! The book provides eighteen strategies and over 100 examples of social action applied to library and information work. Plans are in process for a Spanish translation to be released in Buenos Aires in a special Latin American adaptation in 2008.

Bert Verstappen is Programme Coordinator at the Human Rights Information and Documentation Systems, International (HURIDOCS), a global capacity-building network of organisations that use documentation techniques, monitoring methods, information management systems and available technologies in the defence of human rights and the prevention of abuses. For more information on HURIDOCS see: http://www.huridocs.org/

Bert, Dutch and historian by education, has been involved in human rights documentation for almost 25 years. He started as documentalist-researcher with the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM) – his research focused on fact-finding missions by non-governmental human rights organisations and their reports. He then worked on the Sri Lanka Human Rights Database Project of the International Peace Research Institute (PRIO) in Oslo, Norway, and co-authored two bibliographies about human rights and the ethnic conflict in this country. In 1987, he joined the HURIDOCS Secretariat, which in 1993 relocated from Oslo to Geneva, Switzerland.

Bert took active part in the various HURIDOCS Task Forces that developed tools for bibliographic information handling as well as for the documentation of human rights violations. Together with Judith Dueck and Manuel Guzman, he authored the HURIDOCS Events Standard Formats: A tool for documenting human rights violations and edited the Micro-thesauri with relevant terminology in this field.

He also has a broad experience in providing training on human rights documentation, having been resource person at HURIDOCS training courses in 25 countries in the various parts of the world. On a daily basis, he provides advice with regard to the establishment and development of documentation centres and information systems.

Youk Chhang is the Executive Director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, a project begun by the Cambodian Genocide Center at Yale University. The Center, operated entirely by Cambodians, gathers evidence of human rights violations by members of the Pol Pot regime.

The Center's aims are to provide the public with a better understanding of the Pol Pot regime, and to those who might wish to pursue legal redress for crimes which might have been perpetrated under the Democratic Kampuchea, and to prevent the return of the Killing Fields to Cambodia through legal and peaceful means. For more information:

2007 Time Magazine profile of Youk Chhang

interTactica blog – beginning September 27

The New Tactics project is proud to introduce interTactica, a blog by Philippe Duhamel. Philippe will be working to bring you, our activists and readers, information, advice and tips most likely to be of practical use to you. Philippe is the author of the tactical notebook, The Dilemma Demonstration: Using Nonviolent Civil Disobedience to Put the Government Between a Rock and a Hard Place. Watch your e-mail box for a special notice to subscribe to interTactica.