Introduction

Globalization of any profession encourages professional collaboration and cooperation at the global stage and enhances possibilities of collaborative development of professional standards, best practices, and public policies. Like many other actors in humanities, the information and knowledge communities also have been historically engaged in bridging divides between the Global North and Global South and the information rich and information poor. The intergovernmental agencies and their different stakeholders have also supported many collaborative intervening global programmes for bridging the knowledge divides or digital divides exist in the societies. Building knowledge societies in the world is a more pervasive goal in the twenty-first century for percolating maximizing benefits and overall growth of the global communities. Various global programmes supported by United Nations agencies such as Education for All (EFA), Health for All (HFA), Information All (IFA), Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), all have tangible components to be enriched by library, information, and knowledge communities. Thus, the communities involved in “international librarianship” have important roles in enriching the global citizens in local settings. This chapter introduces these ideas.