One example of international collaboration is that of the World Summit Information Society, including committees on youth and skills training, ICT in democracy, access and inclusivity, and cultural diversity. (see http://www.britishcouncil.org/ism/wsis). They are aiming to allow countries to explore challenges faced by an information society, to explore the impact on communities, to identify common areas and issues for further investigation and to provide a platform of good practice for communities across the world. Using global networks and information exchange, their September 2003 conference enabled the achievement of key outcomes, namely a statement of issues and concerns, and first steps towards being a community of practice. Issues identified include actors, activities and resources. A monthly guide to major developments and dedicated website enable information-sharing throughout the network.

A paper by Turati et al (1998) highlights some difficulties in collaborative efforts in international academic researching. The barriers they identified were geographical distance, language barriers, cultural and intellectual differences, and competition between individual ‘local’ workload and project goals. Likewise, Kajberg (2003) suggested that major collaborative efforts in library and information science education have failed to produce any “spectacular or convincing results”. However, Batonda and Perry (2003) put a case for successful international networking, in projects involving two very different cultures, namely Australia and Japan. In the example given, the authors argue that “understanding culture can overcome barriers at the stage of network development”.

The International Management Centre (IMC) is portrayed as an example of good practice in joint working, with an emphasis on action learning. They attribute the success to:

• A strong vision and shared purpose
• Multi-national communications (bulletin board, total network access, journals)
• Healthy self-financing arrangement (through a not-for-profit central hub and service contracts to three substantial network members, funded through subscriptions and sales).

Partnership working, as evidenced by the Centre for Guidance Studies (University of Derby, UK) working with the University of Florida in projects for the Learning and Skills Council, has shown that processes and methods devised in one country can be usefully transferred across boundaries. Jim Sampson’s Cognitive Information Processing model for guidance has been successfully implemented in UK careers guidance centres, with further developments being explored in the context of Italian guidance (see CeGS website for details; www.derby.ac.uk/cegs ).