Digital libraries: Developing countries,
universal access, and information for all
Ian H. Witten
Department of Computer Science
University of Waikato, New Zealand
ihw@cs.waikato.ac.nz
Abstract. Digital libraries are large, organized collections of information ob-
jects. Well-designed digital library software has the potential to enable non-
specialist people to conceive, assemble, build, and disseminate new information
collections. This has great social import because, by democratizing information
dissemination, it provides a counterbalance to disturbing commercialization ini-
tiatives in the information and entertainment industries. This talk reviews trends
in today’s information environment, introduces digital library technology, and
explores applications of digital libraries—including their use for disseminating
humanitarian information in developing countries. We illustrate how currently
available technology empowers users to build and publish information collec-
tions. Making digital libraries open to all, as conventional public libraries are,
presents interesting challenges of universal access.
1 Introduction
Digital libraries are large, organized collections of information objects. Whereas stan-
dard library automation systems provide a computerized version of the catalog—a
gateway into the treasure-house of information stored in the library—digital libraries
incorporate the treasure itself, namely the information objects that constitute the li-
brary’s collection. Whereas standard libraries are, of necessity, ponderous and sub-
stantial institutions, with large buildings and significant funding requirements, even
large digital libraries can be lightweight. Whereas standard libraries, whose mandate
includes preservation as well as access, are “conservative” by definition, with institu-
tional infrastructure to match, digital libraries are nimble: they emphasize access and
evolve rapidly.
What will the future hold for digital libraries? The dizzying rate of change in the
core technologies clouds even the brightest crystal ball. Perhaps the most striking
feature of the digital library field, at least from an academic point of view, is the in-
herent tension between two extremes: the very fast pace of technological change and
the very long-term view that libraries must take. We must reconcile our aspiration to
surf the leading edge of technology with the literally static ideal of archiving material
“for ever and a day.” Any future we create must run on everyone’s computer today—
for libraries are universally accessible, and should remain so—and it must also pre-
serve the treasures of the past, including past digital libraries.
This paper is particularly concerned with the future for developing countries.
It
sometimes happens that technological advances in developing countries leapfrog
those in developed ones. This occurs because established infrastructure, a strong and
necessarily conservative force, is absent. Alternative sources such as solar energy are
widely used in place of traditional power generation and distribution, while many
developing countries have experienced far higher levels of mobile phone growth than
developed ones. Digital libraries provide another example, compensating for the fail-
ure of traditional distribution mechanisms to address local requirements and deliver
information where it is needed. Indeed, developing countries already have a competi-
tive edge, for the labor-intensive process of optical character recognition (OCR) is
often outsourced from the Western world to countries such as India, the Philippines,
and Romania. More intellectually demanding tasks such as metadata assignment and
collection building will not be far behind.
In the next section we examine the social need for digital libraries by briefly
sketching some trends in commercial publishing and contrasting them with a growing
international perspective of information as a public good. Then we review a project
that is applying digital library technology to the distribution of humanitarian informa-
tion in the developing world, a context that is both innovative and socially motivated.
Next we discuss issues of universal access and illustrate them with reference to the
Greenstone digital library software [9]. We include a brief demonstration of a system
that is intended to allow anyone to build and disseminate information collections, and
illustrates some human interface challenges that arise when providing necessarily
complex functionality to a non-computer-oriented user base. We close with the hope
that future digital libraries will find a new role to play in helping to reduce the social
inequity that haunts today’s world, both within our own countries and between na-
tions.
2 Books, libraries, and the socially disadvantaged
Today, the long-standing three-way tension between the commercial interests of pub-
lishers, the needs of society and information users, and the social mandate of public
libraries, is being pulled and stretched as never before.
2.1 Books
What future has the book in the digital world? The question is a complex one that is
being widely aired (see [3] for a particularly thoughtful and comprehensive discus-
sion). Authors and publishers ask how many copies of a work will be sold if net-
worked digital libraries enable worldwide access to an electronic copy of it. To
counter the perceived threat, the entertainment industry is promoting “digital rights
management” (DRM) schemes that permit a degree of control over what users can do
that goes far beyond the traditional legal bounds of copyright. Indeed, they seem to be
concerned solely with content owners rights and not at all with user’s rights. Anti-
circumvention rules are sanctioned by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
(DMCA) in the US (similar legislation is being enacted elsewhere).
Can DRM be applied to books? The motion picture industry can compel manufac-
turers to incorporate encryption into their products because it holds key patents on
DVD players. Commercial book publishers are promoting e-book readers that, if
widely adopted, would allow the same kind of control to be exerted over reading
material. Basic rights that we take for granted (and are legally enshrined in the con-
cept of copyright) are in jeopardy. DRM allows them to be controlled, monitored, and
withdrawn instantly, and DMCA legislation makes it illegal for users to seek redress
by taking matters into their own hands. Fortunately, perhaps, standardization and
compatibility issues are delaying consumer adoption of e-books.
In scholarly publishing, digital rights management is more advanced. Academic li-
braries license access to content in electronic form, often in tandem with purchase of
print versions too. They have been able to negotiate reasonable conditions with pub-
lishers. However, the extent of libraries’ power in the consumer book market is moot.
One can envisage a scenario where publishers establish a system of commercial, pay-
per-view, libraries for e-books and refuse public libraries access to books in a form
that can be circulated.
These new directions present our society with puzzling challenges, and it would be
rash to predict what society’s response will be. But one thing is certain: they will
surely increase the degree of disenfranchisement of those who do not have access to
the technology.
2.2 Public information
In parallel with publishers’ moves to reposition books as technological artifacts with
refined and flexible control over how they can be used, an opposing trend has
emerged: the ready availability of free information on the Internet. Of course, the
world-wide web is an unreliable source of enlightenment, and undiscriminating use is
dangerous—and widespread. But search engines and other portals have enormously
increased our ability to locate information that is at least ostensibly relevant to any
given question.
Teachers complain bitterly that students view the Web as a replacement for the li-
brary, harvesting information indiscriminately to provide answers to assignments that
are at best shallow and at worst incoherent and incorrect. Nevertheless, the Web
abounds with accessible, high-quality information. Many social groups, non-profit
societies and charities make it their business to create sites and collect and organize
information there. Widespread use is strongly encouraged, and arrangements could
surely be made for re-distribution of the material, particularly as a not-for-profit serv-
ice, with appropriate acknowledgement.
A key problem with information distribution via the Web is that it disenfranchises
developing countries. Although the Web does not extend into the homes of the so-
cially disadvantaged in developed countries either, programs are working to provide
access. But network access varies enormously across the world, and it is still true that,
as Arunachalam wrote in 1998, the Internet “is failing the developing world” [2].
Prompted by this inequity, the importance of public information is today being high-
lighted by prominent international bodies. For example, UNESCO’s “Information for
all” programme was established in 2001 to foster debate on the political, ethical and
societal challenges of the emerging global knowledge society and to carry out projects
promoting equitable access to information. Information literacy is described as “a new
frontier” by the Director of UNESCO’s Information Society Division [6]. The Inter-
national Telecommunications Union’s World Summit on the Information Society
(Geneva in 2003 and Tunis in 2005) is promoting a global discussion of the funda-
mental changes that are being brought about by the transformation from an industrial
to an information society, and confront the disparities of access to information be-
tween the industrialized countries and the developing world.
2.3 Libraries and their role
What is the librarian to make of all this? The mandate of public libraries is to facili-
tate the open distribution of knowledge. Librarians strive to enable the free flow of
information. Their traditions are liberal, founded on the belief that libraries should
serve democracy. A recent promotional video from the American Librarian’s Associa-
tion exults that “the library is democracy’s place of worship” [1].
Clearly, the impending redefinition of the book as a digital artifact that is licensed
rather than sold, tied to a particular replay device, with restrictions that are mechani-
cally enforced, goes right to the heart of libraries. The changing nature of the book
may make it hard, or even impossible, for libraries to fulfill their mandate by provid-
ing quality information to readers. And the emergence of a vast storehouse of infor-
mation on the Internet poses a different kind of conundrum. Librarians, the traditional
gatekeepers of knowledge, are in danger of being bypassed, their skills ignored, their
advice unsought. Search engines send users straight to the information they require—
or so users may think—without any need for an intermediary to classify, catalogue,
cross-reference, advise on sources.
The ready availability of information on the Internet, and its widespread use, really
presents librarians with an opportunity, not a threat. Savvy users realize they need
help, which librarians can provide. A good example is Infomine, a cooperative project
of the University of California and California State University [4]. Infomine contains
descriptions and links to a wealth of scholarly and educational Internet resources,
each of which has been selected and described by a professional academic librarian
who is a specialist in the subject and in resource description generally. Participating
librarians see this as an important expenditure of effort for their users, a natural evolu-
tion of their traditional task of collecting and organizing information in print.
New trends in information access present librarians in developed countries with
difficult and conflicting challenges. Meanwhile, however, the situation in the develop-
ing world is dire. Here, traditional publishing and distribution mechanisms have failed
tragically. For example, according to the 1999 UN Human Development Report [7],
whereas a US medical library subscribes to about 5,000 journals, the Nairobi Univer-
sity Medical School Library, long regarded as a flagship center in East Africa, last
year received just 20 journals (compared with 300 a decade before). In Brazzaville,
Congo, the university has only 40 medical books and a dozen journals, all from before
1993, and the library in
a large district hospital consisted of a single bookshelf filled
mostly with novels.
2.4 Open-source software
Open source software is a powerful ally for librarians who wish to extend liberal
traditions of information access. Open source projects make source code freely avail-
able for others to view, modify, and adapt; and the very nature of the licensing agree-
ment prevents the software from being appropriated by proprietary vendors. But the
open-source movement is more than just a vehicle for librarians to use: its link with
library traditions goes much deeper. Public libraries and open source software both
enshrine the same philosophy: to promote learning and understanding through the
dissemination of knowledge. Both enjoy a sense of community, on the one hand the
kind of inter-institutional cooperation exemplified by inter-library loan and on the
other teams of designers and programmers that frequently cross national boundaries.
3 Disseminating humanitarian information with DLs
Digital libraries provide perhaps the first really compelling raison d’être for comput-
ing technology in the developing world. Priorities in these countries include health,
agriculture, nutrition, hygiene, sanitation, and safe drinking water. Computers per se
are not a priority, but simple, reliable access to practical information relevant to these
basic needs certainly is. Witten et al. [8] mention ten information collections in which
Greenstone is being used to deliver humanitarian and related information in develop-
ing countries. For example, the Humanity Development Library is a compendium of
practical information aimed at helping reduce poverty, increasing human potential,
and giving a useful education. Rather than recapitulating parts of the above-cited
paper, we describe four new ones (Fig. 1).
The Researching Education Development library is a project of the Department for
International Development (DFID), a British government department whose central
focus is a commitment to a target of halving the proportion of people living in ex-
treme poverty by 2015. Associated targets include ensuring universal primary educa-
tion, gender equality in schooling, and skills development. It has created a CD-ROM
library containing many education research papers and other documents. Each one
represents a study or piece of commissioned research on some aspect of education and
training in developing countries.
The Energy for Sustainable Development library, initiated jointly by the United
Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Department of Eco-
nomic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), and the World Energy Council (WEC), con-
tains a collection of 350 documents (26,000 pages). It includes titles that all these
organizations have published on the subjects of energy for sustainable development—
technical guidelines, journals and newsletters, case studies, manuals, reports, and
