The topic "Developing World Libraries/Mobile Devices" has inspired research and thought in a number directions as I begin to answer such questions as "What does the word 'developing' even mean? Should we be using this word?" to "How can libraries advance the use of mobile devices when many library users lack basic literacy skills and resources to support Wi-fi connectivity?" Accompanying these questions is an observation that libraries worldwide are being affected by two seemingly contradictory trends - the trend toward increased globalization, including movements towards globally accessible information, and the trend toward increased valuation of that which is distinctly local. These trends do not have to be in competition with each other; rather they may work together to create solutions to the specific challenges faced by libraries, wherever they may be, to enrich the lives of community members through access to both global and local information. Global partnerships with local leaders can play a part in finding solutions. In many communities the internet and mobile devices also have a role to play.
As already mentioned, I began this week's research with the question "What does the word 'developing' even mean?" and "Should we be using this word?" Authors Hans Rosling, with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling-Ronnlund, entitled Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World - and Why Things Are Better Than You Think, which advocates against the use of the term "developing" when describing conditions in various parts of the world because it is too broad. I read this book over the summer and have been thinking about many of the ideas presented in it ever since. Hans writes, "...we should stop dividing countries into two groups...It doesn't help us understand the world in a practical way. It doesn't help businesses find opportunities, and it doesn't help aid money to find [its greatest impact]" (32). Instead Rosling suggests thinking about the world's people as falling within four levels of wealth and development, each with their own defining characteristics and community challenges. Accompanying his book, Hans, Ola, and Anna have also created a website (gapminder.org) dedicated to advancing a better understanding of the world, including the differing levels of development. In a review of Han's book Bill Gates explains how it has impacted his own understanding of the world and continues to impact his work on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Han's four level framework might prove more beneficial when talking about which resources and practices would be best suited to individual community libraries. While Canada, Australia, and the USA are typically referred to as "developed" countries, there are communities and individuals within them which would fall under Rosling's definition of level three. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Global Libraries initiative tries to reach "information-poor" citizens wherever they may reside:
The Global Libraries initiative, working in more than fifty countries to "improve the lives of 'information-poor' people while positioning the world's public libraries as critical community assets for learning, creativity, and community development," is about to wrap up its twenty year commitment. Reflecting upon the work done in partnership with thousands of library leaders, the foundation emphasizes the need for community libraries to respond to specific community needs:
Libraries and their champions must continue to engage with their communities - to listen to what people need, make sure library services address those needs, talk to local leaders about community priorities, and show how library service contribute to improving lives and making communities stronger. (Bill and Melinda Gates' Foundation Global Libraries)
The needs of some communities will be best met through greater internet
connectivity and digital literacy skills, as illustrated in this video by EIFL (Electronic
Information for education, learning, research and sustainable community
development). Here a librarian is helping a community in Uganda with
farming (level two or three on Rosling's scale):
Other communities might best be served by a librarian with a donkey lending out books and providing workshops to address the trauma of a violent-ridden community (level one or two on Rosling's scale). At its best a library is a place which both symbolically, and often quite literally, functions at the heart of a community. It is a place steeped in local knowledge – a place which works to empower and celebrate the cultural, artistic, and historic resources of a local community. It is a place which serves to strengthen and deepen its patron's sense of community and their connection to their particular area. For this reason it is neither desirable nor advantageous to have fourth level income community libraries donate their discarded books to libraries with lower income levels. Each community library will be unique in terms of its resource needs. Resources should be provided in the languages spoken by community members, activities which take place in the library should reflect the people and culture of the community, and the physical space of the library should also reflect community needs.
Jacob Pilot's article "Developing Indigenous Knowledge Centers" shows a concrete example of libraries developed to specifically address the local needs of a community. His article describes the creation of Indigenous libraries throughout remote and rural Queensland and at the Millennium Library Project. Each rural Knowledge Center was designed in partnership with Indigenous advisory groups. At the Millennium Project the design included a larger external space suitable to host Aboriginal social and cultural events. The indigenous communities were staffed by local community members who received training by working alongside skilled librarians. The communities determined what their centers would be to them, such as "special places to look after the songs, language, stories and traditions of their culture and also as a means to reach out to the wider community" (40).
While every community is unique and will require a library uniquely suited to its own environment and social structure, libraries can and should still learn from one another. The Knight Foundation is providing funding for libraries to prototype digital innovations such as Library for All, a cloud-based platform that works in low-bandwidth environments "to make a library of culturally relevant and linguistically appropriate content available on any device accessible to those in developing countries" (Clark 24) With the release of its android version more than one thousand titles, mainly in Creole and French, were made accessible to Haitians. Another Knight Foundation initiative is the GITenberg project, which seeks to make Project Gutenberg's 45,000 public domain e-books "more easily ingestible and understandable to library catalog systems...integrating attractive book cover images" (Clark 20) so that librarians and their patrons might make better use of this collection which is no-longer under copyright. These free texts may be particularly beneficial to libraries with limited funds for on-going subscriptions to internet resources.
That leads me to the second question I had while researching this week's topic: "How can libraries advance the use of mobile devices when many library users lack basic literacy skills and lack resources to support Wi-fi connectivity?" I discovered through my reading this week that indeed, where internet access is provided, many libraries struggle with issues related to it being patchy and slow. While initiative such as One Lap Top per Child (OLPC) are working to provide children with low-cost, low power connected laptops, these devices are not useful without stable internet connections. Efforts are being made in a variety of ways to find solutions. For example, Internet-in-a-Box (essentially an inexpensive portable hard-drive), offers a terabyte of free information such as "Wikipedia in 37 languages, library of 40,000 e-books, most of the world's open source software and source code, hundreds of hours of instructional videos, and world-wide mapping down to a street level." It can even be used under solar power and without an internet connection.
Where internet is available and users have access to mobile devices, conditions still exist which disadvantage library users in lower-income countries. The article "Online Information Resources Availability and Accessibility: A Developing Countries' Scenario" presents an aggregate of various independent studies exploring factors affecting effective use of on-line information sources. Along with unstable internet connections another factor is inadequate information literacy skills. Work still needs to be done toward improving the usage of online information resources in low-income communities: "The current digital divide between developed and developing nations is shifting to usage skills rather than ownership of the technology....Investments in ICT facilities and other resources [are a] wastage of effort without solving a core problem of low information literacy" (Dulle 51). Some potential solutions include the use of discovery tools to facilitate easier access of online information resources, the marketing of these tools, and more investment in information literacy training (Dulle 53).
The many initiatives I have outlined help me to feel confident that with increased effort and collaboration the problem of an unstable power supply, inadequate internet connectivity, and inadequate information literacy skills can be solved. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Global Libraries Strategy Overview states, "By working more closely together to build and sustain a global network of public library leaders and organization, libraries can learn from one-another, solve shared problems, and spark ideas and innovations that will help them to meet immediate and pressing community needs and look together to the futures."
Work Cited
"Biblioburo." American Documentary. pbs.org, Web. Accessed 27 October 2018.
Charlton, John. "Libraries in the Developing World." Information Today, vol. 30, no. 9, Oct. 2013,
pp. 14-15.
Clark, Laura. "Empowering Libraries to Innovate." American Libraries, vol.46, June 2015,
pp. 20-24.
Eifl. "Connect Uganda: Why empowering libraries with technology is so important." Online
video clip. YouTube. YouTube. 11 February 2014. Web. Accessed 27 October 2018.
"EIFL (Electronic Information for Libraries)" eifl.net. n.d. Web. Accessed 28 October, 2018.
Dulle, F. W. "Online Information Resources Availability and Accessibility: A Developing Countries'
Scenario." African Journal of Library. Archives & Information Science, vol. 25, no.1, Apr. 2015,
pp.45-57.
"Internet-in-a-Box: Sharing the World's Free Information." Internet-in-a-Box.org. Web. Accessed
26 October 2018.
Gates, Bill. "Why I want to stop talking about the 'developing' world." Web blog post.
Gatesnotes.com, 2 April 2018. Web. Accessed 28 October 2018.
Gates, Bill. "Bill Gates on Factfulness." Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube. 3 April 2018. Web.
Accessed 28 October 2018.
Gatesfoundation. "Libraries: Changing Lives, Transforming Communities." Online video clip.
YouTube. YouTube. 24 May, 2012. Web. Accessed 23 October 2018.
"Global Libraries: Strategy Overview. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. gatesfoundation.org.
1999-2018. Web. Accessed 27 October 2018.
"One Laptop Per Child." one.laptop.org. Web. Accessed 27 October 2018.
Pilot, Jacob. "Developing Indigenous Knowledge Centers." Australian Academic & Research
Libraries, vol. 36, no. 2, June 2005. pp. 39-45.
Rosling, Hans, Rosling, Anna, and Rosling, Ola. Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong
About the World - and Why Things Are Better Than You Think. New York: Flatiron
Books, 2018. Print.
Rosling, Hans, Rosling, Anna, and Rosling, Ola. "Gapminder: Unveiling the Beauty of
Statistics for a Fact Based World." gapminder.org. n.d. Web. Accessed 22 October
2018.
Hi Karla,
ReplyDeleteThis is an amazing blog post and I appreciate that you chose to define "developing". I would agree with you, that most "developed" have countries have hidden pockets that meet the "developing" criteria and some countries may consider themselves "developed", such as Saudi Arabia, although it may not be the viewpoint of many. I think my favourite part about the blog was learning about how Internet-in-a-box can be used with solar energy and without internet connection. Ever since watching David Letterman's documentary (Years of Living Dangerously) on India's efforts to reduce fossil fuels and move towards solar power, I have wondered how India will continue to expand learning for its vast numbers in rural locations. I can see how Internet-in-a-box can really benefit those children in communities with minimal power, as they have yet to develop ways of storing the solar energy, and allowing access to information. Thank you!
Well done evidence based exploratory post that dived deep into this topic and explored many foundational issues. Your critique of the developing/developed dichotomy was very well done and the promotion of the 4 levels is much more appropriate. You have done a good job exploring what does it mean to be "information poor" and that this condition does not only exist in parts of the world with low GDP, it can exist in very wealthy countries like Canada. Your discussion of the challenges of access to the internet and regular power was important and the more projects coming online that provide localized, independent access to information stores is a good first step. A very expansive and well researched blog post.
ReplyDeleteWow! What a rich post with so many interesting links to check out.
ReplyDeleteI was really drawn to the 'One Laptop per Child' site and loved learning more about what they do. Such a wonderful idea that these children can take them home to use there as well. Having something to use that helps them continue their learning during free time at home is fantastic. I like that they make them durable and low power. Thanks for sharing!
Will have to add your book, Factfulness, to my list of books to read. Your post has intrigued me to want to delve deeper into the 4 levels. It seems to come down to meeting the needs of the community in question. The attempt to try and put a laptop in the hands of every student is an admirable goal, but if the students or teachers have inadequate information skills then the computer is no more useful to them then an outdated book in a different language. Gets me thinking about my own school and schools in our district. My school has mostly well off families so only a small handful that I know of to do not have a computer at home. Our school does not have a computer per child, but certainly everyone has access to internet information and really more important, they are all being given the skills to access this information.
ReplyDelete