Digital Libraries

DIGITAL LIBRARIES IN THE DEVELOPING
COUNTRIES
Isaías Barreto da Rosa
University Jean Piaget of Cape Verde
CP 775 – Praia – Cape Verde
ibr@unipiaget.cv

David Ribeiro Lamas
University Jean Piaget of Cape Verde
CP 775 – Praia – Cape Verde
drl@unipiaget.cv

ABSTRACT
Digital libraries (DL) are seen as a hope to developing countries in their struggle for accessing bibliographic resources,especially in a context where the traditional distribution mechanisms failed tragically. Several difficulties are however
faced by these countries to build and use digital libraries, due mainly to its high development costs and to the poor
existing ICT resources in these countries. This paper discusses the importance of digital libraries for developing countries
and introduces the mainchallenges they face in building and using such libraries. The current alternatives and major
initiatives for making digital information accessible to developing countries are also addressed.
KEYWORDS
Digital Library, Developing Country, Digital Divide

1. INTRODUCTION
The Online Digital Libraries have the great advantage of making bibliographic resources, including the
most recent publications,accessible anytime and anywhere as far as a computer with Internet access is
available. This fact is considerably important for developing countries where the traditional mechanism for
distribution such resources failed tragically (Witten, 2004). These libraries are therefore a very good
alternative especially for regions and countries where there are difficulties in accessing bibliographicresources. Institutions and researchers in the developing countries frequently have no access to the research
literature published in the developed countries due mainly to the high costs and inadequacy of the
distributions mechanisms (Arunachalam, 2003). A study conducted in 2003 concluded that 56% of the
institutions in the countries with less then US$1000 GDP per capita, have had nointernational journal
subscription for the last 5 years and that 21% had only 2 subscriptions. The costs of building digital libraries
are however high. Nevertheless, a considerable amount of money has been invested in such projects around
the world. For example the Library of Congress invested initially US$60 million in the development of the
American National Digital Library!1 US 24 million wereawarded in the ambit of the First Digital Library
Initiative and over US 50 million2 in the Second. The high building costs might hinder the construction of
digital libraries in developing countries since the decision makers prefer to put their scarce resources in
addressing the existing basic needs such as drinking water, health, sanitation, nutrition etc.
However, apart from minimizing the problemof accessing the bibliographic resources in developing
countries, DL can even assist the human development. (Witten et al., 2001) identify 4 areas where DL can
contribute to ameliorate the human development level: Dissemination of humanitarian information, disaster
1
2

http://hul.harvard.edu/ldi/html/ldi_origins.html, February 19, 2007
http://www.dli2.nsf.gov/projects.html, February 19,2007

relief when providing the proper information, creating information collection locally and creating new
opportunities to enter global marketplace.

2. CHALANGES
Apart from the cost of building Digital libraries, the developing countries face several other problems
related to having operational DL services. Internet connection in these countries is expensive and slow.
According to theITU 20043 “there are more than twice as many Internet users in Germany than on the entire
African continent”. On the other hand a study conducted recently by the African Virtual University,
concluded that African Universities pay 50 times more for their bandwidth then other similar institutions in
the rest of the world (Fritz, 2005). Cliff Missen, director of Widernet project (which mitigates...