Today we had a chance to discuss the idea of digital world libraries in developing countries, and developing digital world libraries. What is the premise? The idea is to create online or digital resources for those in developing countries to access since many of the books developing or remote places get are out of date, hard to transport, or limited in variety. Shipping books is expensive, and having a place to store them all is also problematic. If the content were somehow accessible digitally, that would solve the issues of storage, shipping, and age. Furthermore, the physical books could not be damaged or lost. If libraries could organize their resources and allocate funds to specific topics, a number of libraries could expand their collective digital databases on a number of topics. While Internet isn’t accessible everywhere, fiber optic is being laid down in developing countries. One article I came across noted that the increasing demand for online gaming is actually encouraging the development of infrastructure. While that develops, there are other options that are more readily accessible. My initial thoughts went to e-readers since many of them can store thousands of books, have 3G capabilities to access online databases, and many have chargers that can connect to household power sockets, or even use solar chargers. Another option came from an article discussing using KickStarter to fund digital libraries housed in shipping containers that actual librarians would staff. The digital content would remain in the cargo container and people could come to access information with the assistance of the librarian. The most practical device available would be to take advantage of the most common communication device – cell phones. Cell phones are in many developing countries and are relatively inexpensive. If digital content were made available online and accessible via wifi, 3g, or even using cell phone towers, distribution issues would be resolved. Even a combination of the cargo-container concept, transfer cables and cell phones could work to distribute the content.
How does this relate to our inquiry topics? Sandy and I are collaborating on a way to share information about schools in districts and store that database online. This information would be accessible to teachers or anyone interested in contributing or learning about the ICT availability in schools. A section sharing teacher resources would draw on the digital content one might find from a digital library source. Tumblebooks and ebooks are wonderful resources, but not all books are available in these formats. With further development of digital libraries, it’s my hope that one day they will be.
Your post gave me an idea – what if there was a non-profit effort to provide pre-loaded e-readers to developing readers who would not otherwise have access to a wide range of literature? The beauty of the project would be that the e-readers could be updated periodically to ensure the most up to date content on emerging topics, while also providing access to classic literature. Imagine a high school class developing a kickstarter project to provide e-readers to developing educational systems – with a follow-up provision to ensure the contents don’t go out of date.
I’ve thought about that too, but being a cynic, I wonder who would fund such a non-profit venture and whether such digital content would be available in the native tongue of the recipients. I suppose doing some research would be necessary – we saw how the language barrier was overcome in Mr. Mitra’s video.