DIGITAL LIBRARIES IN THE DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

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 main challenges 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.

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 bibliographic resources. 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 no international 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 were awarded 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.