Sixth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum
27 -30 September 2011
United Nations Office in Naiorbi, Nairobi, Kenya
September 28, 2011 - 11:00AM
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The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the Sixth Meeting of the IGF, in Nairobi, Kenya. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Good morning, everyone. We will start in a few minutes. We have a remote participant. We are just trying to see if she can hear us and we can hear her. But just give us two more minutes, please.
Alex, are you making headway or should we just get going?
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Remote participation team, if you could continue to try to solve the problems, but we need to start in courtesy to all the participants.
Good morning. I'm Anriette Esterhuysen, associate professor for communications, APC, and I'm a librarian, even though I don't work as one right now.
Thank you very much for all of you for coming to this workshop, which is to explore how we can convince policymakers in Africa to take public libraries seriously as a space where Internet access can be provided in a way that allows it to really reinforce development and support education and build community.
And this workshop is being organised in partnership with my organisation, and a group called the Electronic Information For Libraries, EIFL, that does a lot of work in Africa with University libraries and public libraries.
And to introduce our panel I'm going to hand over to my colleague from EIFL, Monika Elbert.
>> MONIKA ELBERT: Good morning, everybody. I'm really pleased to see you. I follow on with Anriette Esterhuysen to say I'm also a librarian. I don't know what she meant by "I don't look like one." I don't know what librarians should look like.
I have the honour to introduce our panelists. I'll start with Geoffrey Kimani, Director of Research and Insights, from the TNS International Research Firm. He is a senior researcher. TNS is an international market and solution research firm who has very strong presence in African countries in particular. And Geoffrey is going to familiarize ourselves with the results of this study that we, EIFL, have undertaken on the perceptions of public libraries in six African countries.
We also have the pleasure to have with us today Dr. Richard Atuti. Richard is the Director of The Kenya National Library Services, and I'm sure many of you know very well the Kenya National Library Services are in charge of running public libraries in, around Kenya and Nairobi and rural areas, and Richard will be saying more about that. It has been our pleasure to work with him on one of these particular community projects.
We are trying to beam in Barbro Wigell-Ryynanen from the Ministry of Education in Finland, who is in charge of running public library policy throughout Finland. We don't seem to be that successful right now with our use of that particular technology. But I hope we can still manage that. Finland is very advanced and very sophisticated in terms of their public library policy integrated into their overall session and economic policies. So it would have been good to get her view. But hopefully it will still work.
Myself, I work for EIFL, Electronic Information For Libraries, and I will say a few words about EIFL when it comes to me presenting our public library community projects.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks very much, Monika.
To get our discussion going, we wanted to share with you some research that had been done by EIFL that looked at the perception of public libraries and the potential that they have, and Geoffrey will tell us how many countries primarily in East Africa. And this research is both very disturbing in that it supports the fact that policymakers are not taking libraries seriously. But it's also enormously encouraging, because it shows a wide variety stakeholders, particularly in government, do see libraries as essential.
I want to ask Geoffrey to give us background on this research and we will pick out topics to discuss that emerge from that.
>> GEOFFREY KIMANI: Okay. Thank you very much. So, what I'll share with you this morning is -- are the findings of a study that was done to understand the perceptions of public libraries in Africa. The study was actually done in six countries in Africa and it was not only in Eastern Africa. We did it in -- we did it in Eastern, Southern, and Western Africa. And you can see, there are countries like --
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Let's pause a minute. Let's sort out the sound problem.
(There is an echo)
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Geoffrey, please go ahead. I think what is happening is that someone has the remote participation on.
>> They can hear us there now.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: But we can hear ourselves there, too. We need to switch something off somewhere.
(There is an echo in the room)
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Testing.
>> GEOFFREY KIMANI: Okay. Good.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Testing.
>> GEOFFREY KIMANI: Okay. Good.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Geoffrey, I think you should continue.
No. It's not going to work.
Do we have a technician with us?
Just tell them that we are going to start without them being able to hear. But it's really just the background paper, which is on the workshop Web site anyway.
Otherwise, we will lose too much time while we sort this problem out.
>> GEOFFREY KIMANI: Okay. I hope there is no echo now.
So, as I was saying, the study was conducted in six African countries.
I'll try to shout.
So the study was done in six African countries.
Eastm southeastern, southern and West Africa. And the main objective of the study was to understand generally how -- what the State of the public libraries is, what they currently have. What the perceptions are. What the attitudes are towards public libraries.
What libraries or librarians believe their role is. And we took it a step farther to understand what the policymakers' perceptions of libraries are.
Now, as you can see on the screen down there, we spoke to many groups of people. Included users of libraries, users of libraries, librarians, local level stakeholders, which is officials of local governments, and then national people, and this was a cross-section of many types of stakeholders.
Moving on, this is just to show you that the study was robust enough and we spoke to a lot of people -- --
(Interference with the microphone)
I'd like to share findings. The overall output of this research is a 600-page document with a whole lot of data that is available for anyone who is interested, on the EIFL Web site, and you can link during the course of these discussions. So it was a task to try to abstract bits and pieces of information that are relevant for this workshop. And I'll try to share with you some of it. I'll give you a background from the users' perspectives, and we will see what the policymakers feel about libraries.
So, initially, we wanted to understand what the users' perceptions of libraries are. And I have highlighted, in what you're seeing in front of us here, the key things. And important to these discussions is the factor that only 5 percent of users associated computers with libraries. So that automatically tells you that there is a huge gap in terms of what people associated with libraries. Of course the traditional issues of books, information, knowledge storage, and acquisition came up quite strongly. And looking at that, there is an immediate opportunity to start moving computers much higher up that ladder.
We also asked the same questions to end-users. And there was no users and nonusers. They were people who haven't used libraries in the last one year. As you can see again, only about 5 percent of those people associated libraries with computers, although countries like Kenya and Uganda showed a little bit better position compared to the other countries that we spoke to.
Now, again, just to give us some background knowledge, we wanted to understand amongst the users why they did not use libraries. And a lot of them said -- if you look at this data that we put down there. The key thing is that modern lifestyle will continue to be hectic and people will always be busy. So the challenge for libraries in this case or the key learning that we get from this is that there is an opportunity to take libraries to the people via the user technology, via Internet, via mobile, which is a big thing in Africa, and by the technology methods. People who are not accessing libraries aren't able to, and that fit within their positions. Because people are not going to start using this because modern lifestyles are busy.
From users, we wanted to find out from them some of the reasons why they are dissatisfied, you know, as they use libraries.
And this is only the people who are dissatisfied.
Now, a lot of people, close to 40 percent, as you can see the percentage, they say the reason they are dissatisfied with the current libraries is because there are not enough computers in the libraries. Again an opportunity to digitize, bring in technology, and give access to Internet and the computing.
The other thing we want to find out from the librarians themselves was the available information in the libraries. And this was even more sad. If you look up there, we first looked at computerization. Only 16 percent of all the libraries we spoke to, only 16 percent said they have a computerized catalog. 83 percent have no computerized catalog. We also asked them about the circulation system. Only 9 percent said they have a computerized catalog system.
How many libraries have their own Web sites? Only 16 percent of the libraries that we spoke to have their own Web sites. Again, a huge opportunity for improvement as far as computerization of libraries is concerned.
As you can see there in Ethiopia, the situation is even worse, as none of the libraries have said that they have computers, let alone a circulation system or a Web site, even though we know that some of the libraries do have access.
So we went again and looked at the national or local level officials. Sorry. And then again we asked them about the associations with libraries. Only 6 percent of all the local level officials we spoke to, only 6 percent associated libraries with computers. Again a huge gap. Not different from what we saw before.
The difference between those two tables, up there are the officials of local authorities that have libraries, and down here are the officials of local authorities that don't operate libraries. And not all countries have them.
And the officials of local authorities that operate libraries, there was a slightly better perception. They said they could associate libraries with computers, but again, that percentage is still a low portion.
The other thing we want to look at was how, according to the local level officials, how could libraries promote visibility? And then again you still see gaps here. Because only 6 percent said that adoption of new technology could afford libraries, better visibility. Of course there are the traditional things of relevance, which are key. But you can see from the charts in front of us, adoption of new technology takes a very small portion of what overall they think would work for libraries.
And ,generally, to summarize what the local officials say, in terms of potential for libraries, is that libraries have a huge potential for planning, literacy and employment and other areas of economic development.
But if you look at bullet number 4 there, it's very encouraging to note that a lot of the local level officials that we spoke to widely recognize and acknowledge that libraries do have a huge potential to provide access to the technology, building relationships, even their own interactions amongst users and other people who interact with libraries.
Now, we also spoke to the national level officials, who are the really the policymakers as far as libraries, development and improvement. The association was better when we asked them if they would associate with libraries. It was 12 percent globally. In terms of the total number of countries we spoke to, associated computers with libraries, slightly better than the users and the local level officials, but then still a huge gap as you can see. Because even amongst these officials, libraries are still associated with the traditional issues of books, the space itself, a place for meeting, information access. So the gap is still there.
We presented these officials with a number of phrases, and we wanted to see or them to tell us which of these phrases are best associated with libraries. Now, the last item there, libraries are up to date on technology, only 15 percent of the national level officials say that libraries are up to date on technology. All the other things, the inclusive, friendly, be highly skilled librarians, competent workers, have high mentions. But you can see that technology had very low mention across most of the countries.
In Kenya, the situation is a little bit better, because half the officials we spoke to actually did say that libraries are up to date as far as technology is concerned.
Again, going farther to tell us that there are still gaps regarding globalization, Internet access of libraries, and there is still a lot of things to be done in that area.
We asked them about the impact of libraries in many areas. What I've done is abstracted information. And this is a very encouraging slide. In terms of the potential of libraries, as far as technology is concerned, as far as computing and Internet access is concerned, it's extremely encouraging to see that. The majority of the officials that we spoke to, actually over 80 percent, do agree that libraries have a huge potential to increase knowledge. As far as ICT is concerned, to increase access and to improve people's abilities as far as computing, Internet, and information technologies is concerned.
That's all I wanted to share with you today. I had a short amount of time. There is a huge report that Monika is holding up there that contains a lot more information about what the studies say as far as libraries are concerned. But the bottom line is that the situation is not good, but everybody acknowledges that the potential is there for libraries to be a very significant partner as far as access to information and technology and computerization is concerned.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you very much, Geoffrey. Before we go on to the next speaker, who is going to be Richard Atuti from the Kenyan National Library Service, do you have any question, anyone in the room, any questions for Geoffrey about this research particularly as you might not again be able to hear him all that well?
Just remember to introduce yourself and keep your question as short as possible.
>> MOSES: My name is Moses from the Akira centre. I just wanted a clarification on the technologies that were being referred to in the study when talking to the libraries, what particular ICTs or technologies were they responding to, what definition?
>> GEOFFREY KIMANI: As far as libraries are concerned, we were interested in simple access to computing, having users access books via the Internet, for instance.
And it went even as low as having printers, having fax machines, having copiers and stuff like that, so it was the whole spectrum of electronic and digital things that would provide better access to services in the library.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Any other questions?
>> I'm Elafus from the Gogle Institute. I would be interested in knowing whether you have a clear profile of the people you interviewed in terms of their ages and educational background. Because I think that also makes a difference when you look at their perception of libraries.
>> GEOFFREY KIMANI: Thank you --
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Hang on a bit. Let's see if there are more questions and you can answer them as well. And I would add gender to that, as well, if that data was available.
Any other questions for Geoffrey before I give him back the floor?
No. Go ahead, Geoffrey.
>> GEOFFREY KIMANI: Yes. Thanks for that question.
The profile of the Respondent is available. And it goes beyond just gender. It looked at education level. It looked at age. We looked at their socioeconomic status, their living standard. We looked at their employment status, occupational status. We looked at their household income. So, within the larger report there is a very clear demarcation and output is put by the various demographics so you can segregate to any level you want and make any analysis that you'd want at that level. And it's not just the report that you have. The data is available online at the EIFL. So you can do your own cross evaluation that you want.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: And thank you, Geoffrey. We are now going to listen to Richard Atuti, who is the Director of The Kenyan National Library Services. He has been with Kenya National Library Services in different incarnations for many years. And he will give us some examples of how Internet has been used innovatively in libraries in Kenya, ,to build community and support development.
>> RICHARD ATUTI: Thank you, Chair.
Ladies and gentlemen. I want to speak briefly about our experience as a public library, the steps we have taken to embrace technology in the operations of our library services, as well as the delivery of services to the end-users.
A while ago, I was in the earlier group which was in this room, actually, this room was full to the extent that some of us were left standing. And whenever we speak of the subject about libraries, you can see how many people among us, the participants, the delegates are interested to hear about libraries.
This basically adds to the report Geoffrey Kimani presented to you about the perceptions of libraries. The perception of libraries within our communities and within our countries.
I'll be brief to address myself to why the Internet. That is the focus that we are discussing this morning. Well, it goes without saying that the Internet facility in our libraries goes a long way to add value to the kind of library services we are providing.
Two, when you look at the training of librarians, in both days and today, most of us value physical things which we see in our libraries. If you tell somebody you have a virtual library, perhaps he will want to understand: Does it contain books and what kind of books? So what we are trying to address here is why the Internet? The Internet is coming as a platform to the library or some part of support, from rural support to provide quality services, and to be able to provide a variety of information services to our users in our libraries.
The other issue why I'm seeing Internet as an advantage is because physical books are increasingly becoming very expensive, as compared to information which is available in digital format, which can be shared widely and faster than physical books within our libraries.
Therefore, how does the library promote this access through the Internet? The challenge we have had also in our context in Kenya is that cost has been an inhibition to most public libraries and other libraries to embrace technology. But all said and done, even within the limited budgets we have, if we are able to prioritize properly, I believe we can spend some percentage of our budgets to embrace technology. Because they are geared to improve the way you do your business.
But one of the drawbacks has been our attitude. We are the implementers of these problems. What has been the attitude or the level of preparedness on the part of the librarians to embrace technology? That has been the problem. And how are we packaging this challenge to the policymakers to be able to make provisions for us to implement these technologies in our institutions?
And you find it's increasingly becoming a challenge, because you are asking the implementer to prepare a strategy to the policymaker, to allow him or her to have resources to implement, a subject this person does not understand.
So more often than not, you would rather do away with it than even discuss it at the end point.
Then what we are saying is librarians also now need to embrace other skills. Let's say expertise in ICT sector. If we have to move forward this programme of computerizing the library services, and you have a problem, if you are a policy maker or official, the best thing you can do is employ or outsource the services of experts who can assist you to implement your vision. And also it calls for policy development within institutions. Not many institutions have policies on ICTs, especially libraries. But we have better policies, very nice policies on how to manage libraries which exclude the element of technology. So, that will be a beginning point for us to move this agenda forward.
The other idea I look at is impressing partnerships, if we have to really be onboard in terms of ICT integration in our institutions. You need to speak to experts. You need to speak to people who know as much about ICTs than you, either in the library sector or outside the sector. This way you'll be able to share your vision with them to be able to provide solutions to you.
As a library, I would say that we have made strides towards this end, despite the challenges which are touching on funding, appropriateness of resources which you want to put online, and dealing with attitudes of our staff, as well as coming up with job enrichment programmes to train our staff on ICT skills.
And, lastly, of course, ICTs are very expensive for some administrations. You embrace them from the beginning, but as you move along the costs aligning with these ICTs also proves to be a challenge. So you have to be prepared how much you can abide or you can take in for you to sustain these systems. But as I said, the first solution to this is partnerships. You don't have to do it all by yourself.
If you can join some kind of consortiums, you'll be able to access resources at affordable rates and that way you'll be enriching your library collections.
However, specifically we have projects which we are implementing now with support from the stakeholders or partners. A case in point is an eHealth project, which we have doing in two of our centers in western Kenya. They are touching on resources online specifically for the healthcare workers who are not regular users of our libraries. But we realized that their contribution to development of our communities is immense. Yet they do not have resources from where they can get information for purposes of updating what they know in the sector and how they share some of the challenges which are emerging from this sector.
For the first time we were able to bring healthcare workers together with librarians for a training. It revealed a lot of potential that the library has in terms of supporting the healthcare sector. For the first time, the healthcare workers realized that the library has potential to fill them with information, and they would be effective in their work.
Today, as we speak, this project is a success. Quite a number of healthcare workers come to the library to search for information, as well as trainees who are pursuing training in the medical field. To the extent that the number of PCs in these centres are not adequate because all the time you find that there are people logged in or on, to be able to get information for different purposes.
So, we have been able to train healthcare workers on how to access information online via the Internet. We have also been able to train students from these institutions as well as members of the community who could be having interest to discuss issues touching on their health and their community in general.
The impact of this project has been immense and we have case studies of a few of the respondents who have come back to the library to share how they benefited from this project.
A case in point is one participant who said that we learned that health workers and libraries can disseminate information to the public as a team. It's important for them to have this information shared online and to collaborate with other stakeholders in the delivery of these services.
The other important project I want to share with you is also an -- we are establishing resource centres in rural communities, ten of them, in partnership with one of the local state institutions called CCK. It's Communication Commission of Kenya. It's charged with the responsibility of assuring that institutions can embrace ICTs in whatever form. But there is a gap between the people in rural communities as opposed to those ones who are residing in urban areas. So through these centres we are establishing communication centres. First of all, for them to embrace the importance of ICTs as well as facilitated communication amongst themselves.
A while ago, I think it was Mr. Geoffrey Kimani, spoke about the popularity of cell phones in this country.
And we are working slowly with some of the service providers to see how best can we use cell phones to be able to access certain information about libraries so that people can know what libraries hold.
Indeed, we are going on a -- we are embarking on a programme and we are working on a programme whereby the online catalogs would be accessible on your cell phone. By the end of this year, I believe that programme will become a reality.
The reason we are doing this, we want to entice members of the public even before they walk through the library. They should be able to browse through on their phones what the public library is holding before they come. Many of them are turned down from your library because when whenever you visit your library, they found we don't have relevant information that they seek from your library. So this programme will come to a reality and it will add value to the public library service and the way we provide services.
We have another project, working with UK Aid in one of the rural communities. And in this project, the goal of the center is to provide local youth with structured career cement skills and opportunities to pursue careers and transition into higher education using the Internet.
This rural community is -- the Internet there is linked with a fiber optic cable and we have about 50 PCs which are being browsed by the youth in that rural area. Each day we have 400 youth to browse, to see about their aspirations and what they are going to be able to do with the use of the Internet.
And, more importantly, we are also training the local communities on the best skills on how to use these gadgets.
I know as we speak today, none of our libraries are collaborating with the administration of materials in their institutions. But one of the challenges which comes with this programme is after you digitize this information, what do you do with it? We are producing a lot of information, but how do we manage the content itself? This has been a challenge which we are experiencing as a library. Therefore, for us, we found that the solution is to partner with people.
The library has a lot of capacity to store all of this information that you are digitizing. We are working with Servericom Cloud. We should be able to store it on the Servericom Cloud and have a link from there to the library source, so you can be able to get this information.
In conclusion, I want to say that Internet and the integration of appropriate technology in libraries is a challenge. But I think it's possible for librarians, stakeholders, and policymakers to overcome this if we get the right strategy, we have the right policies in place, and you don't shy away from using technology, however challenging it may appear.
(Applause)
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you very much, Richard. I think that -- well, myself and a colleague in the room actually recently did research in South Africa on the use of public libraries, and what we found was that where there are libraries, where there is Internet access, there are actually queues in the streets. And so libraries are using SMS to give people numbers for when their turn comes up to come and use the Internet. So that's really been for me a revelation to see how great the need and demand is.
Now we will hear from Monika. And stepping back a little bit more of the big picture look of the role of libraries and access to knowledge and development and community building and how Internet can enable that. Monika, I think I would like you to reflect on this issue not just from the library perspective, but from the public access perspective. I think Geoffrey didn't target the Internet Governance Forum in his research, but if he did he would have found that the perception of the importance of libraries in providing Internet access in the IGF is very, very low. And I think one way in which we can bring that -- the importance across is to route the notion of public access to the Internet and libraries in the notion of public access to the Internet, which I think sadly in my experience, I've been working in Internet access in Africa for a long, long-time.
Since the mid 1990s. And there was a period when there was investment in telecentres and in all kinds of public access centres, and they didn't work that well. They weren't self sustainable. Then you had Internet cafes emerging. But I feel there is little emphasis or thinking from policymakers about how Africa is actually different. One person, one computer scenario is not really real. A one person, one smartphone scenario is not really realistic.
So how should governments take responsibility? By using important public access outlets, like libraries, for giving the citizens access to the Internet. So you can look at it from the public access perspective, not just the library perspective.
>> MONIKA ELBERT: Thank you. It's my first time at IGF and I love the idea of all the different groups talking to each other. I love the fact that for the first time the word "libraries" is in the programme. And I hope we're starting some sort of tradition here.
Now I would like to start my presentation, which is not really a presentation but a dialog with you, with a question to the audience. How many of you here in the room work in or are librarians, please hold up your hands.
(Showing of hands)
How many of you are private industry?
(Showing of hands)
Hooray!
The research that we did together with Geoffrey's firm showed that librarians are notoriously bad at advocating for the value and the potential and the achievements of public libraries to improve the livelihoods in all sorts of ways of their local communities. And librarians often just talk to each other, because it's more comfortable than talking to the funders, the policymakers, partners such as private industry. So I'm hoping that we will be able to, based on the findings of this study, to support and facilitate a dialog between the various stakeholders that could have an interest in exploiting maximizing using the potential of public libraries and their outreach to all sorts of different kind of communities, either currently or potentially.
The study found that a typical library user is male, young, sort of getting his education. So one of the questions that we ask is where are the women? And where are some of the marginalized and disadvantaged communities the public library has the potential to reach, especially via the Internet? EIFL is an international NGO that works in nearly 50 developing and transition countries with libraries, helping libraries to offer Internet based and eResource based services, helping them to afford access to sme resource, helping them to create eResource, helping them to use the Internet to improve their resources for their users. And we run this public library innovation programme which seeks to stimulate innovative public library services.
Now, what do we mean by innovation? By innovation we mean something that is new in their setting, and we mean with the use of technology.
And Anriette was saying about the word "public access." We want to add the word "free." Because it's the library that can reach and service and help those users that cannot afford to buy their PC. That cannot afford to have their smartphone. That cannot afford to go to the Internet cafe. And these communities can find a place to use all the resources, all the knowledge, all the information for their job, for their education, for their social life, that are on the Internet. So we are talking very much about free public access.
Those of you that were in the opening session yesterday heard all these very important people talking about access to knowledge that will empower citizens, digital literacy, relevant information that empowers people's lives, and what we are putting on the table here in this forum is that public libraries have potentially a tremendous role to play. Because they are in touch with their communities.
The public library innovation programme is supported for now has developed 12 model projects in developing countries around the world, focusing on children and youth, youth at risk, on farmers and farming, on health and unemployment.
Now, you know as well as I do that these are very much development areas. They are areas that also are focused on in the millennium focus goals. And what we are doing, I'm not saying trying to do, what we are doing is showing that public libraries, if they are ICT enabled, if their workforce is trained, if they have the capacity and the support, if they have good partnerships, this is very important.
They can assess the needs of their community. What is it that the community needs? They can design the services for their community. And they can evaluate their achievements in a way that they can then use them to advocate for sustainability of their services.
Earlier I gave to all of you this little two-pager about the achievements of those 12 projects. And they are based not on our dreams and fantasies, but on fairly rigorous impact evaluation. We worked with these projects over the 12 months to help them to assess the need to form a baseline, to develop their services, and at the end to make an impact on the lives of their community in these diverse areas that I mentioned earlier.
So it was the public library in rural Ghana that had to confront the problem of so many youths being unemployed, being out in the street. And in an earlier session here that was about youth, there was also a foundation from Eastern Africa that was dealing with that same problem. They brought the youth to their foundation.
We are saying what you can do is you can reach out through the public library to this kind of young people. You can give them ICT and leadership training and you can help them then improve their job prospects and their personal skills, their confidence. And the results of this project show that this is what we have been able to achieve.
In Zambia we are working with a public library and in partnership with software developers, and that's why I'm delighted that here at IGF there is potentially a great forum for the librarians and the library people talking to software people, programmers, industry. And they have developed on the one laptop per child, which is the affordable hardware solution in a number of countries, seven kind of games, software games, to learn to read in -- sorry. Yes. I think eight, seven or eight different types of games to learn to read in eight Zambian local languages. And this has been so successful that the administration in Zambia is now rolling that out throughout the library system in the country.
In Lithuania, there were a lot of truant school children and they started to populate the library because they didn't want to go to school. And what they have done is entered into a tremendously productive partnership with the software firm and the local school. And there is an educational game that the kids can play now in the library and they can earn points from the school for their studies by computing that game.
So, what I'm just trying to say here is that there is a big potential of partnerships between the ICT world and the library world. And when that partnership is entered into and directed and focused at solving and meeting the needs of their communities, it is a marriage made in heaven, basically.
Now, I don't want to go on, because I've been to too many sessions where there was too much talk and not enough discussion. And I don't want us to fall into that trap. But you can see in that leaflet a range of different technologies, coming back to the question asked by the person from Nokia at the beginning. Mobile delivery of information to farmers in Chile. Web services to farmers in Serbia. Computer designed and eCommerce for a community in Nepal that does local artifacts. And you know I could go on, because I am very enthusiastic about these developments.
So we have learned a lot of lessons in that first round, which I wouldn't go into now, but useful lessons. And we had went out for a call for proposals of replicateability in different countries, different environments, and half the money. So we test replication of good models, but in low resource environments. And that should be interesting, so you should watch our Web site as this is developing.
I think this is all I want to say right now. Thank you very much for listening. And I'd be very happy for us to engage in a longer lasting dialog with all of you interested in bringing public libraries to the IGF. >> >> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you very much, Monika.
(Applause)
Now we would like to enter into some discussion with you about how do we change this? How do we change the perception of our national policymakers? How do we change the perception of the private sector, of the Internet Governance Forum, of the Internet community actually, the people that are of advocates for expansion and extension of Internet access?
And we formulated several questions, but I think it really boils down to how can libraries drive this change but how can other actors that care about and believe in the power of access, collaborate and be part of this change?
But I first want to ask are there any library skeptics in the room? The IGF is about debate. Other people who think that changes in technology and how content is shared and distributed, have moved in the direction where we shouldn't be talking about libraries? I think it's good to hear from the skeptics. We have two skeptics. How many -- you don't have to be a skeptic. You can be a critical thinker.
Let's hear from you first and then Alex over here. Introduce yourself and remember to be short.
>> My name is Sylvester Iteria. I'm a librarian at a private library. You are talking about ICT. ICT for who? When you walk into a class and the first thing that you get is a hungry child. The first thing you see is -- the first thing you see is a child who is malnourished. How do you begin to say: This is how you access information. You do this, this, this, this, this. You give a child a phone, when the child doesn't know about how the phone works.
You are talking about health. You have not told this child how to keep himself healthy. You have not told this child, you see him, he has Chiggers. The other day we had children all over the country who could not feed themselves. How do you begin to introduce and say this is how ICT works?
What are the basic things you should teach this child? How to get food or water for him or herself. Those are the basic things you give the children in the class. When they are happy and they are fed, then you can begin to say oh, the teacher here is the only one in the village who has a mobile phone. All right?
How about the rest of the people in the village? They have no mobiles. They don't know how to keep clean water, how to boil it, how to keep away some of the diseases. And you are saying ICT for them?
This is the challenge I want them to react and tell us exactly what is the first thing that you should do first for these children in the village? Thank you.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks for that. I wouldn't have had a more powerful skeptic open this discussion. And I can see the debaters firing up. And I will let it go. But remember I do want to come back to the purpose of this workshop, which is to think about how do we change the thinking of policymakers?
So over there and then there. Okay. I'll get to all of you.
Alex, introduce yourself.
>> Alex (inaudible) and I'm from South Africa. I'm a Ph.D. Student. Currently I'm not at my University and have not registered yet, so I can't use the library. I haven't used a library in years. But at the tertiary education level I find everything that I need is digitized, and it's either open content or I'm forced to do something which some people call piracy and I call fair use. But I see the library with the resources that I need in terms of academic resources, it's an ivory tower that is very hard to get into. You've got to pay like a few dollars to visit one, an academic one. And if you don't have access to a library, you don't have the -- and your library can't afford to pay the big journal companies, you're blocked out.
I'm a skeptic because libraries have not helped me.
I used my own means to get it. I know I'm fortunate enough to have Internet access. But at a tertiary level, I haven't had a library help me in five years.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks. You should have a private discussion with EIFL, trying to help libraries.
That gentleman at the back and then Sylvia, it's you.
>> Good afternoon. I work in the security sector reforms.
My issue is about crime and violence. Our libraries become centres of engagement for families at risk. So that they can use content, so that they can make sure that affordable services are accessible to them. Because Africa is turning into a bedrock of violence. And that's why I'm in this room, to know what are we doing?
And the other last thing is that how can we make sure that we communicate to them in a language that they understand? So that they can turn it into their mother tongue, use the expressions, and make sure that their values are sustained?
Thank you.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: So then you and then this lady in front.
>> SYLVIA: I'm Sylvia. I work in Australia, but I'm from Columbia.
So my comment comes from my previous life as an Internet activist in violent and poorer countries, where we did telecentres and other initiatives to put libraries in small communities. And I really think that, yes, you're right. There is hunger and violence and all sorts of things happening, and maybe computers and others might not be the first line of defense or the first things that we need to do. But there is other types of hunger in terms of knowledge and capacity. And I believe that the -- I've seen the results and the changes in the lives of many young people that will benefit from this first exposure to libraries and access and first Web sites, first data analysis, first access to this knowledge. And I'm sure by experience that there are other hungers that we need to feed also. And if they have knowledge, they can get, you know, a way from that poor ife and get a better life.
And I think there is a risk when we underestimate the capacity of people, just because they are poor or just because they are -- they live far away. We need to give the same opportunities to anyone and it doesn't matter where they are.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks very much for that.
And Gladys and this lady in front. Panelists, are you bursting to react to the discussions so far? So I'll take these three more people and then we will have the panel and then this side of the room.
>> GLADYS: My name is Gladys. I'm the Director of Africa programmes. My take of libraries is the word "Library" for me, because I was forced to go to a library to read so that I could -- it was punishment. It should be a good name. Is it an information centre? Is it a place where we get information or entertainment? What is the name that should be called so that we don't feel like it's a bad thing? We associate it with torture and failing and passing exams. I mean, that is where I come from.
So that's where we need to go. And then the libraries themselves, what have they innovated to go "E"? Is all this information actually there, so that when we want food, when we want information in aggregate, it is actually available? And for the skeptics, I'm saying what is it that we can do to make sure that you have the right information for the right people? IT for what?
I just want to recap on a project that was done by the public in Kenya on a hunger initiative. And it was given on "E". It was driven on the cell phones, media, entertainment cycles, and we responded to the need for hunger. There are those with the information, the librarians in this case and the libraries, and then ways of entertainment, traditional ways of communicating with people so that they know where to get that information out.
And I just want to say what can we do to the policymakers? What we are doing to the policymakers in regards other areas like E width is give them a handbook of advocacy. Give them a handbook of advocacy, when you are going to see a member of Parliament, or somebody else, give them this little three or four page handbook and therefore also practice it where you are. So this forum should come up with how do we come up with a handbook for advocacy for libraries and eLibrarys and for information to disseminate to the grass-roots.
Thank you.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks, Gladys.
>> GIN MARUKI: My name is Gin Maruki. I'm from the formal schools in Kenya. And these are the schools within the slums and marginalized community. And what we have done is we are trying to increase access for basic education to as many children in Kenya as possible. Work towards improving quality of the education provided. And we set up a programme that is using technology. We have got -- we have about 16 centres, connected them with Internet, and four of them are running right now and using videoconferencing to teach secondary education to youth from marginalized communities, to be in training for them to do KCSC. That is a form of certificate education. And these are only going in the night.
Now, my question and my concern is that one of the biggest challenges that you've had is access to content and access to material. Because these are marginalized communities, buying a textbook is very very difficult and we have been trying to look at where do we get content that is relevant to our secondary education?
The first thing, we have to know that public libraries, you know, the biggest client are the children. That is the primary and secondary, you know, the students. And this being your biggest clientele. I think you have to think seriously of how you're going to digitize our educational system and our education content to enable them to be able to access it online.
And you know as we carry forth about access to the libraries, we have got this 16 centres within the nonformal setup, using public thresholds to provide education. And the question of the night again, it's a very, very new concept, people are saying learning in the night? And we're saying yes. This is something else that they like. It's a take up that we could have eLearning facilities that are operating throughout the night, especially for the nonformal setup. Because one more of these children, they don't have qualified teachers. They don't have access of material, and libraries may be an answer if the content available is relevant.
Thank you.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks a lot for that intervention.
>> CHARLES: My name is Charles Mandan. Today as I was registering, I had an occasion to meet with Raul Samprano. He is with UNDP. He just arrived from New York.
And he asked me, when I introduced myself as a librarian, he said so what is your concern in this IGF? And that goes in line with the research that shows that he is not sensitized enough.
So what I told him is because the Internet is the library. He got taken aback, and I needed to explain to him. It told him the library is a forum for access to information and the Internet is the wider network of access to information. And therefore that's why I'm here. We had a good discussion. He followed me to three different forums that I've attended this morning.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Is he here?
>> CHARLES: I just left him somewhere. He will be coming.
But my concern is the question you raise, do policymakers understand the cause for librarians? I'm just paraphrasing. And I believe looking at it that the question is wrong. Why should we point at other people and not we ourselves as policymakers? Do we interpret our mandate as librarians? What are the issues that will make us able to make a difference? Why won't somebody fight for our course?
And another question is: When you're talking, do policymakers understand the course for librarians? What do you mean? Policymakers at what level? At the parliamentary level or, regarding what Richard Atuti said, as our seniormost policymakers, he should be interacting with the same whatever.
So at that level I think our questioning is wrong. You have to change it.
>> >> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you. I have to hurry us up a bit. I think we have only got ten minutes left.
And I wanted to give the panel time to respond. So I'll take this question on this side of the room and then will be the last question. Sorry everyone.
>> MOSES ASUTA: Thank you. My name is Moses Asuta. I happened to have been involved in the setup of a centre from the background of a librarian, our technical expert for that project, which was looking at how to make information accessible to small holder farmers within a village.
The project took off well. We had a good response, so we were thinking in terms of affordability. But the Internet itself was expensive. We tried to get a license from the country regulators to have a radio, a station there, so that it can propagate the information within that centre to the farmers affordably. It has not been forthcoming.
Then we also put books there and a television so that they can get information from the books. They came in the last days for the project. But because we did not have funds to pay for the person who was to manage that place professionally, we did not have a person to run the place.
And then recently while listening to news and reading the pre, there is information coming out that affordable mobile phones, which come from China, they are -- they are determined to be phased. They are going to be phased out. And this is what Kenyans can afford. So I'm looking at four questions for the affordability.
What can the poorer people afford? And therefore once the poorer people have these things, why does the government turn around and say that they want to phase them out? That question goes towards regulation. We have not gotten the regular license we wanted to use so that the information can reach people, yet you find businessmen are given licenses. Why are the people regulating the access for people to want to get these facilities?
And then I look at curriculum. I heard a presenter, Richard Atuti, saying that the expertise is resourced from outside the library. What is missing? Curriculum that makes it not possible to employ librarians to do the job in the library, so then you have to outsource. You find that they employ a computer-based person in the library. Yes, in the library you can find people who can still do that job.
Now, there is the question of --
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Can you quickly go through?
>> MOSES ASUTA: Yes. The last one. We are blamed for not being known to show or people seem not to know what the libraries do have. Do libraries have budgets for marketing, like the way other national companies like Coca Cola put so much money on advertising? What is missing there?
Thank you.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you very much.
We have heard about -- I mean, I'm going to quickly summarize the questions. There is the challenge of the privacy of development challenges, such as poverty and hunger and how do we reconcile. How do we conceptualize our work to provide information and communication services, in relation to these other needs that are so immediate and fundamental?
And we have heard about libraries not keeping up and being blocked by the cost of materials and technology and therefore not being relevant to Ph.D. Graduates in Africa, who fortunately have Internet access.
We also heard about equal access, the power and importance of everybody to have the right. No matter who they are or where they are, whether they are poor or rich, rural or urban, if new innovation happens in the world, everyone should be able to benefit from that.
We also heard about challenges to library, the need for libraries to change, change their names, change the culture, change the curriculum of the information library services.
We heard about channeling libraries instead of blaming the policymakers.
And the importance of advocacy and then also the importance of content. And how do we ensure that content is there for innovative libraries or public access information? The thing about night learning, I found that important. Because I've been to so many projects, because there is Internet in the library but the librarians don't want to work late. So I think changing how we practice is very important. And I think the issues of affordable libraries, and we have to have budgeting and sustainability over the long-term.
So lot of different challenges. And we need to close. I'll just ask the speakers, the panelists, to give us like a three-minute closing statement. And I can see Richard is brimming to -- bursting with his. So you start with us and Geoffrey then you and then Monika. And IFLA, you have an announcement to make? Don't let's forget you.
>> RICHARD ATUTI: Thank you very much for the comments coming from my colleagues. Quickly I'll just speak one or two areas which I want to respond to. First is about the issue of addressing poverty in this country vis-a-vis technology. And I think that the library would be central in addressing the issues starting with effort. Because libraries, you're providing information. We are providing education. And when we provide education, we are empowering communities. Once people are informed, they are easily governable. It's easy for them to interpret policies and governing the country is easy. So technology will play a big role.
We are working with the Ministry of (Inaudible) trying to address the issue of full security. How? We have partnered with the ministry and we set up a system which is called the National Agricultural System. There are not outlets that they can provide this information for free and the library has come out to be handier. The system -- we are hosting the Web site in our premises. They are the people who are generating content. But information will be accessed through our libraries by the farmers, free of charge and online. That is one that we are addressing for security and also improving one for production.
We will be addressing the need of that child who is poor and who needs to be fed. So this is coming.
Secondly, libraries, as we move along, as we have a clear policy that by the year 2014, June, we will be 100 percent computerized, and that's an issue of policy. Thanks to Charles. Charles was my former college mate, and he is putting up this issue of policy. We participate and we are taking deliberate steps to ensure that libraries get the right position in the development process.
What we are doing is that we are also asking people who are jobless in our communities, that you can come to our library, sit in there if you have a computer or use our computers. You know, trying to set up things which along the model of business outsourcing centres. You can sit in the public library, access anything, do business from their laptop, for free of charge. And that way we are also addressing the issues of poverty and unemployment in our communities.
I'm told that that I have to wind up. But I invite my colleagues from around that you can sit down and discuss these issues further until you really know how it is that we positioned ourselves. We have seen an increase of budget from government. In development, for the last two years I've had 100 percent increasing, because I get to policymakers who are able to provide resources for library development.
And everyone in this room who is working with libraries, it's possible that we can turn around things. We can turn around this perception of libraries if we do the right things, which can impact the communities directly. Thank you.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you very much. And Geoffrey?
>> GEOFFREY KIMANI: I'm not a librarian, so I might not be able to answer the questions that you asked.
The first skeptic, who asked about IT for who? I think ICT is important because even though the child is poor, even though he lives in the rural area and he wants food and he wants clothing and everything else, we all know that access to information is very, very important. Forums such as ICT can actually be used to enhance the way access to all those things that you mentioned is facilitated.
A lot of other issues that were raised about advocacy, about the role of librarians in policymaking, budgeting, and funding for libraries, are actually covered in the bigger report that was presented. So by going in there, you can see where the gaps are, where the opportunities are for improvement, what challenges you are likely to face and issues like that.
So I'd like to ask Monika to respond to some of the issues raised, because she is more aware and, you know, focused on that area.
>> MONIKA ELBERT: Okay. So I'm totally overwhelmed about the knowledge, the passion, the ideas that came back from the discussion. And I'm very sorry that we don't have another one and a half hours to go deeply into them. Because each one of these really, really great questions has a deep discussion behind it.
So I would say that we created a footprint for libraries in the IGF today. And let's build on that footprint. Let's make that footprint a step and two steps and more steps.
I saw that there is an instrument, and now I'm talking really as an IGF ignorant here, that is called a Dynamic Coalition; that one can create a Dynamic Coalition within the IGF for a certain issue, for a certain concern that has to do with the Internet and a number of stakeholders.
Let us all that are here today work together. And I'm not sure if I'm saying this and I'm right that one can do this, but let's try and continue this forum, the libraries, within IGF.
Let's try and continue -- build on this, and turn it into something which captures the interest and the engagement of other stakeholders. I don't know exactly how we're going to do it, but we will find a way if we can.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you very much. Can I just add or propose that we make it a Dynamic Coalition on free public access to the Internet and libraries?
>> MONIKA ELBERT: Okay.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: So that it's not just limited to libraries and it's not institutional historical sense.
Show of hands, do you see a need for further deepening the discussion on this?
(Showing of hand)
Fantastic. We can applaud ourselves.
(Applause)
Don't worry about the mechanics. IGF dynamics are fluid.
I have an announcement from Stewart.
>> I'm Stewart Hamilton from the International Affiliation of Libraries and Institutions. There were excellent comments here, many of which have shown up, particularly Alex's comment, that libraries sit in a wider ecosystem. And one of the issues that we have to deal with a lot is copyright and access in the case of Alex to academic journals and articles. And I want to draw your attention to this tomorrow, which is called "copyright under a magnifying glass." 11 AM in conference room 12. I think if you are interested in libraries with the broader society, and in fact some the ways that issues relating to intellectual property affect access to knowledge, come to that session. That's tomorrow morning, 11 o'clock, in conference room number 12. Thank you.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: I wanted to thank all of you who were here. You are one of the most engaged workshops I've ever attended in the IGF. Strong energy. I want to thank our fantastic captioner, I don't know your name. But yes, sir, you know how hard this lady has to work to sit there and type everything everyone says and get all the spellings and names right.
(Applause)
And I want to thank our remote participation team, even though they failed. But I know that was not for want of trying.
And I want to thank Barbro I can see you over there, so thank you very much, from Finland, who was going to tell us about libraries and Internet and access in Finland. But thank you very much for being here and I hope you can follow. And next time we will have you with us.
And then I want to thank our panel. Richard, thank you very much for coming. It's very good to be in Kenya and listen to the Kenyan experience.
And, Geoffrey, to give us some evidence. We all know how important evidence policy is.
And Monika for being the driving force behind this workshop. And Monika's team, there is someone called Rosalie, who is in Rome, who has been working and helped us to organise this.
So thanks very much everyone. Let's hope we make change.
(Applause)
(End of session)