Many current technology trends are not benefiting developing countries-indeed, some bring serious negative consequences. Just as industrialization and globalization have increased the gulf between haves and have-nots, so information and communications technology is creating a chasm between "knows" and "know-nots." By and large developing countries are not participating in the information revolution, although knowledge is critical for development. The knowledge gap between rich and poor is widening [1, 2, 3].
Digital libraries in human developmentWe identify five important areas where digital libraries can promote human development.
Dissemination of humanitarian information is a realmwhere traditional publishing and distribution mechanisms have failed tragically. Whereas a US medical library subscribes to about 5,000 journals, the Nairobi University Medical School Library, long regarded as a flagship center in East Africa, last year received just 20 journals (compared with 300 a decade ago) [4]. In Brazzaville, Congo, the university has only 40 medical books and a dozen journals, all from before 1993, and the library in a large district hospital was a single bookshelf filled mostly with novels.Digital libraries, by decoupling production and distribution costs from intellectual property charges, offer a desperately-needed lifeline. A wealth of humanitarian material is produced and placed in the public domain by NGOs and international organizations such as the UN. In principle, this information could be made freely available in the form of networked digital libraries. (Distribution in developing countries is discussed later.) More broadly, increasing the level of education through knowledge and technology transfer, particularly for doctors, teachers, and other professionals, is an important economic benefit of digital libraries.Disaster relief, whether for natural disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes or man-made ones such as terrorist attacks and nuclear accidents, demands immediate and informed response in an environment where the local infrastructure may be unpredictable or severely damaged. Disaster relief situations are tackled in parallel by numerous players in a variety of organizations, p r e s e n t i n g a n o v e r w h e l m i n g n e e d f o r information-information that is tailored for the problem at hand, organized to be accessed effectively, collected and disseminated rapidly, and distributed even if the network infrastructure is crippled.Digital library technology can very quickly create organized collections of information, graced with comprehensive searching and browsing capabilities. Intelligence specific to the nature of a disaster, the geographical region, and the logistic resources available for the relief effort, can be gathered into a made-to-order digital library collection that combines targeted knowledge with general medical and sanitary information.For preservation and propagation of indigenous culture, the relevant information is readily available locally-in contrast to the prec...
