INASP Links & Resources
INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION DEVELOPMENT: 
Information and communications technology/Information media 

see also

RESOURCES: Library & information sciences/Archives & Museums

Africatechforum  
Networking forum designed to serve as a platform for high-tech companies of African origin, or for companies with interests in Africa, to discuss issues of common interest. The site includes a useful links section to technology-related organizations for and in Africa. http://www.africatechforum.org

Authentication & Authorization: A Guide
A very useful guide from South Bank University in London for those who are involved in, and want to learn more about, access management for networked information sources, and how to achieve secure identity authentication. There is a particularly good five page summary of the basic issues, and a glossary providing definitions of frequently used terms (such as application proxy, authentication, cookies, digital certificates, IP address filtering, proxy servers, single sign-on, etc.) A resource directory also provides links to 12 key studies and some current projects and initiatives relating to access management. http://www.sbu.ac.uk/litc/candleathens/

Benton Foundation: Strategic Communications in the Digital Age
This is a "best practices" toolkit for achieving your organization's mission. Includes articles, resources and tools on designing and funding effective communications technology strategies, audience development, creating partnerships, implementing communications strategies and reaching your audience, together with reports about key innovations and the latest trends in communications technology. http://www.benton.org/Practice/Toolkit/ 

Budapest Open Access Initiative
The Budapest Open Access Initiative arises from a meeting convened in Budapest by the Open Society Institute (OSI) in December 2001. The OSI is a foundation network founded by Hungarian philanthropist George Soros. The statement released by the Open Access Initiative advocates the world-wide electronic distribution of peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free and unrestricted access to it by scientists, scholars, teachers and students via the Internet, including downloading, copying, printing, and distributing it to others. To achieve open access to scholarly journal literature it recommends two complementary strategies, namely (1) self-archiving, i.e. for scholars to deposit their refereed journal articles in open electronic archives, and, (2) alternative journals, and that scholars need the means to launch “a new generation of alternative journals committed to open access, and to help existing journals that elect to make the transition to open access.”
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/ 

Note:
A response to the Budapest manifesto by the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) can be found at http://www.alpsp.org.uk/budapest0202.pdf , where is points out that "the processes of formal publication cost money", and that the advent of electronic publication has reduced these costs much less than was hoped. ALPSP states "we are convinced that all of our scholarly communities will be ill-served by an initiative which promotes systematic institutional archiving of journal content without having in place a viable alternative economic model to fund the publication of that content. 

CentraTel  
Designed to serve as a learning resource for the global telecentre community. The sites includes many links to telecentre operations, telecentre researchers and research organizations, equipment suppliers, as well as links to development and funding agencies. http://www.centratel.com/

Current Cites
Good annotated online bibliography of selected articles, books, and digital documents on information technology; also offers an article search. http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/

Data Powers of Ten
You may know about kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, and perhaps even terabytes, but if you also want to know about petabytes, exabytes, zettabytes, and the dreaded yottabyte, check out this fascinating table. Compiled by Roy Williams this is a collection of estimates of the quantities of data contained by the various media, from 0.1byte to 2 exabytes, the latter the total volume of information generated worldwide annually. Most units have links to small images as illustrative examples, and the etymology of the words used for very large numbers is also explained. The page, created in 1995, carries a warning from the compiler that many of the numbers are now a bit out of date, that the numbers quoted are approximate, and that in fact a kilobyte is 1024 bytes not 1000 bytes "but this fact does not keep me awake at night"! http://www.estoredata.com/page8.html  

Developing Countries Page
From IS World Net and hosted in Hong Kong, these pages aim to provide a forum for the discussion about the use of IT in developing countries, and offering guidelines for e-publishing for the DC community. The site also includes a substantial number of regional and international links to a variety of resources, e.g. agricultural, urban planning, education, etc. together with links to recent and forthcoming conferences, and working groups and other discussion lists in the IT area.  http://www.is.cityu.edu.hk/research/resources/isworld/developingcountries/index.htm 

Educause Quarterly
Educause (formerly Cause/Effect) is a freely accessible practitioner's journal containing articles that relate to planning, developing, using, and evaluating information resources in higher education, covering aspects such as information systems development, user services, telecommunications and networking, database administration, and instructional technology development and co-ordination. http://www.educause.edu/pub/ce/  

Electronic Journal on Information Systems in Developing Countries (EJISDC)
A publication by the City University of Hong Kong in association with two Dutch universities, this journal is dedicated to the problems and opportunities in information systems in developing countries—and to assist policy makers to share knowledge and experience in the design, development, implementation, management and evaluation of such systems. Access to full-text articles is free, and which are provided as Adobe pdf files. The latest issue July 2001, with a special issue on Health Informatics. http://www.ejisdc.org/ 

Electronic Supply of Academic Publications to and from universities in developing regions' (ESAP) A project of the International Association of University Presidents (IAUP) in cooperation with the International Federation of Catholic Universities (IFCU), SAP aims to set up a sustainable electronic document delivery systems for scholarly publications between universities in the North and the South as well as on a South-South basis, and thus assist in the supply of academic publications to as well as from the developing world. The site provides access to the project outline for 2001-2003, and, as a pilot project, free access (as Adobe pdf files) to a series of monographs from the African Research and Documentation Centre at Uganda Martyrs University. http://www.fiuc.org/iaup/esap/ 

Free Resources for Information Technology
Part of the Mantex Web pages (the Manchester-based UK online booksellers), this site offers a variety of free resources on information technology, including articles and reviews, bibliographies, guidance notes and free Web tutorials, writing style guides, and basic HTML tutorials.
http://www.mantex.co.uk/ou/t171/t171-00.htm 

Gender and the Information Revolution in Africa (edited by Eva M. Rathgeber and Edith Ofwona Adera)
This site provides free access to the full-text version of the above IDRC report (also available in print format). It contains a range of essays (many by African contributors) that examine the current and potential impact of the ICT explosion in Africa. They focus specifically on gender issues and analyze the extent to which women's needs and preferences are being served. The authors argue that it is not enough for women simply to be passive participants in the development of ICTs in Africa, but that women must also be decisions-makers and actors in the process of using the new ICTs to accelerate African economic, social, and political development. http://www.idrc.ca/books/focus/903  
Also available in a French version L'inégalité des sexes et la révolution de l'information en Afrique
http://www.idrc.ca/acb/showdetl.cfm?&DID=6&Product_ID=589&CATID=15 

Gender, Information Technology, and Developing Countries: An Analytic Study (by Nancy Hafkin and Nancy Taggart)
An article commissioned for USAID's Office of Women in Development that examines the current situation of gender and information technology in developing countries, and the impact on those left on the other side of the digital divide. "Most women within developing countries are in the deepest part of the divide - further removed from the information age than the men whose poverty they share." The study analyses the factors and obstacles that constrain women's access to information technology, the benefits of IT to women's political empowerment, and the significant opportunities information technology can offer for virtually all girls and women in developing countries, including poor women living in rural areas. Concludes that although the technology "is not a panacea for women's problems in developing countries, since IT can bring threats and challenges along with opportunities", IT nonetheless offers possibilities that offer women in developing countries a lifeline for economic, social, and political empowerment. "The options offered by information technology have to be seized deliberately because the cost of not doing so is very high."
http://www.usaid.gov/wid/pubs/it01.htm 

How Much Information? (by Peter Lyman and Hal R. Varian)
Reprinted from the Journal of Electronic Publishing (vol. 6, no. 2, December 2000), this is the executive summary of a report first published by the School of Information. Management and Systems at the University of California at Berkeley, on the every-increasing supply of information. It is an intriguing report that attempts to seek an answer to the question "How much information is there to store?", and provides estimates of yearly US and world production of originals and copies for the most common forms of information media. It also estimates the cumulated stock of information in various formats; namely the four main physical media of print/paper, film, optical (CDs and DVDs), and magnetic; digital content stored either by institutions or by individuals; and non-digital communication flows. It reports that the world produces between one and two exabytes of unique information per year, which is roughly 250 megabytes for every man, woman, and child on earth (an exabyte is a billion gigabytes). It concludes, "it is clear that we are all drowning in a sea of information. The challenge is to learn to swim in that sea rather than drown in it." http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/06-02/lyman.html 

Info@UK
Compiled by the Information Management Research Institute at the University of Northumbria and published by the British Council, this is a monthly online bulletin on Information Society developments within the UK and around the world. Content of each issue include articles and reports of national and international developments - including developments and initiatives in Africa, Asia and in other countries of the South - research and innovation news, appointments, courses and conferences, new publications, and new Internet resources.
http://www.britishcouncil.org/infoexch/info@uk/[email protected] 

Information Literacy - Sources of Information
From Sköde University Library in Sweden, this is a valuable and substantial collection of Web sites and resources devoted to information literacy, including information literacy education, instruction, tutorials, standards, models, programmes, and more. Links are grouped by Web sites, articles/conference papers/monographs, bibliographies, and mailing lists and discussion forums.
http://www.his.se/bib/enginfolit.shtml 

InformationR.net
A source for research on information management, information science, and information systems. Includes access to Information Research: an international electronic journal, a world list of departments and schools of information studies, and a guide to freely accessible journals and newsletters in this field.
http://InformationR.net/ 

Information Retrieval Skills for Distance Learners
From the University of Leicester Library, this is a step-by-step tutorial – using a mixture of information and practical exercises – to assist distance learners how to retrieve information from a variety of sources, and how to formulate search strategies for key databases. http://www.le.ac.uk/li/distance/training/search/

Information Technology in Developing Countries
An online newsletter of the IFIP Working Group 9.4 and the Commonwealth Network for Information Technology. http://is.lse.ac.uk/ifipwg94/ifipnews.htm

Innovations in Teaching and Learning in Information and Computer Sciences
A peer-reviewed online journal for the information and computer sciences communities from the UK-based Learning and Teaching Support Network Centre for Information and Computer Sciences (LTSN - ICS). The journal is intended to disseminate best practice and research on learning and teaching in these disciplines at higher education level. Volume 1, issue 1, 2001 contains three articles (all freely accessible), including "Electronic Support for Computing Students at a Distance".
http://www.ics.ltsn.ac.uk/pub/italics/index.html 

Institute for Learning and Research Technology-University of Bristol
A national centre of excellence in the development and use of technology-based methods in teaching, learning and research. http://www.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/

International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD)
Funded by the Netherlands government, the IICD Web site serves as a good starting point for gathering information on issues relating to ICT, and how they can assist and enable sustainable development. http://www.iicd.org/

Into or Out of the Digital Divide?
Published by Panos Southern Africa, this is a collection of papers and perspectives on ICTs and development in South Africa. It includes a number of analytical articles that examine key issues in the communication technology and development debate, together with a range of case studies from seven countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region, reporting on development initiatives using ICTs. 
http://www.panos.org.zm/Into%20the%20Void.htm 

LearnLink
Funded by USAID, LearnLink uses information, communication and educational technologies to strengthen learning systems essential for sustainable development. Offers a good range of online resources that pertain to the use of modern communication technology and multimedia, including computer assisted instruction, distance education, community communication centres, and e-commerce online. http://learnlink.aed.org 

Liaison Francophone - INTIF
Online journal devoted to new ICT, including features and news items about the development of the Internet, and Internet connectivity, etc. in francophone African countries. http://intif.francophonie.org/ 

Mapping the World
A project of IIAV, which aims to provide a comprehensive overview of women's information facilities. http://www.iiav.nl/mapping-the-world/index.html

Nature Web debates: Future e-access to the primary literature
The topic of this interesting Nature forum is the impact of the Web on the publishing of results of original research, and the debate about the implications for the future dissemination of scientific information. Nature invited leading representatives of the main groups of stakeholders - academics, librarians, institutions, commercial publishers, not-for-profit society publishers, and observers from the mainstream Internet industries - to express their views in 1,000 word articles. This has created a very lively debate, including some quite contentious views! http://www.nature.com/nature/debates/e-access/  

The debate was recently fuelled by an article, "Science world in revolt at power of the journal publishers" by James Meek, Science correspondent of the Guardian, published in the issue of Saturday May 26, 2001, and which can be found archived at Guardian Unlimited http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4193292,00.html 

Network Startup Resource Center (NSRC)
A non-profit organization which has been involved for the past decade with the development and integration of appropriate networking technology in various projects throughout Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and Oceania. http://www.nsrc.org/

TechKnowLogia
An international online journal of technologies for the advancement of learning about ICT, and harnessing different information technology for knowledge dissemination. http://www.TechKnowLogia.org

Techsoup
Techsoup is a not-for-profit technology assistance agency, and its Web site aims to provide a gateway to the entire world of non-profit technology assistance and solutions. The site provides access to many "how to" articles on technology planning, hardware and software, computer networks, databases, Web building, using the Internet, training, and virtual community building. There are also resource lists, worksheets, and links to free downloads and other sites. http://www.techsoup.org/ 

The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC)
SPARC was created under the auspices of the US based Association of Research Libraries (ARL). It is open to institutions from the US and international academic and research community "that share an interest in creating a more competitive and diverse marketplace for scholarly communication through support of high-quality, economical alternatives to high-priced journals." SPARC strives to "return science to scientists" and supports the Budapest Open Access Initiative http://www.soros.org/openaccess/  (see separate entry above). http://www.arl.org/sparc/home/index.asp?page=0 

UNESCO. Communication, Information and Informatics Sector. World Communication and Information Report 1999-2000
This report, released in November 1999 and available in English and French versions, contains 18 chapters reviewing information and communication technologies and social processes, the evolution of information and communication strategies, and information and communication technologies worldwide and in the different regions of the world, including chapters on Sub-Saharan Africa, the Arab countries, Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean. The entire report can be downloaded in full in pdf format (1.53mb), or chapters can be accessed and downloaded individually. Various statistical information is included in an annex.
http://www.unesco.org/webworld/wcir/en/report.html 

UNESCO-Webworld—Communication, Information & Informatics Sector (CII)
Links to, and reports about, a variety of UNESCO-supported programmes and projects in the CII sector, which are designed to promote international cooperation and national and regional initiatives in the field of informatics. http://www.unesco.org/webworld/

UNRISD Information Technologies and Social Development
Links, on-line resources, conferences, cyber-forums, electronic discussion groups, etc. http://www.unrisd.org/unrisd/website/projects.nsf/(httpProjects)/
A2C02484CD29933980256B5A0044EE67?OpenDocument

The Web of Information for Development (WIDE)
Developed and maintains under the auspices of the UNDP-Special Unit for Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries, WIDE aims to facilitate exchange of information and knowledge for technical cooperation among countries in the South. It is open to any individual or institution interested in knowledge sharing. Users and clients supply and manage their own information. http://www.tcdcwide.net 

This page was last updated on: 07 July 2003 © International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) 1998-2003.