The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. 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, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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MODERATOR: Great. Thank you to everyone who is here and I think in particular to everyone who is only. We're going to get started. I'm sorry about us starting a few minutes late but we had to set things up.
So welcome to the session of the Dynamic Coalition on Public Access in Libraries this year. We are conscious that there are three different lengths of session given the IGF website. But we're going to go with the one that gives the most time. So, we will go with the 90 minutes that we think we have. And if someone turns o up, we'll have to stop.
The focus of this session is on evolutions in public access, evolutions and the nature of public access as a contribution, as part of the broad infrastructure, as part of the broader means that we have of ensuring that there's meaningful connectivity for everyone. My name is Stephen Wyber. I work for the international federation of libraries institutions.
So, the reason why we are talking about this one this year is that just under 20 years ago, in Tunis, the world came together and put together the plan of action for the world summit on the Information Society. And they said lots of things. But one of the things they said was that it was important to have multi‑purpose community public access points, providing affordable or free of charge access for citizens to various communication resources, including the Internet. And that these access points should have sufficient have sufficient capacity to pro assistance to users. And they gave this to libraries. And the public access in libraries was created around 10 years ago in order to explore this, in order to develop thinking on this idea, to bring together different actors, to reflect on what does it mean? What does this include? And how can we maximize this impact?
Now, of course we are almost 20 years later and we're getting to the stage where we're beginning to think about well what's going to be in the WSIS+20 gender? What of those plan of action and those action lines between 2003 and 2005 are still relevant and have their place? How relevant have those set out in 2003 would actually be?
The exam question we have 90 minutes to answer is how has the nature of public access in libraries in the wider connectivity landscape evolved over the last 20 years?
In advance of this session we went out and asked a few people what their thoughts were. How have they seen the role, the contribution of public access changing over that time? And so we've already just this morning put out an initial report, very much a draft version, focusing on what those expert views are, what those experiences are. We've got the QR code up on the screen in order to take a look at this.
I'd note this is a 0 draft. And one of the key outcomes, one of the things we're really looking to achieve from this session is to bring in further ideas, to get further inspiration about what those evolutions are so that we can really understand how it's changed, how we would hope it's still relevant today.
So there are already some conclusions, some key themes that have emerged from those contributions. The first set are to do with things that I think are we're calling eternal. So, factors, characteristics that mean the public access in libraries should technically always be relevant, should always be useful as a way of ensuring meaningful connectivity.
First of all is simply the ongoing relevance of that fundamental mission, to work through information, through knowledge, in order to provide access to information for development. So, that transformational connection between making the link between people and knowledge in order to deliver change. Better lives, better decisionmaking.
Another ongoing function is of course a much larger share of the online population is online now than was the case in 2003. There are still billions of people who do not have access to the Internet. And we no that for many, maybe the Internet's available but they don't see the value, they don't see the interest, they don't feel the confidence necessary to get online or to invest in something they're in private connectivity. So, there's still that first taste of the Internet for the unconnected as a funs.
But there are also some ideas that have come out what are the evolutions, what are actually change inned there?
So the first point and perhaps this wasn't clear back in 2003, but it's become increasingly clear that public access is not an alternative to private access. It's not in competition with private access. But, rather, as our understanding of what a full and meaningful engagement the Internet looks like, public access has come out, it's been demonstrated to be complimentary. Possibilities to do different things, to do the same things differently as you would at home with your own devices.
We've seen it becoming clearer that public access has the possibility to be flexible. It's not a set thing that only needs to be provided in one way, in one context. It's been able to provide a means of responding. A strong example was during the COVID crisis back in 2003 public access may not have been seen as part of crisis response. But between from 2020 onwards we saw libraries really working on how they could step in, how public access could actually step up, compliment education, compliment employment, compliment efforts in other policy areas in other to ensure that people could continue with their lives. So, that broader function that, broader role that it plays is becoming clearer.
We've seen public access proving its ability, proving its possibility to help realise the potential of new connectivity solutions.
We'll hear talk shortly in a little bit how public libraries have shown that they're good places to actually turn the potential of lower orbit satellites into reality works real change on the ground. So, public libraries can be that first opportunity, that first contact and actually help realise that potential.
We've seen it as providing a response to shocks. We'll hear a little bit further later about the role of libraries as second responders, as organizations, as places where even in emergencies, even in disasters, public access plays a key role backing up, supporting, making sure that when private connection isn't possible, people can still get online, can still carry on with their lives as best possible.
We'vesen libraries prove their ability to work in partnership. And libraries, of course, bring much to the table but they are even more powerful when they can work with other people, when they can work with other organizations that bring in skills, that bring in programmes, that bring in activities and really combining public access with other things. Public access doesn't exist on its own, but it can be really mobilized. It can be utilized when we actually work with other partners.
And, finally, we're seeing examples when we see public access become a basis, a Sinha qua none for actually helping people explore new technologies, new tools, new possibilities that may be open to them. So, by having public access libraries become a kind of sand bit, a place where people can discover things, find new possibilities, be creative. And then potentially adopt personally.
So this is just some of the ideas that appear in that 0 draft of our report. And clearly what we're trying to do here is dig further, gather new ideas, gather new perspectives so hopefully we can really use to develop that report to produce something really helpful.
So, just before we go on to our speakers, we have a meant metre set of slides that will hopefully help each of us engage and start thinking. So, for our participants online in particular, I hope that you can see at the top of the screen that you should go to mentee.com and with the Code 190887903 if you can read properly. What we're interested in getting an idea of the start of the session what you think your initial impressions of this role the public access, within a broader set of policies in order to ensure meaningful connectivity. So, we'll give people a couple of, give people a minute to respond on this. Great. First response in.
Glad to see people being very positive. It's always interesting I think on the second answer that you can see that there's some people who are very favorable and some people who are ‑‑ believe that public access may compete. So, actually having it. It's always interest when you have this interest in views. Let's go for a minute or so more. We've had a few responses.
Excellent.
Okay. So, I was hoping that we could use this as an evaluation metric and at the end of the session people would give even higher scores than they do now. But there's not much room for improvement. So, I think we'll just have to give up on that as an evaluation metric for ourselves this time.
But, anyway, so thank you for those initial views, but we will be asking those questions again later but also giving opportunities for you to feed in.
But what I'd like to do now is actually hand over to our speakers. So, we will get a series of contributions. We are going to get a series of ‑‑ I've got the biographies on my phone. Let me get this up. There we go. So, we have five speakers who are going to be joining us in order to give their sand, in order to share views about public access.
We will start with a little bit of context, which is always valuable, from Maria Garrido and Matias Centano. Maria is with the Technology and Social Change Group, and gender digital technology. Matias is lecturer at National University of San Luis as well as for inter. His area of expertise family ag, digital transformation and youth studies. They're going to be talking about a wider context of access to information which I think is particularly important when we're talking about meaningful connectivity as opposed to just connectivity, the possibility to connect. And I'm going to introduce the others so we can go through. We will then be joined by ugh lip her work is with public Internet access in libraries and the critical role libraries play in providing connectivity and digital skills to communities.
The addition to the research, she's developed a number of training programmes and conducts training of public and community libraries in Africa enabling them to assess community needs developing the transformative impact of library services. Then we'll have Woro. She holds a masters from Sheffield university. Has been working at the National Library of indonese easia for over 30 years. Previous to this she was with the library services centre where she assisted in developing capacities of librarians and technicians all over Indonesia. Today she is an active member in the indone easian library association and all forms of types of Larry libraries. Then we'll have Don Means. Don has over 25 years experience in the IT industry and he's a cofounder and principle a company in 1994 transformational tools and subjects for local communities.
And 10 years ago means founded the gigabit libraries network which is an open collaboration of innovative libraries cooperating as distributed test bed and showcase environment, high performance, and in the education, civic and cultural. Gigabit libraries network created the white space network in 2015 how open wireless communication tech followings can benefit library users by combining the universal with WiFi with the range and penetrating capabilities of which had spreed devices. This is not the last technology that I know Don has engaged with that I know we will hear about.
I will hand it over to Maria and Matias to tell us what that means today.
MARIA DE BRASDEFER: Thank you for the invitation. Thank you for initiating the presentation.
So, as Stephen mentioned, this is the context in terms of the progress that we've made in the past seven years. You know, the UN2030 agenda celebrates midway in 2023. So it is the progress that regions of the world have made towards inclusive connectivity and meaningful access to information. Next, please.
This is part of an initiative called the DA2 i development and access to information. IFLA, international federation of library associations and the University of Washington and has three main objectives. Demonstrate how access to information contributes to advancing the Sustainable Development Goals. And of course within that context demonstrate the contribution of libraries. Providing equitable access to information and connectivity in the context of the agenda.
So very basic, very complex question, given the present ability we have today to share, create and exchange information, how can meaningful connectivity and inclusive access to information advance poverty, diminish poverty, advance equality, give young people more opportunity, et cetera. Next, please.
It's the rights and capacity, that's the way we define inclusive connectivity and rights to information, the rights and capacity to use, create and share information in ways that are meaningful to each individual community organisation. We have three different dimensions, connectivity, gender equity and freedom. 29 indicators, publicly available indicators mostly through the UN agencies, the World Bank and for freedom, freedom house. So, we're going to tell you. We're going to walk you through these three dimensions and let you know and share with you the progress that we've made in the past seven years since the UN23 agenda began 2015.
As I said, it's midway through the agenda so let's see the progress of countries. I'll hand over to you Matia, .
>> The first triangle of aspect of three aspects that are considered in the meaningful access to information research that we conduct shows, the next, please. Show more people and more houses connected to Internet. If we saw the progress in connectivity between 2015 and 2022, the next.
We can see that today the 60 percent of the world's population are Internet users, which means an increase of 20 percent from seven years ago. But this access has asymmetric impacts. I mean if we saw, for example, from the economic side, the low income countries 30 percent of people connected against to the high income countries increase to the 90%.
So, however, we have more people connected. The next?
However, this progress is more slower than expected if we take the united nation connected 2030 agenda as a compass, we can see here in this slide the Internet population growth by regions. The goal is to 70 percent of individual worldwide use in the Internet. And today we only have five regions managed to reach the goal. The next, please.
According to our research in 2022, the world is still behind in achievement of the target 1.2 and 1.1.
And the next. This is the case of households when we can see that the situation is the same.
The next.
MARIA DE BRASDEFER: Thank you. So, this is important context to support of public access and support of the role of public libraries, libraries in general. It's still not only relevant but is necessary.
In terms of gender equity, next, please, unfortunately the progress was not as great as connectivity. We have very much progress towards gender equity. We have more women using the Internet, 52 percent of women in the world. There's still 208 more men ‑‑ 208 million more men than women connected. You see that in the other three indicators, very much in our progress. Could you go to the next, please?
The gender inequality index has a very marginal drop, which is almost unassuming. But is declining but very, very marginally. Next, please.
In terms of gender digital divide, again we are behind the connect 2030 2.le target by gender equality. This is the world average. Of course this does not show the difference in regions. But if you see on the left side in low income countries four out of five women are still offline.
Next, please.
If you look at the regions tonly region that has achieved gender equality is Latin America with more women than men connected.
And northern Africa and some southern east Africa were the two regions that made the most progress the past several years connecting more men and also more women. Next, please.
Unfortunately women continue to be the three times or two times as likely to not in employment, education or training compared to men. And in southern Asia and western Asia young women are three times more likely. Even though we are more connected, the opportunities for women are still less than for men in many regions of the world. Next, please.
Similar with women in science and women in politics. We have marginal progress of 1% for women in science to 37%. And that's a difficult indicator because we really don't know what exactly are they doing? What positions are they advancing in science? And especially in the creation of knowledge and deciding of technology. And 22 percent in politics. Next, please.
>> Matias: In terms of freedom we don't have good news also. So, sorry. If we had a look at the progress between 2015 and 2022 shows a decline in all freedoms indicators.
Next.
We measure Civil Rights, political rights and freedom on the net in all of these indicators.
In the levels of democratic development of our society. We have seen right now in the screen that evolution and progress between 2015 and 2022 seen an increase of number of countries that are declining freedoms course 71 seven years ago to 120 the last year. So, Civil Rights and political freedoms have declined across all regions. And when I say all regions, regardless their economic development.
As we can see on the screen, the worst situation are in developing regions. 32 countries of developing regions declined freedom's course followed by the subSaharan Africa and Latin America. Next?
Internet freedom declined for 12 consecutive years we have bad indicators related to freedom. So, we are increasingly digital but less and less free and subject to rights. This trend confirm more digital infrastructure does not lead necessarily to an improvement in a quality of life or better societies or better quality of lives.
Next?
Here we can see the freedom on the net in measure of losses and gains by regions. This remark, the relevance to qualify the gap, the digital gap go beyond infrastructure access because we ‑‑ if we saw only the duck teal access penetration, we are losing some part of the history. This shows some pending matters we saw in terms of gender, in terms of freedom. But also in terms of rural and urban divide for example.
In my country in Argentina, the national technology 30 percent of rural towns don't have access to Internet but 80 percent of people live in there have bad connection. So, they can't enjoy the rights of digital life today.
MARIA DE BRASDEFER: Next, please. So, one of the elements that we like to highlight is the very scarcity of data. So, all the analysis that we brought to you today although it is from 2022 was released full 2022, many of the countries do not have data that is recent or that shows the impact of the pandemic and the dynamics of the pandemic in the world.
So, we don't only need more data, we need better data, right, better data that reflects the realities of communities and reflects why connectivity is important. Why inclusive connectivity should be promoted and addressed and of course in the context of public access. Next please.
So as I said limited or no data. Binary. There is limited. Gender, different gender fluid identities, there's like nothing available. Next, please.
So just quickly to wrap up. Only 86 countries in the world collect Internet population by sex. Not gender, sex. Of this, only 60 have historical data. So, it's very difficult to assess progress in terms of gender digital equity. And even fewer countries have, you know, data on digital divide by other intersectional factors, age, locality, education, et cetera. Limited skills, of course. No data on types of use, motivations and impact on this connectivity in everyday life and of course no data on online violence and harassment that as we know affects particularly women and members of the LGBTQ plus communities.
Next.
So, the road ahead what it will take to guarantee inclusive connectivity and meaningful access to all information to all people and what is the role of public access and of course of libraries in addressing the roots of inequality, not only public access in terms of connecting people to the Internet, but the routes of inequality. And with this, thank you very much for your time.
>> STEPHEN WYBER: We have seen the decoupling between connectivity and that word meaningful is so important because despite the good results when it comes to connectivity as a whole, it's not feeding through into other things. I know that should be a bit after alarm call in a place like this where we shouldn't be measuring the success of the Internet in terms of the number of people connected. We should be measuring in terms of the positive change it brings about and that's not happening right now. This is something that should be taken away from the IGF is the need for data collection. It's kind of crazy that we're talking about governance and we're not talking anywhere near around the evidence around governance decisions might actually be made rather than just superstition.
MARIA DE BRASDEFER: One second, we forgot to show part of the initiative. We developed these dashboards. You have the QR code on your screen. If you would like to explore as an example today as organizers, you can do with our visualization tool. Thank you very much.
>> I definitely recommend take a look. It's a fantastic resource. And allows you to look across different sections and questions is really, really powerful.
With that I will pass over to Ugne is who is joining us from yesterday because she's in Chile.
UGNE LIPEKAITE: It's past midnight. So, it is also today. Almost. Wyoming welcome to today, Ugne.
UGNE LIPEKAITE: Thank you so much. I will just try to share my screen because as everyone, you know you make last minute changes in your slides. So, I have a newer version of my slides. Wyoming we.
Stephen Wyber: We sympathize entirely.
UGNE LIPEKAITE: Thank you to participate in the. Thank you to University of Washington for amazing presentation.
And I will be speaking today about role of public access through two examples. And these two examples actually illustrate what colleagues just showed on the screen. So, these graphs there are big differences between developed countries and e, for example, subSaharan Africa.
So two examples that I chose are Canada and Uganda. And I will be showing the role of public access through the lens of these two countries and presenting evidence how public access in these countries is filling gaps of connectivity and also addressing most pressing needs of communities in these countries.
For Uganda case, it's our study. We did it earlier this year. For Canada I just used publicly available data and research. And I will give you the references at the end of my presentation.
So let me start by just giving you a very brief overview of both countries. So, naturally in Canada has strong Internet infrastructure with over 90% of people having high speed Internet access at home.
Even in remote areas. However, I think it is important to emphasize that it is not true that in Canada digital divide is nonexistent. If you look a bit deeper and, for instance, among low income populations, more than half of them lack access at home. And mainly it's an issue of affordability.
Canada has extensive network of public libraries, over 3,000 of them providing all sorts of resources in all sorts of formats, including obviously access to computers, Internet and digital skills training.
Now, when you look at Uganda over recent years, Internet penetration in Uganda has been growing, as well. But if we talk about home connectivity, it's still heavily lacking behind. And there is a very big rural and urban divide as well as big gender disparities.
Uganda has 45 public libraries funded by government. About half of them are connected to a computers and Internet. And they have also a very vibrant network of community lines, around 100 of them. But very few are connected to the Internet.
So let's see how public access looks at both countries. First of all, who are the users of public access? In Canada, almost half of public access users fall below the age of 35. Notably, public libraries in Canada demonstrate really high utilization by vulnerable populations. So, if we look at statistics for low income individuals, immigrants, visible minorities, people over 55 years of age, they are really big users of public access.
Now what is really striking me is that over half of public access users in Canada don't have alternative place to access Internet. That is a statistic that surprised me, actually.
In Uganda, you know it is a very young society, so almost 80 percent of users fall between the age of 15 and 25. And, again, we see a really big use by vulnerable population. So, you remember I mentioned gender divide. So, 56 percent of users are female. So, it's a big contribution to gender inclusion in Uganda. As well as 22 percent coming from rural areas. Again, it is very important figure in terms of urban and rural divide.
Again, really high number of people, over 70 percent, who have no alternative place to access Internet.
Now, when I started to look about into patterns ofoff public access, I was again quite surprised because I found striking similarities and communication and education seemed to be dominant areas of focus both in Canada and Uganda.
For communications, individuals mainly used online tools, social media to connect with friends, family, educational activities thrive in Uganda, especially over the last few years berm see study‑related information. They take online courses. Engage with video tutorials, webinars, Google classroom and so on.
In Canada, it's quite similar. Most popular educational activities include completing course work. Only courses, workshops and so on.
Now, employment‑related activities is the next area which is again really popular in both countries, especially in you Dan da where people look for jobs put on their CVs and use public access for skills enhancement.
Concerning e‑government, again, very similar usage patterns in Canada. People looking for government programmes, subsidies. In Uganda, looking for forms, for applying for different programmes online.
And, lastly, for business‑related activities. In both countries, again, we have very similar percentages of people who are looking for information to start businesses, to maintain existing businesses and so on. And in Uganda what was very popular is people looking for ways to deploy online tools to promote their services or to sell their services or their products online.
Now I'm getting to I think the most important part of my presentations where I would like to highlight key outcomes arising from the use of public access in both countries. And first one without much down is related to digital literacy. In Canada dim teal training and programmes are wide spread and they range from email and quite courses on programming and web design as well as 1 one‑on‑one support. Canadians show over 80 percent of users report confident and comfort of using technology as a result of public library training and use.
Also over half of them report that in public access venue in the library they were first introduced to new technology.
In Uganda over the last two years we have been implementing digital skills programme in 27 libraries. And this libraries trained all about 22,000 people to use computers and Internet. And we serve those people. And 94 percent of them credit library for improved digital skills.
Many of them became continuous Internet users in the library. And when we went back to them and asked again, they said that two‑thirds continue to use librarian as an adviser when they need help to use technology.
Another area very important area of outcomes is related to education. As I mentioned before, education is a big part of activities are related to education. And for can darks I found statistics that 45 percent of users report that through public access, they managed to develop employable skills. And in Uganda, over 85 percent of people saw improvement of their academic results and many report that they manage to develop vocational skills which are aimed at generating income.
Another area that I analyzed was communities, social and civic engagement. And it is not a mistake. It is the same percentage for both countries. It's maybe a coincidence. So, in Canada, 81 percent of public access users experience some kind of increase in the level of social engagement through participation and learning about local groups, volunteering opportunities, issues of local politics and so on. And in Uganda the same percentage of users say that library, their social linkages, almost 70 percent became more active in society by learning about local issues and contacting local authorities.
The last area that I analyzed is related to entrepreneurship, workforce and business development. So, again, the statistic that I could find showed that 26 percent of agains report that they use public access to manage existing business, conduct business‑related search or start new business. A lot of people come to learn job‑seeking skills. And nearly half of them successfully manage to get jobs afterwards.
In Uganda, situation is quite similar. We see very similar percentages of people who use public access to earn some additional income as well as improved their work performance as well as as many people finding jobs.
The studies that I analyzed provide so much data and evidence about positive effects of public access. And I could continue along these lines. But I will stop here and try to emphasize what these percentages mean to me and how I interpret them.
So, first of all, also to confirm what Stephen said in his introduction, public access continues to be relevant regardless of whether individuals have Internet access at home. In both Canada and Uganda, the importance of providing access to information to technology, to digital resources in public spaces cannot be underestimated.
Secondly, major outcomes of public access in both countries revolve around digital inclusion and promoting equality. And these initiatives really show effectiveness and positive impact in breaking down barriers that prevent certain groups of people enjoying benefits of digital age.
Thirdly, beyond digital inclusion, public access in libraries deliver a wide range of secondary benefits. These compares meaningful education, encouraging civic participation, engaging citizens in community initiatives, promoting social participation, allowing them to share with each other, engaging in online communities and so on.
And, lastly, public access in libraries makes significant contribution to livelihood gains. So, expands opportunities for online job seeking skills, development, entrepreneurship and so on.
So, to wrap up, I could say that public access in both Canada and Uganda serves as powerful catalyst for the growth of individuals, for the growth of societies, and this is really what evidence that we can put on the table to show that not only libraries not only provide access to technologies but also serve as catalysts for empowerment, education, social and economic advancement and really contribute to more inclusive and equitable future for everyone. And this is what I had today for you. And these are the references that I promised. Those first two studies are linked to the data that I mentioned about Canada. And remaining two are about Uganda. So, if you are interested to look deeper, you're welcome to check these out. Thank you so much.
MODERATOR: Thank you very much. I'll ask that you can include the links in the chat so people can click on them. That's fantastic.
UGNE LIPEKAITE: Sure.
MODERATOR: I think the comparison between Uganda and Canada is very good. You can see that this is a relevant concept around the world. It's not something that's just for one subgroup. It's not for one country. It's not for one continent. It's got that relevance everywhere. I think the different dimensions, different ways in which public access makes differences is powerful, I'm sure. Plenty of these will not have been foreseen. They would not have been imagined 20 years ago. And yet it's happening now. It is, public access is giving rise to it. It's making possible to make these sorts of changes. So, that's really fantastic. Thank you so much.
I'm now going hand over to Woro who is going to tealk from the Indonesian perspective.
WORO SALIKIN: Thank you, Stephen. Yes. Can I have the slide on? You can start with the second slide. Okay.
Since 2011, actually, we start to transform in managing the library, especially those in the village or remote areas. We're providing them with Internet access. And the transformation has made that the library has become the place to learn from the printed or digital materials, can be also audio/video materials, as well. And also the library become place to share, to share knowledge amongst the community itself. And then also it's the place to do activities, play music, also creativity with handicrafts and then make products, make cookies and also discussion about other things.
And this one of the, you can see that this is the products that the village library has made. And they learn this also from the Internet and also from their colleagues in the village.
And this actually ttransformation, to empower the community and to preserve the local content. And all of those things is to increase the community engagement and also to increase the community prosperity. This can be reached faster if the library is provided by Internet access. Can we go to this next slide, please? Yeah.
This is I just want to show you that this is the fact of how big we are in here, that the population is 275 million and the land area, you can see that. And the district, we have 34 province and district is 514 and the villages we have is 80,000 and 820. And the schools you can imagine that there are a lot of schools, elementary schools itself, 174,000,373. And senior high is. And senior high is 36,000. And university is 3,994.
Next, please. Yes.
That is another ‑‑ this is the picture of the library, Stephen. This is the library that we have. It's between the librarian technical, 10,000. And the total number libraries in Indonesia is 164,610. And the provincial public libraries is 34 because in each province we have one public library. And district libraries part of the 514. We only have 496 libraries.
And subdistrict libraries we have 1,685, village library is, hang on. This is elementary school. And this is 33,000. And the schools, sorry, village library 33,000 that is recorded. And then school library, elementary school library is 76,000. And junior high school libraries 19,900 something. Senior high school library is 17,000 something. And university is 2,075. Special libraries in Government is 2,2002. Special and private libraries is 872. Is lambic boarding library is 3,478. And school library community is 1,000 something. And then the community reading garden is a park actually that's 5,928.
That is the total of all together is 164,610. And 10,000 of it is being accredited. And not yet accredited is 154,000.
Next, please. Yes.
Here is the national library as the national advocate all the types of libraries Indonesia. We advocate them with teaching, coaching, and funding. One of the privileges it is nongovernment institution which is directly under the President. The National Library of Indonesia is under ministry of culture but responsible directly to the President. So, this gives us the more power to decide to do the national, the library system in Indonesia. That we are not depending from other ministerial. No, but we can do it ourselves. That's why we can publish or list the accreditation, we can also the standardization of the libraries. Okay. Next, please. Yes.
This is the policy and here. The roles of the function of national library. Yes, this is other libraries, yeah. This is the first is library, as the library development centre that no one has this function because with this, we can give application to the public other libraries and also we can help them. We can develop them. Yeah. Those are the 16,300. We have to help them to develop. This is the same with the other libraries. This is develop library national system in supporting the national education system. We have quote/unquote that we are very powerful in the need of libraries in here. The guarantee and sustainability of the library, guarantee library services and also the guarantee of the collection through transliteration transcription and transmedia. And also because the reading habits are not too high yet we have to promote the reading and library services and develop library collection and we have to also develop ourself and to also appreciate the manuscript. Yes, please, next.
Yes, another click. I think that is for the library transforming funding. Yes, please. This is yesterday as mentioned that the directive, that's the first? Okay. Sorry. Yes. That is the policy that we have to make. That is the problems, actually, we have that three we have to make it actions in here. Yeah, that's a problem. Connectivity, content and human resources. That's a problem that we have to face Tconnectivity judging from the huge area that we have and then that is still we have to do it now. The how to encounter with those problems. And we cannot go to the one place directly, so what we have to do, that we have to provide them with the Internet access.
And then also with the content that, is also difficult to get, to produce the digital contents. So, physical content we cannot distribute all over because it is too far, so we'll have to create the digital contents. And we also provoke, actuallily the local government to create also the local digital contents. So, we can share with each other.
Next, please. Yeah. This is still the presidential directive that we have to do this. The president said that improve and expand access to the digital libraries in order to accelerate the human who will master science and technology, innovate to create job opportunities. That is job opportunities, reduce unemployment rate and increase income for per capita, as well. For to create technologies.
So this is talking about the Internet access in Indonesia, yeah. It's quite big. In 2023, that those who have the access of Internet is 215,000, that is out of our populations. It means that 78.19 percent of the total populations.
And then for the gender, yeah, the penetration is 70 percent ‑‑ 79.32 percent. And the contribution is only 51 percent. And then for women, the penetration is 77 percent. And the contribution is 48.8 percent. And then urban areas that is the penetration is 80, 87.55 percent and the contribution is 64.57 percent.
And rural area that this penetration is 79.79 percent and the contribution is only 35.4 #. This is what we are, how we are going to push this. To make people more give contribution in the rural area.
Next, please.
Yes. This is the occupation for the penetration for the students in college. 90.8 percent, almost 100 percent in here, but the contribution is only 16 percent.
And then for the housewives, 77.8 percent the contribution is only 1985 percent. And for the workers, that is quite big. That is 84.72 percent the contribution is 60.32 percent.
And then for the teachers retirement and then for the Government officers is 71.84 percent. And the contribution is not too much. It's only 062 percent. And then for the unemployment, 72 percent, the access Internet quite a lot but the contribution is only 3.11 percent. We get this from the association of the Internet provider in Indonesia.
And then the incomes from the incomes, we have one U.S. dollar is equal to 15,500 Rupp I can't say. So, those whose income is under 1 million is 76.9 # percent. And then for those who is who have the above 15 million it's almost 100 percent contributes. Again, the contribution is only 0.18 percent. And then for the ‑‑ those with 5 million up to 15 million, that is 95.62 percent and the contribution is 876 percent. And this, what we see from the Internet that we have the data. And the next, please?
Yeah. The main reason for using the Internet is finding information. That's quite big, yeah. But 80 percent. And then this is for the, after that they are finding new ideas and experience. Okay. Next, please?
Yes, please. Expanding connectivity, yes. This is what we have in libraries. It's not yet fully integrated. Yesterday also I mentioned this. The national infrastructure because the president directive say that we have to have the, create the data centre. The national data centre. And this national library, one part of the 65 ministries and councils in Indonesia that we have the obligation also to provide the data, there are two public services and then the other one is for the administrative for the internal use.
The public is given to public is that we have in this light we also have the one search, innovation one search and also Ipusnas. Thank you. Next please.
This is the example of the Indonesia knowledge discovery I mentioned. This is one single search portal for all public elections from libraries, museums and archives all over Indonesia it is used as union catalog and also provide access to international resources. It is subscribed by international library. And for all registered member, yeah. That is for the resources should be registered members. But for the Indonesia itself it is not registered. Just you can come in the.id. Next, please.
This is the contributors and the members of the Indonesia one search. You can see the number. It's quite big.
Next, please, yes. Yes, this is in this slide. This is the latest is in this slide, 3.2 is the latest version of the library use paying software. The National Library of Indonesia. And this is given free to the library in Indonesia to use it. This way we put it in the fashion wall data centre to become part of the public services that can be used by everybody.
Next, please.
Yeah. Next, please.
Next, yes. This is emobile, yes. Emobile we have the Eposnes. This is immobile for the social media for EPOSNES. This like yesterday we have the e‑donations that if you write books and you want to donate your books, we don't want to talk about that royalty. Just forget about the royalty. But just put your book there and we will publish it digital and then people can have access to books.
Because mostly governors they likes to write books and then say, okay, I just want to write this and people want to know what I've done so far, this is my achievement. And if they visit, they put it there. And they don't want to sell their books, actually. They just write the books for their achievement. That's self‑esteem, yeah. This is what I have done so far. This is what I do. People should know should read this book, my books.
Open okay, next, please.
Yes. This is new. This is only for university and schools. We work together with the Minister of religion because School of religions is under the ministry of religion. And the general school is under ministry of education. The total collection tdigital collection is 1,488,and 470 books. Yes. This can be accessible.
They can feed you as well.
This is the e‑resources. I think that's everybody, the same with other libraries, national library, they have the e‑resources where it can be access for everybody. Yes, next, please. This is another. Yes, please. This one. Part of that, the digital things it takes to make the, what sit in the collection information close to the people in the remote areas or in the city, actually. Where you distribute about 520, 938 units mobile libraries, yeah, for the 520. And we provide also books. 90,078 ‑‑ 750 titles books, sorry. And then this is also for the motorcycle. Yeah, we also give them for the ‑‑ we have the 986 units. And also we provide with ‑‑ it means project by ‑‑ it is the digital corner readings. Yeah. It provides also with digital books. And the latest one is actually the national library one is the TiTIK BACHA. It is also provided with digital contents that can be accessed by people. Next, please.
Yeah. This is more collections, yeah. This is actually we give books. And for the others and also those who receive our grant and our collections, yes.
Next, please. Yes. Next, please. This is that's proper. Library transform is the prosperity. Thank you. Next, please.
Yes. This actually is for the what we do for the become one of the national priority in the programme, library transformation for the, based on the inclusions. Inclusion base libraries. And this is what we developed so far with the ‑‑ with our own money here because before that, actually we got grant from the Bill Gates foundation. 2018. But now 2018 up to 2023 with our own budget and develop more and more libraries. Yes. Next, please. Yes.
This is actually the library. That is to empower the community to. Com a place for learning, a place for empowering community, a place to share knowledge and also a place to preserve that local culture and enhance also the local culture to be expose today the people and also this is to empowering people in the community.
Next, please. Finish.
MODERATOR: We have to give time to speak.
UGNE LIPEKAITE: Okay. We can skip this. And actually that is next, please. Next, please, sorry. This one is what they got. This is the next examples in collections. I think that's all. Thank you. Yeah.
MODERATOR: Sorry for cutting you off there. But I think first of all. This is a respond to what they were saying is the volume of data there is really powerful especially the disaggregated stuff. That's excellent. And all of that effort and all of that work to localize and proving public access as a way of localizing efforts to actually provide meaning connectivity is powerful.
Without further ado I will hand over to Don. Don thank you. That's all right. Thank you. Thank you, Steve. And thank you all. I don't have any slides. I'll relieve you of that. And I'm not going to present any data today because I think we have seen extraordinary amount of data from our colleagues University of Washington and from EIFL and from the National Library of Indonesia.
I just wanted to touch on some conceptual points related to the roles of libraries and how they may be changing or have changed in the last 10 or 20 years.
To us it doesn't seem like the roles have changed so much; it's the circumstances have changed. Tremendously.
We, I come at this, Stephen mentioned it, a technology background. And most of our work has dealt with technology‑related issues, more specifically in communications technologies.
We ‑‑ and I need to update the website because we've been doing this since we started with the gigabit libraries network with the fibre to the library campaign. In the U.S. we said that the most expedient, the most inexpensive and the most effective way to deliver next generation broadband in every community is to run fibre to all 17,000 public facilities in the U.S. And we've worked on that advocacy campaign since then. We have expanded into wireless, of course, because the word has expanded into wireless.
We identified at that time, we identified three roles for libraries: Technology‑related roles that we've continued to work on. And the roles, as I say are still there. The circumstances have changed.
The first one is the library is an early adopter of information technologies. And this, of course, is not a new role. Books themselves represent an early information technology that libraries have led in. But it's just progressed on from there.
So jumping ahead to the arrival of the World Wide Web in the mid 90s, we were all doing dialup, maybe some of you were here, have been along oh round long enough to remember that. In broadband talways on service was arriving at that time. And people were going. Well, what are you talking about? You're comparing straws to fire houses. You're telling me about bit rates. It doesn't mean anything to me. They go to a library and they sit down and they're connected to streaming media through the Internet, like the radio station or hometown across country. I'm talking about the 90s here. Wow, that's really cool. I want that at home. And that example ‑‑ and there are more, of course ‑‑ is how libraries have introduced emerging technologies to their communities as a showcase enIrvinement as a demo site. And this is such a powerful thing because describing technologies in any kind of meaningful way is extremely difficult without direct experience. And that's what libraries provide is direct experience to that.
They've also played the role, we say, as the human face of e‑government. So this has been an explosive area well since 2,000 that every agency at every level of government has been auto plating services for the same, you know, for the typical reasons. It's efficient. It's convenient. It saves money. Well, great. But who are those ‑‑ and as they do that, they find new things you can't do with paper. It starts out automating paper process and they do things you just do the with software. And you ask them, okay, that's great, but Thursday those are just for the people that are connected; right? Well, yeah, of course. What what about the people who are not connected. Well, they can go to the library. They'll help you Dyou ask them. No we know they will. Okay. Are you sharing any of your savings with the library to take on this support role that you've given them without them asking for it? Well no. Why not? Well we don't have to. Okay. Great. Thanks again.
But yet it's important because these are daunting applications. They don't work alike. They don't look alike. And even if you have a connection, think can be difficult to navigate.
But the librarians are the ideal people to confer with in the development of these programmes. They have more experience in what it's like for people to use these programmes than anybody else. They need to be drawn into the development phase of government applications. Another drum that we beat.
The third role that we've focused on is as so‑called second responders. In large‑scale events, the first responders, the police, the ambulances, the firearm, are completely overwhelmed in large‑scale events. And then everybody is on their own at that point.
Well, they turn to public facilities like schools and libraries as places to get help, to get communication, to get information to know what's going on as common distribution points for supplies in those kinds of events.
So we refer to these as second responders that have a special category and need to be accommodated with communication technology that's resilient to these outages. Which is a general condition that doesn't necessarily represent the presence of a large‑scale disaster like an extreme weather event that knocks out the telecommunications infrastructure.
When it does, these systems are out for days, weeks, or longer. We just went, I live in a county just north of San Francisco. And about four, five years ago, suddenly the lights went out. There was no disaster. Well, at least not where we were. But the utility company had turned off the electricity in the county to all quarter million people living there to support the needs further north where we were having these fires. And it's really interesting if you have not been through an outage longer than an hour or two. What what happens after about 24 hours. You wonder what you have he' got in the fears. You wonder what your phone is going to do because your Internet, your WiFi is out. And your phone battery is dying. And you really don't have any other source of information about what's going on. So, you have go somewhere. And so people did. They went to a community centre in every town, the library in my own town and it was filled with people daisy chained on surge suppressors recharging their phones and using the resilient Internet access to the library, which was a fibre connection. And that was a real eye opener that that really wasn't planned, but it was just the way people respond to need. They just figure it out.
When the Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, everything was wiped out. And people just went to the nearest library, even though they didn't have a connection, people just went there and then they started setting up WiFi routers just to allow people to communicate with each other. It's just what people figure out in these situations.
The challenge of the topic here of roles for libraries is that the library plays so many roles. We've stared started referring to libraries as the Swiss Army knife of public institutions. They provide more different services to more people than any other institution by far and it makes for a challenge for them because it's not the best corkscrew and it's not the best knife and it's not the best bottle opener but it's all of those things in one place. And that's a hard place to make for something special. But they are special because they do so much for so many.
And I want to touch again on this point about the response and crisis and I'll kind of close with that. That it's increasingly common for communities to experience these extreme weather events. This is climate‑driven extreme weather. Whether it's inundated with rains or no rain at all or extreme high winds, all of these weather phenomenons are being accelerated by the heating of the atmosphere. And this conversation is really, we would say, supersedes all other issues. And every day we have to do something today. And that's normal. But in the larger picture, this is our number one challenge. And libraries are there. What can they do about this? Well, like each of us, not very much in terms of mitigating a circumstance that has gone on too far. But they can do something about adaptation. Because we have surpassed the point where we could fix it or we could reverse it. Maybe we can. We have to try. But the effects of it are baked in. We're in for severe weather from here on. And these events are going to be more common and more severe. And so what we all can do at every level is try to adapt. And this is where libraries can play a special role in showing how to do that and being resilient.
As I mentioned, we've focused mostly on communication technologies, mostly in wireless for the last 15 years or so, how libraries and other community anchor institutions connect to each other and create an autonomous local community network that can be in touch with itself even if it doesn't actually have outside connection to the outside world. But now there is new communication technology: Satellite technology from systems in low earth orbit, which is different than a traditional satellite communication which relies on satellites that are thousands and thousands of kilometer terse out. And the response time for the communication is very slow. And it wouldn't support an event like this. Just the lag time is too much.
These new systems principally going from star link, the satellites orbit at under a thousand kilometer terse and the residual time tfeedback, the lag is very short. It allows any kind of connectivity actually as robust 100 megabit‑type connectivity.
The thing that is ‑‑ this is not just sort of a new wireless scheme, perhaps. What it is is a new global wireless network that can connect any point, any point on the planet can have robust broadband in a box. It goes out. You plug it in. It turns itself on. It wig always round. It announces itself to the overhead satellites. It's got a bondled router. In 10 minutes you have that kind of connection.
This is completely new.
Now, will it work? Is it affordable? How usable is it? The availability is just one of the barriers to adoption. Affordability and usability being the two other principal needs.
But without availability, the other two are moot questions. And so libraries there. And their typical way to consolidate a resource for the community and then share it. And so this is something that we're advocating that libraries try out if the service is available there and learn about it and decide if they want to to use it. But we are totally sold on the library as the quintessential public institution and they're irreplaceable and they're just marvelous. And I'm pleased to be here today. Thank you very much.
MODERATOR: So, thank you very much, Don, for those words. And I think I'm just trying to draw out examples about those trends. I think the point you made, the original WSIS document talked about multi‑purpose. I wonder if we even need to talk about polypurpose or something that underlines just how many different roles there are. But also just by their complexity that brings also the value that it brings, literally this one stop shop, the library is a place you can localize. And so Internet access is not a one way thing. If we only think about technical collusions, then we tend to only think about supply side and not about the demand side. So, that aspect of localizing, applying actually making the link between the potential and the output is really powerful.
So, we're into our last five minutes. We've got some people online. If you are still in mentee, we welcome any further thoughts or questions you have about suggestions. Your views about how public access has evolved or what you think we should be taking into account in subsequent versions of the report from the Dynamic Coalition from public access in libraries.
I suppose I would actually ask other panelists if you have any sort of responses or views having listened to each other about themes that you think have come out that underline or other agnostic []that is we should be thinking about in trying to assess what those evolution versus been over the past 20 years and why public libraries are more relevant than it was back in 2003.
Q. I'm going to jump in on that one. I'll try to make it quick though. Our view is that libraries, with robust Internet connection, offer the minimal accepted baseline for universal access to the Internet. That's what everyone everywhere should have. Even if they don't have, you know, fibre in the home and the rest of it, they have a community point where they can engage with a digital conversation for no fee or a very low fee.
And this is extremely doable. It's nothing like the goal of everybody connected at home. But it's very doable with today's technology.
>> Yeah, I think I agree with Don that actually the library should be cred with it the Internet that people can there. Because sometimes difficult is to get in homes. Or not everybody can have the equipment, the tools to access. And then they have to come to the libraries and the libraries must be empower Wednesday the access of the Internet. That is the most important thing that people can do. Activities can access intermet there. Can talk there and can learn based on the Internet access. Thank you.
MODERATOR: Thank you. Clearly there's work that needs to be done I think for the libraries about two‑thirds are connected. But we don't have data for so many. So, coming home to the data, your response.
>> Thank you for all the wonderful presentations, one thing that seems to me vital to understand is that in this narrative that many ways the UN and many governments sponsor the connectivity will solve many social problems. Libraries have remained at the heart of helping to resolve those root problems, right: Inequality, lack of access to education, lack of access to economic and educational opportunities. And I think that shows that as institutions, they are fundamental in fabric of societies. It doesn't matter how much connectivity we have. Apparently we saw the data. Connectivity is not gender inequality. Connectivity is not giving us more freedom. So, these social institutions are fundamental in that equation.
>> I believe that we need to renew the narrative about the digital access. We are in a different point of part of the history of the human interactivity with technologies. I mean, AI, social and technical presentations.
I believe that we need to be on the digital connectivity and think about this second gap related to skills, related to gender, related to diversity. And you're more and more ahead to qualify this in digital access today.
MODERATOR: Thank you. I think that's probably one of the key messages we come out: Gne, did you want to add a last thing.
UGNE LIPEKAITE: Yeah, briefly. I'm still thinking about the presentations made by colleagues at the University of Washington. And lie brer advise done amazing work at bringing people online. They've also contributed significantly to the gender equality.
But now I was thinking what else can we do to give more freedom? Because this is where we ‑‑ we saw it went really badly on this indicators. So, I'm not only looking back 20 years, you know, back, but I'm thinking about the future and what else can libraries do to improve on the freedom? That's my take‑away.
MODERATOR: Thank you. I think that actually leads to quite a good way of summing up. That in effect libraries are an infrastructure. They're a multi‑purpose infrastructure. And so people come to the library in order to fulfill any number of different goals, any number of different activities. They're not just for health. They're not just for education. They're not just for employment.
And that means, that, okay, they're spread across a number of areas but they are multi‑purpose. That actually opens up that possibility to adapt. And as long as there is the skill and the support and the training available, it also means they're in a position to answer that question that Ugne just sort of put up because it's not purpose‑specific because it's not goal‑specific. Actually it means it's far more resilient and far more relevant over the long term as a way of actually answering some of those questions about how do we get to meaningful connectivity. So, with that, I'm one minute overtime so it was 91 minutes. We are overtime, Winston, I'm sorry. I will close and thank all of our panelists. So, thank you to Maria, to Matias, to Don, to Ugne online, to Woro. Thank you.
[Applause.]