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: Trish, can you see the slides now?
>> TRISH HEPWORTH: I cannot see the slides.
>> MODERATOR: You don't see them?
>> TRISH HEPWORTH: I can see you looking very professional with a microphone. I can see them now.
>> MODERATOR: Great. Perfect. I think now it's working.
Room 9.
An infrastructure for empowered Internet citizens.
>> MODERATOR: Maybe we can give one or two more minutes and then we can begin. I will give one more minute and then I will start.
>> MODERATOR: Okay, so I think maybe we can start now while people arrive. We're good?
Okay, so hi, everyone. Good afternoon. First of all, I would like to welcome you to this session. My name is Maria De Brasdefre and today at the IGF what we would really like to do is take this opportunity not just to present a seer eats of short cases to you, but as to exchange and explore with you the topic of digital empowerment and to approach it from a slightly different perspective.
So, of course, we know that the fact that you're here sitting in this room, just as well as all the other many people who are attending the IGF this year, it means that you are already aware of the great value that lies in using the Internet as a tool to advance access to information, but as and more importantly on the great value that meaningful access has on our societies as a whole.
We also know that a society where citizens can make better informed decisions will automatically translate into a more democratic society where people will exercise citizenship in in a more participatory way, and ultimately uphold rights inside and outside of digital spaces.
But, of course, saying that is the easy part, so we are aware of that and in that case, the real question remains, how can we do that and also what are the best approaches for this?
So, having this in mind, today we would really like to present you with a short series of four, five‑minute case studies that look at the themes that lie at the intersection between digital empowerment, the documentation of local knowledge, but as the mobilization of the global library infrastructure to help people access the Internet and make the most of it.
So, for these we have four speakers with us today. I think my slides are not showing. Yeah. There it is. So we have Eric in collaborate rigs with CSAG and APS. And Woro Salikin from National Library and Trish Hepworth Australian Library and Information Association joining us online and Yasuyo Inoue from the Dokkyo University in Japan. Before the case study, we would also really like to hear from you. We're not many today, so it would be good to exchange more. We would like to do a quick reflection exercise with you first.
So for this and in case you're not familiar with it, you can either scan the QR code with your phone or you can enter the website, www.menti.com and then you will see a space where you can enter the code of 18381615.
I will give you a couple of seconds.
So now you should see on your phones the following question. So, we have the question of have you thought about how can libraries contribute to digital empowerment? If you've thought about it before, you can share how and in what ways. In case you haven't, you can also share that, no, it never crossed my mind, or simply, no.
So far we only have one yes. These responses are anonymous, but of course you will also be able to comment on them at the end of the session if you would like.
Okay, so we have a second response. Yes, media literacy, awareness, coding lessons, et cetera. Yes. That's very accurate. We have another just a yes. More yeses. That's good that we don't have any no so far. Digitalized knowledge which is not yet digital. Yeah, that's a very interesting one, too. Okay, so I think we don't have any other replies, but this is good news because it means that all of us are more or less on the same page about it. It means that we've thought about it before, but maybe we don't know exactly how. This is also why we're here and gathered today to discuss a little bit about that and give you insights on that.
For this, it is time now for our first presentation. Our first presenter will be Mr. Eric who works at risomatic in collaboration with CSAG and ATC and telecommunications of indigenous people and co‑riewr in communication and technology. Eric, please go ahead.
>> ERIC: Thank you, and I'm sorry for being late. I got lost within the rooms, like it's very ‑‑ it looks very similar and I went to different ones. Well, our work at Informatica is mainly with Indigenous Communities so that's like made me think about what we could share in this session. It was more about the role of library, but as the question of what is a library for everyone and maybe if it does the same.
I think one of the things that's a barrier for the use of the Internet, so some people is that it's not meaningful content within the Internet. That's explained as one of the barriers of Internet adoption and some of them is about the content. Sometimes some communities even say, well, when they have to take a decision on whether which technology they have to use, sometimes they ‑‑ some communities refuse to get into the Internet because of the kind of content that people will find there, that sometimes has no relation to the reality or sometimes it's exposed to certain content that they don't want to be exposed to that specific content. So that made me think about the first one.
Well, that's the sort of communities we work with, so we help many ‑‑ we work together with Indigenous communities that want to create own media, such as community radios, community mobile networks, owner of their own mobile network, and also we have this applied research program in which communities define which sort of local research that they want to do for a specific task, and there are some examples. So, there you have the opening of a communication center in a rural area in Rhizomatica and they have their own network. And this community in central Mexico that has traditional medicine, and that's the product. Next, please.
So my first question is what is a library, you know? So when we think about a library, so we mainly think in the picture that is on our left. But when you talk with some communities about what is a library for them, it's this, it's territory. Most of the territory is talking, it's saying, it's where they learn, it's where they teach each other, which is where they gather the local knowledge and meaningful knowledge to manage and understand the territory.
And so, how do we put together these different concepts of library? This reservoir of knowledge that's in the nature and territory of the communities and the concept of library that we find as in books, no, and storages of knowledge in books. What are the chances that the Internet can do so. Next one.
So, I think that ICTs can bring together these two concepts of library. Mainly, because most of the knowledge, for instance in the communities, it's oral knowledge. It's not related to knowledge full in practice. It's not actually ‑‑ so for many of the languages that are oral, they're starting to be written, but mainly are languages that are not written.
So, that is a main difficulty of bringing local knowledge into the libraries because the libraries are mainly related to book, but when we bring ICTs into a library, even if it doesn't have connectivity but it has a local storage and that, then you can bring inside songs, then can you bring inside music, then you can bring video, then you can bring all of the stories that form part of the local knowledge of the communities.
And so this sort of work is mainly what many communities are interested in. So for instance in this picture that's on my right, they are sharing this, these persons are sharing their recovery, experiencing their recovery of some of the local language and local variety of the languages and bringing up some words and stories and some research that they did on that. Then in this space they are having a workshop on how to put this knowledge together in a handbook, in a manual and so on, no, so that they can share it better with other people.
So that's the idea. The other photograph is from a community that was one of the first in having these mobile cell, mobile networks. Also, they have a university, and they have a library from the university as well. One of the things that they were more interested in, in complementing this library was the Internet. They said well, we have this library, we have the books here, but we need a lot of ‑‑ we need to document a lot of the findings that we are having from our knowledge, we also need to bring all the videos and the music. That's a complementary part of the library of the local university, the indigenous local university.
And then the next one, please. Then in this one, I wanted to share in the recent years, we have been ‑‑ we mainly work with from long time ago with the community radios, but this also we open this local research program from that brings some other different experiences, too. So, I'm going to talk about these two experiences, these two chances that we have to bring and document specific knowledge. We got with UNESCO some consultations to develop policy for indigenous community radios in Mexico. And from there some specific needs came, and some of them were specifically related with local archives of the radios. So, a lot ‑‑ so the radios, and there is one on the left, it's a radio that was the first community radio of Mexico. So it's about 60 years old, this community radio. They have an archive of many of the voices, knowledge, festival, and so on. And was about to get lost because that's an area that is very humid and so on. So, when expressing the needs of being in this local archive, the phonotech took interest in that and helped them to restore the tapes and also they are now keeping them. They have a copy and they are now keeping in the area now so it has access ‑‑ they ensure that this archive could be lasting forever.
Then also, some communities they decide together that some community radios decided to have one‑hour program every week, and that's in the national radio. So that has become also an important reservoir for knowledge in the communities. For instance, it has ‑‑ they determine which are the subjects that they want to talk about. But each of these programs is really rich in knowledge because, for instance, some of them talk about the textiles and they bring together some ‑‑ a lot of information that is not in the books, it's not in there because it comes from the person.
These other two, yes, very quickly. One is a community that started the research because they were descendant and wanted to be origins was. And this last one was another Indigenous Community and they run museum, and these pictures that you see there, you touch these pictures and then they play the music or stories of that. That is what I wanted to show you. Can you go to the last one?
Thank you very much. And we wanted to show you and share on this possibilities of using the ICTs to incorporate local knowledge in libraries, and those are where you can find more information about it. Thank you. (CITSAC).
>> MARIA DE BRASDEFER: Thank you so much, Eric, for sharing all of these nice cases with us, but as to emphasize on the importance of not just promoting local knowledge and building up local knowledge, but as on the importance of storing it and how hard it is sometimes for communities to access not only their own knowledge but as to store it sometimes, so and also the role that libraries play in it. Thank you so much for sharing it.
Please keep in mind that there will be a space for asking questions to the speakers, but now we're going to move on towards our next presentation. So, our next presenter will be Woro, so as I mentioned is a Senior Librarian National Library of Indonesia and working in capacity development for librarians and library technicians across Indonesia for more than 30 years. Go ahead, Woro.
>> WORO SALIKIN: Thank you. Yes, I agree with what Eric said that what is library is reservoir of knowledge, and that I'm going to tell you that what the National Library role is to reveal the knowledge discovery to the community. Yes. Go to the second. Next, please. Yeah. Next, please. Yeah.
Is this is the Presidential directive, five steps to be taken to accelerate the National Digital Transformation. This is not the area of the National Library but closely related to the National Library, and it is the function of the Ministry of Communication and Information. It should be taken into action to expand the Internet access and develop digital infrastructure and provide Internet services for all. There is target for the people, for the population to get the access to the Internet, and this is important for us for as library, so as long as they get the access, then the knowledge can be transferred there.
And then the second is targeted about 196, 714, 070 that is the target to get the access of the Internet. And then we have to ‑‑ we have to prepare transformation digital roadmap for the governments strategic sector, public services, social, et cetera.
And then the third is to take immediate action to integrate national data center. This is also a library that can contribute the data that is to be stored in the national data center, and then taking into account the need of the digital talents. This is also important for us because through this digital talent that there will be training, yeah, training for peoples to be able to access the Internet. That is a target quite a lot from the Ministry of Communication, and this facilities to the data center, the national data center needs to facilitate all the government to store their data and then can be accessible for the community.
This, also the digital talent includes digital literacy. The target is all over Indonesia. They collaborate with 12 ministry, private sectors, and communities. Digital skills, digital culture, digital ethics, and digital safety, this will be covered in the digital curriculum, digital society, digital economy, and digital government, and then they put it into two categories for the training. That is the training for the skills for proficient class, and then also the empowering the cyber creativities that is inclusion class.
And this next, please, this also directive from the President for the libraries to improve and expand access to the digital libraries in order to accelerate the human resource development will master science and technology, improve creativities and innovations to create job opportunities, reduce unemployment rate, and increase income per capita as well as increase foreign exchange to create prosperity for all. That is the directive to the library. Next.
This is the function of the role and the function of the National Libraries. Yes, as the library ‑‑ as the networking center and also the preservation center, this library networking means that we will collaborate with other institutions and then make a network to create more local knowledge, create local knowledge that can be shared together. And then preservation center as this also we have to localize their local information, so local content that should be preserved and also can be accessed. This research center, this depository center and reference library center, and of course this library development center. But in here, this is the role of the National Library. We have also the obligation, next slide. We have the role, the obligation to develop a National Library system and supporting national education system and guarantee the sustainability of libraries as learning centers. This again that we have to provide them with the access and also the content, and guarantee the availability of the library services throughout the nation, and guarantee availability of collections through translation, transliteration, transcription, and transmedia. Also promote habits and also develop library collection and develop National Library itself. We also have to be developed and appreciate those who preserve, and conserve manual. Next, please.
This is libraries is not yet fully integrated to the national data infrastructure. Yes. It is to implement what the directive of the President that the National Library is part of the government so we have to contribute to send our data to the national data center because this is an example of NLE, that is National Library, and then we have two that are actually N list and then CIRT. N list is what is it? The application for, what is it to do the library management, that is based on the mark base and then online. One CERT I can will talk about later and and it can be accessed all over Indonesia. Other ministries will do the same thing.
Yes, this is knowledge discovery, the Indonesia OneSearch, a single search portal for all public collection from libraries, and at the moment we can collect, we can have 12, 608,000 records and also members around ‑‑ I'm sorry, more than ‑‑ actually this is for repository. Repository itself is 11,000. This is connected to ‑‑ almost all the libraries in Indonesia, not all but mostly about more than 20% of the libraries in Indonesia is connected to us. This is for the system, for the anti‑plagiarism tools and subject analysis tools and open access initiatives. Next.
Yeah. This is the institution. Imagine this library institution is 300. Library is 4,000, and then repository institution is 11,000. It's a very big knowledge can be reserved there, so more and more knowledge is coming and then we also motivate those who are not yet becoming part of this program but they have to join us and we also give them a freedom to whether they want to send it to us. It's only the abstract or only the metadata or full text is up to their policy, to individual institutions.
We have that, the contributors, quite a lot, the National Library, of course, the biggest contributors, and then also there is a university that's also contributing their collections to us. Next, please.
Yeah. This is the e‑mobile. We have that what I mentioned earlier. This is, we have that social media‑based library, provide digital books to read, share, and show. This application is available on mobile. And then using digital right management and technology security. This also, we have the menu is for e‑donations, for those who write books and then want to donate their books and give the right to the National Library, so it can ‑‑ and up until now we have around 140 books that is donated to the National Library. And that is free. Then everybody can access it. Well, we can ‑‑ it doesn't have the royalty things, no. We are not talking about the royalty because we can give voluntarily, and it's free. Next.
This is another one. This is the latest. This is for the education. We work close to the Minister of Education, and also Minister of Religion because they also have schools that we can collaborate with, and this platform provides improved access to the digital content for schools and universities, the contents are varied such as audio books, video books, educational journal, scientific journal, all of this work can be accessed via multiple platforms. The total collections that we have in here is for elementary schools, a total collection ‑‑ for the elementary schools is 26,000 something. And then junior high school is 22,000 something. And senior high school is 50,000, and then university is 262,000. The digital books from the Ministry of Religion, we have 58,000, and from the Ministry of education we have 1, 063,000 books that is stored there, so it can be accessible for the community. Next.
This ‑‑ I'm sorry, yeah. This is for the e‑resources. E‑resources is the service that we have. This is digital collection for service National Library of Indonesia which are either subscribe or made independently by the National Library. It means that we subscribe to the books that I think everybody is familiar with here, and there is one mainly for the research for the manuscript and also digitized books and then put it here, and this is free and to be able to access this, you have to somebody member of National Library, and can you do it online to become National Library member. The National Library membership, the membership number, we now connect it to our national ID, and that's integrated. Thank you. That's all.
>> MARIA DE BRASDEFER: Thank you so much for sharing this case. I can also thank you it's an interesting example of a case that can be followed by other libraries, but not just in terms of digital empowerment and also economic growth that is tied to libraries. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. Now we'll move to the next case, which is the case from Trish Hepworth who is Director on Policy and Education for Australian Library and Information Association and works across the sector to strengthen workforce and libraries to achieve a socially just and progressive society.
>> TRISH HEPWORTH: Thank you, Maria. I wish I was there. Thank you very much for having me. I would like to acknowledge today that I'm coming from the Lands of Indigenous People and play respects to elders past and present. Maria, are my slides up? Perfect. Brilliant. I guess I want to just very quickly have a little bit of a look at what this looks like from Australia. In Australia we have an index called the Digital Inclusion Index that gives us statistics about digital inclusion across the whole population. The digital inclusion index measures the accessibility, the affordability, and the ability of people online, and then basically gives a score.
What you can see up there is some of the various things we know wildly different across the country. Australia is a very concentrated metropolitan kind of country. We have most of our population that lives in cities and on the coast. There is a huge difference between the digital inclusion scores in the metropolitan areas which are quite high, and the digital inclusion scores in regional and remote Australia, which are much lower.
Similarly for our First Nation's People, the Aboriginal Peoples of Australia, we can see they have a much lower digital inclusion index than the Australian population generally. But, again, in particular the further you go from the metropolitan areas, the lower the digital inclusion index. Next slide, please, Maria.
And across all of the different vectors, we see a really significant change across age. So this graph on the screen at the moment talks about digital exclusion. It's looking around the bits around accessibility and affordability. As you can see for younger age groups, the ability to access digital worlds to be online is much higher, and as you go through the older age groups, that accessibility really drops. If I could have the next slide, Maria.
That probably unsurprisingly goes with ability as well. So as we see this across all of the things, the accessibility and ability of people are closely correlated, so people with the most access, also have the most ability and comfort online. Those with the least access, First Nations People, Aboriginal People, older people, they have the least ability online. If I could have the next slide.
To have a look at what it actually looks like in practice, only 23% of Australians were confident that they could edit a video and post it online. So, the fundamental ability to be on Tik Tok, for example, is only shared by a quarter of people in Australia. Only 35%, so just over a third, were confident that they could work out if they were being harassed online, and if they were being harassed what they could do with it or which authorities they could report it to. If I could have the next slide.
While people's abilities and media literacy is quite low, people's interests in being secure and able digital citizens is very high. So, when you ask people, they are really keen to know how they can protect themselves from scams. They want to use media across all of the different forms of media to stay connected with community, to stay connected with friends and family.
If we have a look at the next slide, this is very much where libraries come in. So across the library systems, and in particular libraries and educational institutions, so schools and vocational education in Australia and universities, and public library, we see that librarians are already working solidly in these areas. So you have the infrastructure from libraries to have the access to the Internet and as Woro and Eric have said, the ability to access community‑based connections, but as nationwide digital collections. So you have those accessibility port, but we also see with libraries a huge role in bolstering that ability as well. So when you ask libraries, they are helping people find resources in their catalog and helping people find information online, but they're also providing a basic support about how to use computers or about how to use mobile phones, how to stay safe online.
And if we can have the next slide, I just wanted to do a very quick look at a little local library, Hume libraries based in Melbourne, and so Hume Libraries is situated in a highly multicultural area, so they can see that all of those cross the correlation, so they've got communities who have English as a second language, which is often one that looks at digital exclusion. They have older communities who often have English as a second language, and they have ultra metropolitan, so that's another one where you find people of lower digital literacy. If I could have the next slide.
So Hume Libraries have run a huge amount of work in conjunction with the local university to actually run out a research project around how do we deliver digital literacy programs for cultural and linguistically diverse communities. And the thing about using the libraries is that the infrastructure was already there. So they were able to pull together the resources they had around community engagement, they were able to harness the people in the libraries and also the community relations that were already there. They had a system in place for the programs. So working with these three together, they very successfully managed to tailor digital inclusion programs called communities or culturally linguistically diverse communities that went across age ranges and abilities. That looks different for different people.
You might have people who are absolutely fluent in spoken English, but unable to do written English, or perhaps need their content in video or audio format. You might have people who have different accessibility issues. You need to be able to find case studies and ways of working with people that relate to cleks that are important to them and communities in which they are already participating. So running these sort of programs in your local library, means that you can have a very tailored experience where you leverage the ability to have those central points for access, but as then brings in all of the support from the libraries to upskill the ability piece. If I could have the very last slide.
I think some of the takeaways that we would save from Australia's experience is that it's not easy. Libraries are there, the public libraries are in every different community across Australia. We go regional and remote and linguistically diverse and have the older people going in. There is no other organization that is currently in a better position to be able to have the people coming in the door with the access. Having said that, every single community is different. One of the things that the culturally linguistic diverse guidelines, for example, developed was a list or toolkit for each library to then be able to work with local partners to be able to build its own localized program. The outcome of the program was that we had a group of people who went from being digitally nervous to being digitally confident and that meant that they were more confident digital citizens, but as more confident citizens and better able to partake in Australian society and part of democratic society, so it was a resounding success as one case study replicated across the country, and I hope that was of some interest to you all. Thank you.
>> MARIA DE BRASDEFER: Thank you, Trish, so much. Also, we're sharing the case of Australia and also I guess it's really interesting also to see how a country as culturally diverse and linguistically diverse as Australia also, this could be seen as a challenge, but libraries seem to be addressing this in a very successful way, despite all of the diversity there, so thank you so much for sharing this case.
So as we're running a bit out of time, I will move on to our next and last presenter who is Yasuyo Inoue and she will give us a local perspective on this topic, and Yasuyo is a Professor on public librarianship at Dokkyo university and been a professor at other universities for more than 35 years and focusing mainly on children and young adult library service. Also, in the past, she was also a member of the Intellectual Freedom at the Library Committee of Japan Library Association. Please go ahead.
>> YASUYO INOUE: Thank you. Time is not enough and I didn't bring so many slides so I just wanted to say that some general information based on Japan. Right now from elementary school to junior high and senior high, most of the kids have their own tablet or PC, so as for the technical things that they know how to use the computers. But the problem is that lack of content. That's why the library needs some roles to provide information to the kids. Maybe 50 years later, most of the Japanese people can use any kind of the computers, but later on. So right now what libraries should do, I think libraries can do with using the ICT techniques, the library can connect rural areas and urban areas. There is situation right now, but they can connect to these other situations or maybe different direct area that we can connect to each other through the materials and information at libraries.
Overall, the library has three roles, one is as the other speakers mentioned that kind of community activity center. And as Eric said, preserve their own culture or traditions. And another one is kind of educational or running center or information center, so not only books but as a lot of data. In that sense, a library is a kind of data center. So we concentrated and stacked a lot of big data, and now many public libraries in Japan, especially big libraries, they want to digitalize those traditional historical materials into digitalized materials and provide to the users, especially National Library, national central library in Japan, they have so huge big data, so they changed the national direct library role and changed the copyright role and now they provide data via Internet. So the content provides to each users, so more libraries can provide more data, not only national direct library level, but as local public libraries make the community get together. Like right now, this slide is a very small town library close to Molioka city, and I don't know why, foreigners should be ‑‑ I don't know, but this is small‑town library, but central that Japanese just exhibit in the library and they show how they make the brew, the Soke and tell people what to brew and how to taste and the character, so they want to show the local business to the people at the library. The right side, that is the library connected to the agriculture corporation. So once a week, there is a kind of vegetable market in front of the library, so people buy the vegetable and come into the library, and view the collection of recipes, so which vegetable did you buy? You can use this recipe at your own home. So the agriculture business and the library connected, and on the wall where the farmers grow the vegetables in the local area, so the library stimulates the local business, so I think that is another community center role that library played. So not only those things but maybe in the future more small‑town libraries will provide digital materials. So if you have any trouble or questions, go to the local libraries or maybe they will help you how to expand your local business. Thank you.
(Applause).
>> MARIA DE BRASDEFER: Thank you so much, Yasuyo, and also all of you who are here today. Yeah, I think as a final remark, I can only say that if we see all of these cases that you presented, you can also see how the role of libraries, well, you can see this common factor in all of the cases about how the role of libraries is really evolving and, yeah, with time and also with the use of Internet and access and all that the communities can get out of it at a local level. So, thank you very much for sharing it.
So now we still have a couple of minutes left, so I would like to open the floor for the people who are here to ask any questions to the speakers. I don't know if we have any questions online? No? Okay. Yeah.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi. Thank you. I did have a question for Trish Hepworth, but is she still online?
>> TRISH HEPWORTH: I am.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Oh, you are. Great. Good to see you. Trish, we had some contacts within IFLA in the past couple of years, and one of the contacts we had was that you made a presentation at a library webinar that I organized in the framework of the Asia‑Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum, two years ago, I forget precisely. But I wanted to ask you, was there anybody at the Brisborn meeting of the Asia‑Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum, was there anybody there who was talking about the contribution of libraries?
Because it seems to me that the ‑‑ your comments about the digital inclusion index are highly relevant to all countries. In fact, you've got a model there which we should all probably imitate, that is countries which haven't got one, should have one, should have that sort of system and monitor it and develop it.
But was there anybody at Brisbon who was talking about library information services, whether on the coast as you said in the metropolitan areas or in the outback in remote areas? Do you know?
>> TRISH HEPWORTH: Thanks, Winston, for the questions. We didn't have an ally or representative as such. We definitely had people that were at that forum talking to things like the digital inclusion index, and also to the role of other sort of bodies such as libraries. I think it's, you know, one thing that I know that is very top of mind for our policymakers in Australia at the moment is the increasing need around things like media literacy and digital skills with the rise of generative AI and that's certainly something that we know is getting a lot of attention in sort of big structural things. So, you know, there is both the doom and gloom, oh, know, how will people be able to detect AI scams or what does it mean for the future of the Internet search. But as those huge potentials. So when you're working with people who might have lower levels of written literacy, the ability to use generative AI to help support them with job applications, or even in writing search and prompts, so huge.
So, certainly from a policy perspective at the moment, I think there is a really important role for libraries to play in that digital skills and AI and media literacy space, which realistically, if you don't have libraries doing that work in a country like Australia, there isn't anybody elsewhere adults that are not in formal education really have to go.
>> MARIA DE BRASDEFER: Thank you, Trish. So, do we have any other questions from the floor?
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay. Thank you. I am Johanna Mono, a member of assembly from Kenya. I want to appreciate the presenters for packaging the information in the right way, very clear. Also, I want to appreciate their approach of taking knowledge closer to our rural flock.
As I do appreciate that, I realize that this approach helps our young ones to come together, socialize, share knowledge and maybe also get exposed, and my question is whether there is sensitization on how we have realized that in the area of academia, the most tricky part is how to publish some of these works or maybe some of the activities so that others from elsewhere can be able to access the same information, access our experiences. Do we really ever contract feasibility studies to either vet on the content, and also see the compliance of the same in terms of legal frameworks which may govern whatever you publish to be accessed through the Internet. And again, I come from a rural area where the poverty levels are a threat, very low, so you realize that it is like where the government is not able to come in and support fully, and coming up with such structures, however good they are and I really appreciate becomes a challenge. Personally, I am running on institution with a very tiny library, and their approach I've gotten from here has really lightened me such that I have thought of only addressing needs of learners within the small institution, but I have seen other learners can come together from even other institutions and with certain access of search facility, be able to share knowledge and even be able to take it to a higher level while publishing the same on the Internet and sharing the experiences with the world over. Thank you.
>> MARIA DE BRASDEFER: Thank you so much. I think maybe we have time for one last question. No? Yeah, well I think we're at the end of our session anyway, but thank you so much to all the speakers who are here today and who presented and thank you so much for sharing your cases and stories with us. Also, thank you for the attendees and the questions. We really appreciate your presence. Also, if you would like to collaborate with us in the future or if you have any ideas for opportunities or collaboration with library, please feel free to reach out to us. Thank you.
(Applause).