Monday, May 19, 2008

Meghann's blog for Niankorodougou library

Peace Corps volunteer Meghann Coughlin just created a library blog which she will be posting regular updates to.... check it out.

This speaks to a broader project we are slowly undertaking at FAVL, which is to get every community library in Sub-Saharan Africa mapped onto Google Earth, and linked to a library blog like Meghann's, so that ultimately anyone, anywhere, who wants to be a "friend" of a small community library in Africa can look up the community libraries in the geographic area and also read blog entries and comments to find out how the libraries are doing. And then.... once the libraries themselves are electrified and connected to the Internet, the libraries can use the tool to "associate" amongst themselves. If Jeffrey Sachs is the winner of the "my idea is right and will come to pass" race, then all should be in place by 2015. If Bill Easterly wins the race, then 2030. If Paul Collier is right, then the bottom billion that we are talking about here can't expect to live in the world of information flowing freely until 2050.... I'm a Collierite, so am fully committed to being there in 2050 for the virtual ribbon cutting ceremony.

1 comment:

Kim Dionne said...

in your efforts to catalog all community libraries, please add the iKi Kayesa Community Library supported by the Invest in Knowledge Initiative in Malawi. More about iKi-Malawi can be found here: http://ikimalawi.org. if you'd prefer GPS coordinates, I'm sure I could come up with some this summer when back in Mchinji.