Information-transfer Stations for Developing Countries in Asia

Jeffrey A. Smith, Ed.D.

Introduction | Needs for information | Limitations of networks and databases | Barriers to access | Elements of an ITS| Functions of an ITS | Participants in the project | Status and future of the project

Abstract

The need for information in developing countries in Asia and elsewhere is crucial, while traditional methods for importing it are costly and inefficient, including the employment of foreign experts, purchase of foreign materials, and overseas training. In addition to books, journals, documents, and other standard formats, there is a need for communication and exchange of ideas between individuals and groups in the East and the West.

The Internet and new information technologies make it possible to procure much of the knowledge, and conduct many of the exchanges that are needed, across boundaries and time zones at high speed and low cost. However, physical connection to the networks, by itself, is not enough to bring these benefits.

The spread of the Internet to China, Vietnam and other countries has increased the demand for applications and services , including person-mediated support, that make access to the networks and their information contents fully available. Without such services, many users will remain information-isolated in the future as they have been in the past, and research and development efforts may suffer.

Introduction

Bridge to Asia is creating several Internet-based information-transfer stations (ITS) that help users in China and Southeast Asia gain access to knowledge resources worldwide. The stations are built around people rather than machines: 'cybrarians' or (combination) subject specialists, research librarians, and network navigators; and teams of experts who provide on-line consulting in the target fields.

There will be several ITS's in the United States, one each in a field critical to development: law, medicine, science and technology, management, economics, environmental science, education, and agriculture. Each ITS will be linked to companion stations in China, Vietnam, and other countries.

The eventual system will serve researchers, institutes, government agencies and others with significant responsibility for research and development. The purpose of the overall effort is to increase and strengthen relationships among individuals and institutions in East and West, especially those engaged in mutual efforts to solve complex problems, and to place control of the information-transfer process in the hands of end users.

Top

Needs for information

Most developing countries are information-isolated, and few can afford to update their knowledge bases. Vietnam, for one, struggles to build new infrastructures, systems, and institutions, without critical information needed for planning, management or operations. The country recognizes its needs for knowledge and expertise, but the schools and research centers that might be expected to produce such resources are poorly equipped and have information needs of their own.

China is modernizing its infrastructures and institutions on a scale and at speeds that are unprecedented in world history. It needs information in so many sectors and so many forms that it has invested substantial human and material resources to acquire it. China has sent more than 100,000 students and scholars overseas in the past 20 years, invited thousands of experts from abroad, and imported millions of informational materials. Still, its knowledge resources are inadequate.

International exchanges that once supplemented in-country training have been reduced. They remain important, vital in some cases, but are costly and time-consuming and have not yielded the expected returns (most students who were sent to the West from developing countries have failed to return). With fewer people being sent overseas, and few of those returning, the needs for imported information are greater than ever.

There is a need for consultation with experts in most fields and projects, particularly those that entail imported technology. For example, institutions and individuals who are adapting Western medicine to the Chinese environment have questions that cannot readily be answered by use of available resources. There are several well-provisioned medical libraries, some with access to MEDLARS (the on-line biomedical database and research service linked to the U.S. National Library of Medicine). However, most of these are static databases that cannot be searched for answers to dynamic questions (questions whose answers do not exist on a printed page or in an electronic databank). As more 'foreign' technology is introduced, more widely and in more forms, there will be many more questions that are not anticipated in print or electronic publications, and thus an increasing demand for dynamic information services.

While these and other needs continue to grow, the costs of information continue to rise. Costs of books, journals, and reference works have in many cases climbed so high that consumers in the West, including major research universities, cannot afford all the information that is wanted. In developing countries, the costs of creating or updating the knowledge base by using traditional methods (such as building paper library collections) are beyond the reach of nearly all institutions.

There are needs for more open and effective information-sharing. Some governments restrict in-country publishing; they allow conferences to take place, but not permit conference proceedings to be published. Individuals struggle to maintain contact with colleagues in their own countries and overseas. The sum of these restrictions can frustrate the best efforts to implement projects and to sustain relationships.

The new technologies can transport information to wherever it is needed in efficient and responsive forms, and help maintain links among colleagues, including those who may be the most informed thinkers and decision-makers working on a problem but who are literally worlds apart. However, if they lack equal access to the Internet and its knowledge resources, then users in developing countries will continue to be by-passed by developments, and their information-isolation will increase.

Top

Limitations of networks and databases

 The Internet speeds communication, increases the radius of contact, and reduces needs for localization of data in libraries or paper publications. It promises extraordinary benefits for poorer countries in Asia but is not sufficient to close to the knowledge gap.

Capacities of many lines and links are low, and some local networks are saturated. (In China, a little bit of connectivity equals a lot of people, and more users are coming on line every day.) When local lines or links go down, thousands can be affected. In-country traffic is slow, and messages transiting the Pacific can be delayed.

The information contents of the Internet are so vast and variable that they can barely be fathomed. Search tools let users browse global databases and find answers to factual questions, but searches for general information can consume hours and dollars and produce a volume of data that needs to be filtered and evaluated further (even then, the searches may fail).

It can be difficult and is often impossible to retrieve the full-text versions of many materials. Abstracts of articles may be available on-line, but not their full text. In most cases, the full text needs to be retrieved the old fashioned way, manually from paper libraries (difficult to do when the user is in China and the journal is in New York, for example), or it needs to be purchased from a commercial service (difficult to afford when the user is poor). (Nearly half of the documents requested by scholars in China during our test of the prototype ITS were not available in digital form at any site we could discover, and so could not be retrieved on-line.) This is a significant limitation, since journals are the primary vehicle for sharing information in most fields and professions.

This limitation is not due to a weakness of the technology, but to the control of information by the knowledge industry. That industry includes societies, universities, professions, publishers, and others who generate, process, or disseminate information. It also can be thought of as including corporations that produce and own storehouses of information, little of which is shared. Although "information wants to be free" (a catch phrase of Internet users, and rallying cry of evangelists), the knowledge industry continues to own much of the information that users in developing countries need, and continues to control access to it. The new technologies are applying pressures that may depress some costs of academic and professional publications; however, the rule is that if paper versions are not affordable today, electronic versions will probably not be affordable tomorrow (certainly not, for poor users in poor countries).

Top

Barriers to access

 In addition to these limitations, there are barriers to access to the technology. There are financial barriers including the costs of equipment and telecommunications usage. The price of a computer and modem is beyond the means of most academics and professionals. The project will donate laptops and modems and pay access charges when necessary for some users. Those without computers, or without funds to pay usage fees, can contact an ITS by low-tech methods such as paper mail or fax.

There are technical barriers such as incompatible hardware and software and "noise" on phone lines that scrambles transmissions. And there are barriers created by local conditions: lack of air-conditioning and central heating in some computer facilities; and power brown-outs or outages.

There are barriers to physical access created by jealousies and competition between institutions that prevent users at one from gaining access to resources at another.

There also are language barriers. English is the common language of most contents on the global Internet, and users need at least some fluency to access most knowledge bases in the West. The Internet is the revenge of the written word, and users also need to write well in order to communicate clearly. Electronic mail can be raw communication, not nuanced, and it does not convey non-verbal cues of face-to-face interaction; in some cases, as across culture boundaries, it can cause misunderstanding.

Top

Elements of an ITS

 The ITS has been designed to overcome most of these barriers and limitations. It adds people to the technology, including the information specialist who operates the station, and a team of experts who provide consultation for users and for the specialist; and it adds hard-copy materials by providing access to the paper libraries at the University of California at Berkeley and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, among others.

An ITS consists of:

• an information specialist - a (combination) subject specialist, research librarian, and network navigator
• a team of advisors who are experts in the target field
• a research assistant
• PC, modem, and software
• link to the Internet
• electronic databanks
• paper libraries
• other information resources

Each ITS will serve hundreds of users who can be individuals, teams, or institutions, and provide each user with perhaps dozens of responses per year. A response can be a package of books, documents or computer discs sent by express mail, or electronic files sent by the Internet. 

Top

Functions of an ITS

An ITS performs several services: research, consulting, and document-delivery. It receives requests from users, and refines the requests as needed; it locates sources of information; it points users to the sources, so they can go to them directly if possible; otherwise, it retrieves the information for the users, electronically from databanks or on-line conferences, or manually from paper libraries; finally it transfers the information to users.

The information may be formal, that is, it may come in conventional hard-copy formats such as journals, or in standard electronic formats such as files. Or the information may be informal and reside in the experience of individuals rather than in books or in databanks. When requests are for informal information, the specialist can post them on a conference or refer them to project consultants.

When the request is simple, that is, when a factual question is asked or a particular document is wanted, the specialist can purchase it, or copy it, and then mail the material to the user. When the question is general or complex, for example, when the user is probing a problem and does not know what information is needed, the specialist begins a dialogue with the user to frame the problem and specify the request. S/he may create a research menu (a bibliography, abstracts of articles, list of documents) and send it to the user for consideration, and during this back-and-forth process may consult with the project advisors. The user refines or adds to the original request, and the specialist fulfills it.

During early years of the project, funds will be provided to purchase hard-copy materials, since most users will be unable to afford them (the average cost of a hardcover book in the U.S. is $50, equal to the monthly salary of a professor in Beijing). To control the costs of materials and limit them to essential information, users will be given annual accounts of several hundred dollars, to be spent for whatever they wish: journal subscriptions, books, or copies of documents.

The ITS also can send redundant materials and sets of information: one set to the user, a second to her institution, and in cases when the information is of wider interest, a third set to a regional repository. The ITS can send information that has not been requested but that may be important to know: it can produce reports of findings and abstracts of key articles, as a current awareness service. The stations can maintain archives of frequently requested information and post these on mirror sites in Japan, Bangkok and Singapore, so that users can go directly to a 'local' source without contacting an ITS.

The ITS also can supply instructions for locating information, so that users can use the technology independently and learn to control the information-transfer process by themselves. In future years, support by the stations may become less direct. However, there will be continuing needs for the research services an ITS provides, for consultation with experts, for hard-copy materials from the West, and for training and guidance in use of the Internet.

Patterns of use of individual stations may vary. The ITS in medicine may provide more informal information. Users of the ITS in education may want information from the region and from colleagues in cultures and conditions similar to their own, rather than from the West. The station in environmental science may be linked to a computer network in China that connects national environmental centers, and thus serve more institutions than individuals. The station in management can be used to link managers with mentors.

Top

Participants in the project

 The Internet attracts networkers, and most of the participants in the project are bridge-builders who strive to create relationships between individuals and institutions internationally. The strength of the project is due to the people who are supporting it including architects and administrators of research and education networks in China and other locations in Asia. Its strength also lies with those it brings together, especially the users of its services. The ITS in law will serve researchers, legislators and others drafting new legislation. It will provide them with documents and other information, and will support their interaction with colleagues in the West. The ITS in medicine will serve practitioners at medical colleges and hospitals, as well as planners and researchers at health ministries. The ITS in science and technology will serve research teams, institutes, universities, and agencies. And so on.

Top

Status and future of the project

A prototype ITS has been tested with a small group of scholars in Beijing, and is being expanded to serve 100 users in the field of law throughout China. Funds have been raised to complete the ITS, in law, (located at Bridge to Asia in San Francisco); to install an ITS in medicine (also in San Francisco); and to open companion stations in Beijing. Discussions are under way for additional ITS's in the U.S. and for additional companion stations in China, Southeast Asia, and other regions.

Costs of the full system will be approximately US$1 million per year and will be supported with a mix of grants, endowments, and user fees. Several stations may be attached to universities and their costs may be incorporated into institutional budgets. Start-up funds have come from American foundations, individuals, and institutions. Additional funds and in-kind donations are being sought from corporations and members of the Chinese community. 

This paper was presented at the Inet'95 in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Home  |   Mission  |   Books  |   Internet  |   People  |   News  |   Contact