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Bridging the digital divide: working toward equity of access
through document supply services in South Africa
Kim
Baker
Abstract | Paper in
Portable Document Format (PDF) Presentation in Microsoft® PowerPoint®
format
South Africa's history presents
unique challenges for librarians involved in document supply services in South
Africa. The apartheid era left a legacy of unequally distributed resources,
with some libraries being very well supported, financially, while other
libraries that were allocated to separately serve the black population of South
Africa, were atrociously under-resourced. Traditional Interlending services
were one way to help bridge this gap. With the change in government, political
and strategic priorities also changed, focusing on addressing and redressing
this imbalance. However, at the same time, great advances were made globally
with technological developments, and globalization occurred almost
simultaneously. This left many of the strategic initiatives without funding,
and many initiatives had to be re-thought to accommodate the global and
technological changes.
In South Africa, Sabinet-Online
led (and is still leading) the move towards digitization. As a private company,
they are able to generate profits, and thus had the necessary resources to
pioneer this digital revolution, while many state-funded institutions fell
further behind, due to drastic budget cuts. Sabinet-Online have introduced
ReQuest, which is an online Interlending module providing all functionality,
including an electronic IFM (Interlending fees management) system. Most major
educational, government and corporate libraries now use ReQuest to process
their Interlending requests nationally. However, many smaller, under-resourced
libraries, especially in rural and remote areas, are not able to afford
Sabinet-Online's subscription fees, and thus are finding that they are being
left behind. |
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