Dirt road or yellow brick superhighway? Information and communication technology in academic libraries of South Africa

Abstract

Information and communication technology (ICT) development in South African libraries cannot be understood outside the context of the post‐apartheid period. The society consists of a technologically sophisticated sector, and an underdeveloped Third World sector. Higher education and other libraries attempt to straddle this divide. Government policy emphasises the importance of connectivity in redressing inequality. Policy is a contested area, and investigations have been conducted with little concrete result. The main development has been the emergence of academic library consortia, which have succeeded in attracting funding from the USA and other foundations. But without information literacy, these developments will have little impact. There are grounds for techno‐pessimism, as digital information resources are seen by advanced countries as commodities for which payment must be made, even if knowledge production originally took place in the South.

Citation

Darch, C. and Underwood, P.G. (1999), "Dirt road or yellow brick superhighway? Information and communication technology in academic libraries of South Africa", Library Hi Tech, Vol. 17 No. 3, pp. 285-298. https://doi.org/10.1108/07378839910289411