I.A.

Professor Denise Comer

English Composition I. Achieving Expertise
30 June 2014

Op Ed: Libraries, internet and social mobility

On April 29 of 2014, the Ministry of Culture and Heritage of Ecuador started the Integrated
Library Management System. In order to achieve expertise of managing libraries and democratize
the access to books in the country, now government allows people to read the books stored in
public libraries by internet. It is an important step, however, only 31.5 % of Ecuadorians used
internet in 2013. Therefore, it is necessary to wonder, going online is the right step for public
libraries in Ecuador? What else could be done to increase access to books and knowledge? And why
this is important?

People usually acknowledge that facilitating access to books is considered an important way to
reduce social exclusion. Consequently, it is important that poor people has access to books in order
to improve their social mobility. UNESCO ()United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization) wrote a manifesto on 1994 that says The public library, the local gateway to
knowledge, provides a basic condition for lifelong learning, independent decision-making and
cultural development of the individual and social groups. However, many people say that since the
internet stores more information than physical libraries the later are no longer needed. I differ due to
the technological inequalities of countries like mine.

Certainly, Ecuador has increases the number of internet users, but according to INEC -Instituto
Nacional de Estadstica y Censos- (2012) most of the users are people with good income. Poverty is
one of the biggest barriers to have access to information technologies due to the small income and
usually, lack of reliable electricity and internet connection services. For instance, it doesnt seem
logical to think that people who has no access to computers will be able to read books in this way.

Figure 1. Percentage of people who that has used internet in the last 12 months organized by income
20th percentile.
Source: INEC, 2012

Traditional stationary libraries werent doing a good job before this either. Although, there are
2560 public libraries in Ecuador managed either by national government, local authorities, schools,
universities and NGOs; the ones that spent more money to keep libraries updated are local
authorities and universities (Diario Hoy, 2010). Several libraries run by the national government
have faced funding cuts for years. Now, most of them are open just at office hours and book lending
is prohibited, physical collections are outdated and many volumes are deteriorated. The problems
goes farther because Ecuadorians dont read very much, the average citizen reads 1-2 books per
year. So an iterative, inclusive, and demand-driven approach is needed (Lee, 2013 cit. by Scott,
2013). The first step is to have a good plan to increase literacy/language skills, number of readers,
books available, computer literacy and information technologies (ICTs) availability.

Successful campaigns to gain readers arent alien ideas. In fact the Colombian plan to increase
the number of readers seems to have good results (Ministerio de Educacin, 2014). Most of its
success seems to be related to the fact that they include a large group of stakeholders (teachers,
artists, local leaders, etc.) before interventions and they consider families as a whole entity to
promote reading, not just kids and schools. Interventions to improve access to ICTs such as giving
free tablets to poor kids, or running internet centers for free helps people but only if they are already
interest on knowledge which might turn to be difficult if culturally they place little value on
knowledge, which is the main task of libraries.

In order to improve services of libraries, several things must be considered. First, librarians
shouldnt expect that people go to them; they should go to the people. Besides mobile libraries, they
should coordinate activities with local schools and cultural organizations to bring together events to
foment reading, prepare cultural programs local artists and gain acceptance, gather information
relevant to local economic activities p.e. agriculture books in a semi-rural setting-. Also, libraries
might embrace actions that attend social and educational issues such as programs to reduce
illiteracy, improve math and language skills, prevent crime, etc. Most of researchers said that it is
necessary to take advantage of ICTs and use them to help the disadvantaged; this might be one
through having rooms with computers that could be used for free. Libraries might also host
computer literacy courses, help people to learn how to research through internet and provide high
quality academic journals so that people can access to recent developments.

To wrap up things, uploading contents to the web isnt necessarily bad, but strategy to increase
access to books and information should be part of a long term plan for development. Investments
should be done prioritizing protecting the poorest and using existent capabilities such as libraries
and expertise of librarians.


References:
Ministerio de Cultura y Patrimonio. 2014. Varias gestiones se anticiparon por el da del
libro, una de ellas la implementacin del Sistema Integral de Gestin de Bibliotecas.
Retrieved from: http://www.culturaypatrimonio.gob.ec/una-nueva-implementacion-del-
sistema-integral-de-gestion-de-bibliotecas-podra-hallar-en-la-web/
Universia. 2014. Crece el nmero de ecuatorianos que se conecta a Internet. Retrieved
from: http://noticias.universia.com.ec/en-portada/noticia/2014/01/16/1075539/crece-
numero-ecuatorianos-conecta-internet.html
UNESCO.1994. Public library manifesto. Retrieved from:
http://www.unesco.org/webworld/libraries/manifestos/libraman.html
INEC. 2012. Tecnologas de la Informacin y Comunicaciones (TICS). Retrieved from:
http://www.inec.gob.ec/sitio_tics2012/presentacion.pdf
Diario Hoy. 2010. Estado no invierte en las bibliotecas, los municipios s. Retrieved from:
http://www.hoy.com.ec/noticias-ecuador/estado-no-invierte-en-las-bibliotecas-los-
municipios-si-278489.html
Scott. 2013. Access to information: 15 things you need to know to get it right Retrieved
from: http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-
network/2013/mar/22/open-data-ict4d-debate-resources
Ministerio de Educacin. 2014, Plan Nacional de Lectura y Escritura 'Leer es mi Cuento'
Retrieved from: http://www.mineducacion.gov.co/1621/w3-propertyvalue-49672.html