Resources for Librarians in Developing Countries

 

RESOURCES
FOR LIBRARIANS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

 Items listed are especially for institutions, governments and nongovernmental organizations in low-income and low-middle income
countries.

1. SCHOLARLY RESOURCES — Freely Accessible Full Text Journals

 A. Full Text Journals

1. Open Access/Almost-Open-Access Online Journals (any country)

 a. Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)

 http://www.doaj.org
DOAJ covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly
journals, aiming to cover all subjects and languages. As of February
2006, there are 20014 journals in the directory.

 b. African Journals On Line (AJOL)

http://www.ajol.info
Provides access to citations and fulltext of over 230 African journals
covering most subject areas. AJOL also offers a document delivery
service which is free to users and participating journals. Document
delivery requests from outside of developing countries are not free.

c. Bioline International
http://www.bioline.org.br/journals
Features 30 peer-reviewed journals from Brazil, Cuba, India, Indonesia, Kenya,
South Africa, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. Subjects include: health
(tropical medicine, infectious diseases, epidemiology, emerging new
diseases), biodiversity, environment, conservation and international
development).

 d. Electronic Journals Library
http://rzblx1.uni-regensburg.de/ezeit/index.phtml?bibid=AAAAA&colors=7&lang=en

University Library of Regensburg offers the “Electronic Journals Library,”
which contains over 25,000 titles, of which over 10,500 journals can
be read free-of-charge.

e. Highwire (Stanford University)
http://highwire.stanford.edu/lists/freeart.dtl
Highwire facilitates access to over 1.1 million full text scholarly articles
on medical/biomedical topics. Most journal titles covered include
back issues older than 12-24 months.

 f. Scholarly Journals Distributed via the World Wide Web (University of
Houston Libraries)

http://info.lib.uh.edu/wj/webjour.html
Provides links to established Web-based scholarly journals that offer access
to English language articles. No user registration or fees required.

 g. British Library for Development Studies
http://blds.ids.ac.uk/blds/elibrary/ej-list.html

(click on: “List only free Internet editions”)

h. Ideas at RePEc

http://ideas.repec.org/search.html

B. Journals Accessible Freely for selected developing countries – some may
require registration

1. Electronic Information for Libraries

http://www.eifl.net

eIFL.net is an independent foundation that strives to lead, negotiate, support
and advocate for the wide availability of electronic resources by
library users in transition and developing countries. Its main focus
is on negotiating affordable subscriptions on a multi-country
consortial basis, while supporting the enhancement of emerging
national library consortia in member countries.

 2. AGORA — Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture
http://www.aginternetwork.org/en/journals.php
AGORA provides free access to more than 500 journals from major scientific
publishers in the fields of food, agriculture, environmental science,
and related social sciences. AGORA is available to students and
researchers in qualifying not-for-profit institutions in eligible
developing countries. For more information, contact agora@fao.org

 3. HINARI – Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative

http://extranet.who.int/hinari/en/journals.php
The Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative (HINARI) provides
free or very low cost online access to the major journals in
biomedical and related social sciences to local, non-profit
institutions in developing countries. As of February 2006, over 3100
journals are accessible thru HINARI.

 4. OARE / Online Access to Research in the Environment

http://www.springer.com/sgw/cda/frontpage/0,11855,4-198-2-172659-0,00.html
OARE is being developed under the sponsorship of the United Nations
Environment Programme with infrastructure provided by Yale
University. OARE is scheduled to be launched in January 2007.

 5. Highwire Press (Stanford University)
http://highwire.stanford.edu/lists/freeart.dtl

Highwire press provides a list of journals offering free online access to
developing economies. Individual publishers use the World Bank’s
list of low income economies for determining access. You do not need
to register for this service as highwire software automatically
detects the country you are connecting from and grants access
accordingly.

6. Oxford Journals – Developing Countries Offer

http://www.oxfordjournals.org/access_purchase/developing_countries.html
Oxford University Press offers developing countries free (or greatly reduced
rate) access to many of our journals via our Developing Countries
Online Collection offer. The offer via the International Network for
the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) for established
not-for profit educational institutes from qualifying countries and
provides access to an Online Collection of journals.

7. Global Development Network (GDN) – Free Journal Access Portal
http://www.gdnet.org/middle.php?oid=245
GDN has linked policy research institutes from 11 regions and more than
100 countries. GDN offers a range of journals services to address the
difficulty faced by many researchers in the global south in accessing
journal articles to support their research.

 8. TEEAL – The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library
http://www.teeal.org/about.html
TEEAL is a full-text and bibliographic CD-ROM library of more than 140 of
the world’s most important scientific journals in the field of
agriculture. It is available well below cost to more than 100 of the
lowest-income food-deficit countries.

 C. Directories / Indexes for Determining Publisher Open Access Status

Index
of Author-Archiving Status

Romeo lists the status of publisher copyright policies and author-archiving
policies of academic journals, indicating, by a color scheme, which
publishers allow authors to archive preprints and/or post-prints.
Journals are classified by color as green, blue, yellow, and white
levels.

http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php?all=yes
2. INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORIES

A. Full Text Open Access Repositories

1. Directory
of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR)
http://www.opendoar.org
OpenDOAR lists the wide variety of institutional and subject-based Open Access
research archives and repositories which have grown up around the
world.

 2. OAIster
http://oaister.umdl.umich.edu/o/oaister/simple

 OAIster is a collection of freely available, previously difficult-to-access,
academically-oriented full-text resources searchable without
restriction. OAIster includes over 7 million records from over 600
institutions worldwide.

 3. ARC – A Cross Archive Search Service

http://arc.cs.odu.edu
Arc is an experimental research service of Digital Library Research group
at Old Dominion University. ARC searches across over 178
international repositories (listed here:
http://arc.cs.odu.edu:8080/oai/admin.jsp) through a unified search
interface.

4. ePrints-UK project

http://eprints-uk.rdn.ac.uk/search/?view=advanced
ePrints-UK aims to provide national, discipline-focused searching for access of
journal articles, technical reports and web pages in electronic
institutional archives of 30 selected UK universities and colleges.

 5.
Bielefeld Academic Search Engine
(BASE) http://www.base-search.net/index.php?i=a

BASE is the multi-disciplinary search engine to scholarly internet
resources at Bielefeld University. BASE complements the current
metasearch system for catalogues and databases of the Bielefeld
Digital Library by allowing searches to be limited by type of
document, including scholarly full text archives, digital
repositories and preprint servers available on the World Wide Web.

 B. Full Text Institutional Repositories focusing on development

1. FAO Corporate Document Repository/ FAO
http://www.fao.org/documents

 The repository provides full text access to publications, articles and
meeting documents produced by the FAO.

2. Development Experience Database/ U.S. AID

http://www.dec.org
Provides access to abstracts and full text documents from USAID, including:
Reports, development project documents, and citations of documents
held by USAID Information Centers.

 3. WorldBank “Documents & Reports” Database
http://www-wds.worldbank.org
Provides access to all publicly available World Bank operational documents
(project documents, analytical and advisory work, and evaluations),
formal and information research papers, and most World Bank
publications. Includes over 15,000 full text documents.

 4. Development Gateway/ Development Gateway Fdn

http://www.developmentgateway.org
Promotes knowledge sharing by providing access to fulltext documents across a
wide range of development topics. Also includes 38 Country Gateway
Portals serving local development information needs.

5. Eldis Gateway to Development Information/ Inst of Dev Studies

http://www.eldis.org
Over 16,000 full text, abstracted development-oriented documents are
available from Eldis. Documents are of “strategic, policy or
practical interest” for development practitioners based in both
the North and the South.

6. UN Best Practices Database

 http://www.bestpractices.org
Includes descriptions of over 2,150 award-winning solutions to common social,
economic and environmental problems in over 140 developing and
developed countries. Searchable by country, scale (global, national,
regional, village, etc.) and by subject category. Best Practices is a
joint product of UN-HABITAT and The Together Foundation and is
supported in part by the Dubai Municipality, the Best Practices
Partners, and the Government of UK. Coverage: 1996 ? present.

7. Projects & Operations/World Bank

http://www.worldbank.org/projects

Search thru projects, project documents, and analytical-and-advisory work of
the World Bank. An advance search feature is available. The database
is also browsable by: Region, country/area, theme or sector.

 C. Free Statistical Data Sources focusing on development topics

1. World Development Indicators (text display) / World Bank

http://www.worldbank.org/data

Query database selections here:

http://devdata.worldbank.org/data-query

 World Development Indicators (WDI) is the World Bank’s annual compilation
of data about development. The 2005 WDI includes more than 800
indicators in 83 tables organized in 6 sections: World View, People,
Environment, Economy, States and Markets, and Global Links. Data are
shown for 152 economies with populations of more than 1 million and
14 country groups, plus selected indicators for 56 other smaller
economies. Limited access to statistical database. Full access
available via subscription only.

 2. FAOSTAT Database/ Food and Agriculture Organization

http://faostat.fao.org
Multilingual statistical databases containing over 1 million time-series records
covering international statistics in the areas of production, trade,
food balance sheets, fertilizer and pesticides, land use and
irrigation, forest products, fishery products, population,
agricultural machinery, and food aid shipments.

 3. LABORSTA Database / International Labour Organization

http://laborsta.ilo.org
Contains yearly statistics of employment, unemployment, hours of work, wages,
labor cost, consumer price Indices, occupational injuries, strikes
and lockouts on over 200 countries (data since 1969); monthly
statistics of employment, unemployment, hours of work, wages,
consumer price indices (data since 1976); and economically active
population estimates and projections, 1950-2010.

 4. Creditor Reporting System

(CRS) / OECD & World Bank

http://www.oecd.org/dac/stats/idsonline
Contains data on Official Development Assistance (ODA), Official Aid (OA) and
other lending to developing countries and countries in transition as
collected by members of the Development Assistance Committee, the
World Bank, and the regional financial institutions. The system is
sponsored jointly by the OECD and the World Bank and operated by the
OECD.

 5. DAC Online / OECD

http://www.oecd.org/dac/stats/idsonline

DAC measures the flows of aid and other financial resources to aid
recipients. Collected annually from the Members of the OECD’s
Development Assistance Committee, these statistics are broken down by
major category of expenditure: capital projects, budget and balance
of payments support, food and other commodity aid, technical
cooperation and emergency relief.

 6. UN Monthly Bulletin of Statistics / United Nations

http://unstats.un.org/unsd/mbs
Includes current monthly economic statistics for most countries and areas of
the world. The statistics are obtained by from official sources in
the various countries, except where otherwise stated in the notes to
the tables. Updated monthly.

 7. UNSTATS UN Common Database / United Nations

http://unstats.un.org/unsd/cdb
Draws selectively on statistics from throughout the UN system, covering all
countries, areas and over 300 series from more than 30 specialized
international data sources. Time series data is generally available
from 1970 or 1980. Many series are disaggregated to show underlying
distributions. The source includes comprehensive footnotes and
meta-information on sources, definitions, and frequency of updates,
and provides technical definitions and standards verbatim from their
original sources. Users may view data, compile graphs, calculate
derived measures, and export data.

 D. Free Citation Databases

1. Online Journals Requiring Subscriptions / Global Development Network
http://www.gdnet.org/middle.php?oid=247#online
This site lists databases providing full text access to online journals,
mostly by subscription. Other services, such as citation searching,
email alerts on new journals, abstracts and table of contents alerts
are usually freely available.

 2. JOLIS Library Catalog / World Bank/IMF

http://jolis.worldbankimflib.org/e-nljolis.htm

The Jolis Library Catalog is the catalog of the IMF/World Bank Library
Network. The catalog, which contains over 1 million items includes
references to a wide variety of development related materials from
hundreds of different publishers. The catalog also includes
references, and links to many published IMF and World Bank materials.

3. Global Jolis Library Catalog / World Bank

http://jolis.worldbankimflib.org/e-nlglobaljolis.htm

Global Jolis is the library catalog for World Bank Country Office PIC
(Public Information Center)/Libraries. It includes materials in most
country offices around the world. The catalog includes references to
books, journal articles, working papers, conference proceedings,
technical reports, electronic resources, and country-specific reports
from local government agencies, nongovernmental organizations,
special collections of local language and indigenous knowledge
materials.

 4. ERIC / US Department of Education (English, French, Spanish)
http://www.eric.ed.gov
ERIC includes references to journal articles and non-journal material
covering all aspects of education. The database contains over 1.1
million citations from 1966 to the present. More than 107,000
full-text non-journal documents (issued 1993-2004) are available. For
technical issues contact: library@ed.gov

5. FAOBIB — FAO Library Catalog / Food and Agriculture Organization

http://www4.fao.org/faobib

FAOBIB is a multilingual, on-line catalogue of documents and publications
produced by FAO since 1945, books added to the library collections
since 1976, and serials held in the FAO library. Full text links are
now provided for all documents which are available in electronic
format.

 6. Agricola / U.S. Department of Agriculture

http://agricola.nal.usda.gov
A comprehensive source of bibliographic citations covering U.S.
agricultural and life sciences information, Agricola contains Over
3,500,000 citations to journal articles, monographs, theses, patents,
software, audio-visual materials, and technical reports related to
all aspects of agriculture. Coverage is from 1970 to the present,
with monthly updates. Some citations in French.

 7. UNESBIB – UNESCO Documents Database

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/ulis

UNESBIB includes over 100,000 citations for books, articles and UNESCO
publications, some with full text links. Languages included are:
English, French, Spanish, Arabic and Russian.

 8. Red Latinoamericana de Documentacion e Informacion en Educacion
(REDUC) (Spanish only) http://www.reduc.cl/homereduc.nsf/?Open
REDUC es un sistema cooperative de recopilacion, procesamiento y
diseminacion de documentos relevantes en el campo de la educación
en la region de America Latin y el Caribe. (Cooperative
education database covering Latin America and the Caribbean at the
regional and national level)

 9. PubMed

 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez
PubMed provides access to over 11 million citations from the U.S. National
Library of Medicine and other related databases. Links to selected
online journals, some freely available, are also included. Updated
monthly. Covers 1960s to present. Some citations are in French,
Portuguese, or Spanish.

10. Popline
http://db.jhuccp.org/popinform/basic.html
Popline is the world’s largest bibliographic database on population, family
planning, and related health. Citations also cover sexually
transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS, reproductive health, law,
and policy issues. The database includes abstracts of journal
articles, monographs, technical reports, and unpublished works.
Updated twice per month. Some citations in French, Spanish or
Portuguese.

 11. Science Direct

http://www.sciencedirect.com

A collection of over 1,000 journal title citations with links to the
full text by subscription only. ScienceDirect focuses predominantly
on science, technology, and medicine, but mathematics, economics and
other disciplines are represented. Some citations in French.

 12. UNBISnet / U.N. Dag Hammarskjold Library

http://unbisnet.un.org 

Catalogue of United Nations(UN) documents and publications indexed by the UN
Dag Hammarskjöld Library and the Library of the UN Office at
Geneva. Also included are commercial publications and other non-UN
sources held in the collection of the Dag Hammarskjöld Library.
The coverage of UNBISnet is from 1979 onward, however, older
documents are being added to the catalogue on a regular basis as a
result of retrospective conversion. UNBISnet also provides instant
access to a growing number of full text resources in the six official
languages of the UN (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and
Spanish), including resolutions adopted by the General Assembly, the
Economic and Social Council and the Security Council from 1946
onward.

 13. Google Scholar
http://www.google.com/scholar
Google Scholar facilitates citation searching of scholarly literature,
including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts
and technical reports from a broad range of research areas.

3. Scholarly Journal Document Delivery Support Services for Developing
Countries

 A. electronic Journals Delivery Service (eJDS) Programme
http://www.ejds.org
The electronic Journals Delivery Service (eJDS) Programme is geared to
facilitate free access to current scientific literature. The goal is
to distribute individual scientific articles via email to scientists
in institutions in Third World countries that do not have access to
sufficient bandwidth to download material from the Internet in a
timely manner and/or cannot afford the connection.

B. African Journals OnLine (AJOL)

http://www.ajol.info
AJOL offers a free document delivery service for developing countries.
There is a document delivery fee for requestors outside of developing
countries.

 C. Electronic Supply of Academic Publications to and from universities
in developing regions’ (ESAP)

http://www.fiuc.org/iaup/esap
A project of the International Association of University Presidents
(IAUP) in cooperation with the International Federation of Catholic
Universities (IFCU), SAP aims to set up a sustainable electronic
document delivery systems for scholarly publications between
universities in the North and the South as well as on a South-South
basis, and thus assist in the supply of academic publications to as
well as from the developing world.

D. A Library in your Letterbox: The GDN/BLDS Document Delivery Service

http://www.gdnet.org/online_services/journals/gdn_journal_services/document_delivery/index.html
Accessing the latest development knowledge is a key challenge for
many researchers in developing and transition countries. Recognising
these challenges, the Global Development Network and the British
Library of Development Studies (BLDS) have teamed up to bring
GDN/BLDS Document Delivery service to meet the information needs of
research institutes in the South.

 E. International Network for the Availability of Scientific
Publications (INASP)/Programme for the Enhancement of Research
Information (PERI)

http://www.inasp.info/peri
This network provides access to scientific and scholarly information
through electronic means. It includes more than 10,700 full-text
online journals, current awareness databases, and document delivery
of major scientific, technical, medical, social science, and
humanities materials from a wide range of sources. For more
information contact inasp@inasp.info.

 F. FreeForAll

http://www.geocities.com/wfb_2/freeforall.html
Free for all is an international collaboration of libraries whose mission
is to provide underserved nations with health science journal
articles for free.

4. Open (Free) Courseware

 A. MIT Open Courseware
http://ocw.mit.edu
MIT OCW is a large-scale, web-based electronic publishing initiative
whose goals are to: Provide free, searchable access to MIT?s
course materials for educators, students, and self-learners around
the world, and extend the reach and impact of MIT OCW and the
?opencourseware? concept.

 B. SOFIA / Sharing of Free Intellectual Assets

http://sofia.fhda.edu
As of February 2006, content for eight courses was available online
freely thru the Sofia open content initiative. The Sofia project is
an open content initiative launched by the Foothill ? De Anza
Community College District with external funding support.

 C. JHSPH Open Courseware
http://ocw.jhsph.edu

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health?s OpenCourseWare
(OCW) project provides access to content of the School?s most
popular courses. Includes undergraduate and graduate subjects
available on the Web, free of charge, to any user anywhere in the
world.

D. Tufts Open Courseware
http://ocw.tufts.edu

 Tufts open courseware includes course content in: life sciences, with a
multidisciplinary approach, an international perspective, and an
underlying ethic of service.

E. Utah State University OpenCourseWare
http://ocw.usu.edu/About/index_html/ECDocument_view
USU OCW is a free and open educational resource for faculty, students,
and self-learners throughout Utah and around the world. OCW supports
USU?s mission to serve the public through learning, discovery, and
engagement.

F. Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon
http://www.cmu.edu/oli/overview/index.html
A collection of “cognitively informed,” openly available and free
online courses and course materials that enact instruction for an
entire course in an online format.

 G. Information Management Resource Kit (FAO)

http://www.fao.org/imark

This
research guide was developed by Anita Johnson, IMF-World Bank
Library Network

In celebration of International Special Librarians Day ? April 6,
2006 ? DC/SLA

 The Information Management Resource Kit (IMARK) is a
partnership-based e-learning initiative to train individuals and
support institutions and networks world-wide in the effective
management of agricultural information. IMARK consists of a suite of
distance learning resources, tools and communities on information
management. IMARK is being spearheaded by FAO in collaboration with
over 30 partner and contributing organizations.

Resources
for Librarians in Developing Countries April 2006 Page 7
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Last updated:23/10/23