Eldis aggregation tool

24 August 2004

[Gender&ict] gender & ICT report available.

"Bridging the Gender Digital Divide: A Regional Report on Gender and
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in Central and
Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)"

Commissioned by UNDP, this report represents a joint effort of UNDP
and UNIFEM to deepen knowledge about gender dimensions within ICT
for Development (ICTD) and to strengthen integration of gender within
the work of UNDP and others working to promote ICTD in the region.
The report highlights the need for increased action to address
imbalances between women's and men's access to and participation in
ICTs in the CEE/CIS region. It also emphasizes the powerful potential
of ICTs as a vehicle for advancing gender equality.
This report is the first of its kind to compile a substantial inventory of
gender equality projects and resources for the information society in the
CEE/CIS region, including references to other resources, relevant
websites and contacts. Equally important, regional specificities are
addressed...

By Monitor@community.eldis.org. [Community@Eldis: ICT for Development messages]
10:53:12 AM

APC Paper on Internet Governance and WSIS.

Adam Peake of Glocom has authored a paper (PDF), commissioned by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), on Internet governance and the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) (PDF).

"The purpose of this paper is to describe our current understanding of the debate about Internet governance in WSIS, and to examine the main policy issues that are being considered in that discussion. It also suggests opportunities for developing nation stakeholders to contribute to the processes that are defining the Internet governance landscape. The key message is that there are opportunities for civil society to engage and we must take them. Internet governance is one of the most controversial and debated issues to come from the WSIS process. It is also a moving target in that the UN working group that will help define what Internet governance is, and identify the public policy issues involved is only just being set up and we can only make a best guess at its working methods and the scope of issues it will consider. As such this paper is very much a work in progress and may be modified over the coming months. APC gratefully acknowledges the funding support of CIDA."

[via Internetpolicy.net]

[ITU Strategy and Policy Unit Newslog]
10:51:21 AM

Weblogs and Communities of Practice.

Here’s a thoughtful post comparing communities of practice to networks of weblogs, apparently distilled from a discussion group at the Blogwalk conference. The short summary:

Weblogs are more respectful of their authors and of their audience
Weblogs are better connecting tools
Communities are better social structures for problem-solving, knowledge stewarding…

[e-Literate]
10:50:38 AM

Disruptive technologies in scholarly communication. Susan Lafferty and Jenny Edwards, Disruptive technologies: what future universities and their libraries? Library Management, 26, 6 (2004) pp. 252-58. Only this abstract is free online: "Christensen's Theory of Disruptive Technologies predicts that mainstream organisations and industries can be made obsolete by new technologies that change the whole paradigm of the industries in which they operate. This paper demonstrates the relevance of the theory of disruptive technologies to academic libraries, higher education and the academic publishing industry. The way universities are organised and how they operate could change radically; scholarly communication could be transformed, placing academic publishers at risk; academic libraries may become irrelevant as new business models emerge. There are strategies that these organisations might adopt to limit the effect of such technologies and/or preferably transform them into sustaining technologies." [Open Access News]
10:47:01 AM