Humanity Development Library 2.0 CD-R
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A practical CD-ROM library to help solve poverty, to increase Human
Potential and to provide education to all
The concept: providing a complete low-cost CD-ROM library of 3,000
essential books and solutions
The goal of the non-for-profit Humanity Libraries Project is to pro-
vide persons or groups in the South owning a PC / CD-ROM set, access
to a complete basic library of +/- 3,000 essential books at very low
cost. This CD-ROM set will contain most multidisciplinary solutions,
know-how and ideas they need to help themselves or to help other peo-
ple. The initial language will be in English, soon other languages
will follow: Spanish, French, and local languages. Depending on local
partnerships, we welcome versions in many other languages like Ara-
bic, Indonesian...
This is a very powerful Library. Every person with a few hours prac-
tice can find any information or book within 30 to 60 seconds. The
Humanity Development Library is created by the NGO Global Help Pro-
jects in co-operation with many partners, of which the World Informa-
tion Transfer.
A list the 1,230 contained publications - subject categories and
types
The 1,230 publications are classified into 24 subject categories and
come from 70 organizations. The complete list of titles takes 30
pages. To give an idea of the wealth of information there are ap-
proximately 50 to 100 publications per following category. In each
category there are in majority practical publications, but also edu-
cational titles, development policy oriented titles and scientific or
research titles. There are about 30,000 images and illustrations.
* General reference
* Sustainable Development,
* International cooperation, Projects; NGO, Organizations, Poverty and
Hunger Alleviation, Humanitarian Aid
* Economics, Economic policies, Finance, Trade, Structural Adjustment
* Business, Micro-entreprises, Management, Marketing, Finance, Microfi-
nance, Cooperatives
* Politics, Public administration, Law and Legislation, Peace, Human
Rights
* Society, Culture, Community, Woman, Youth, Population
* Education and Training
* Communication, Information and Documentation
* Transport
* Science, Research and Technology
* Ecology, Biodiversity, Natural resources, Environment, Waste Disposal
* Water, Sanitation and Sewage Disposal
* Health, Nutrition, Medicine
* Agriculture and Food Processing
* Plant and Crop Production, Protection, and Processing
* Animal Husbandry and Animal Product Processing
* Fishery and Aquaculture
* Forestry and Agroforestry
* Industry, Manufacture and Services
* Energy, Renewable energies, Household energy
* Settlements, Housing, Building - Infrastructure Construction (Roads
etc.)
* Disasters, Disaster Mitigation, Humanitarian and Food Aid, Humanitar-
ian Interventions, Refugees, Poverty Alleviation
* Development Periodicals and Magazines
* Resources, Product Lists, Catalogues, Internet Sites
The organizations range from UN organizations like the United Nations
University, UNESCO, the FAO and many Governmental organizations like
GTZ and Peace Corps till NGO's like the ITDG, IIRR and many others.
The translation co-operation in further stages
We believe that the Humanity Libraries Project offers a model for an
information resource developed at low cost and made available to all
for free or very low cost. This model is important because a huge
"base" of essential knowledge has already been gathered and produced
by the publicly funded agencies and should be released in the same
way.
It can be fairly estimated that 1/3, or about 20 million pages of UN
material are very useful, and probably as much university and NGO ma-
terial. Currently most UN/World Bank information is copyrighted - and
is either too expensive for developing countries, or, if free, re-
quires requests or download processes that are too cumbersome for de-
veloping countries. We propose that core UN knowledge should be re-
leased in public domain in standard formats like RTF and bundled on
low cost CD-ROMs or central servers in each country.
Once this material is available, university faculties and Ministries
of Education in each country should organize the ("non-UN-official"
but informally authorized) translation by students into local lan-
guages and free redistribution via the Internet in each country. A
kind of "Marshall" information and translation plan in which for one
year most students of that country or state are involved in this as-
signment, for example to get most useful UN material translated in
Arabic.
Ordering costs
This project is like a low cost vaccination against lack of knowl-
edge. We want to give the example and prove that in order to solve
poverty all essential information should be made available at lowest
cost. For small quantities the price is 13 to 6 US$ per CD-ROM + de-
livery costs.
But for wider non-profit redistribution of at least 500 to 1000 CD-
ROMs or more, the costs are about 2.5 US$ per CD-ROM + about 0.5 US$
delivery costs.
Our project address, e-mail and website:
Director: Dr Michel Loots, MD
Humanity Libraries Project
Global Help Projects vzw - HumanityCD bvba
Oosterveldlaan 196
B-2610 Antwerpen - Belgium
Tel +32-3-448-0554
Fax +32-3-449-7574
mailto:humanity@globalprojects.org
http://www.worldinfo.org/html/loots.htm
http://www.oneworld.org/globalprojects
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