Resumen de Symbiotic partnerships: The global library community and the ICTD stakeholders

Fay A. Austin

• Brokering collaboration between those who develop and/or provide information and communications technologies and the intermediaries whose work is dedicated to providing access to information for all peoples may at first seem redundant; yet on closer examination, the enduring role of library and information professionals in providing access to information in all its forms; in communicating the advantages of the new technologies and in educating the user population in the use of the new technologies has not been recognized in the call to action issued by the signatories to the Millennium Development Goals. Specifically Goal number 8: target 5 calls for the ICTD community to co-operate ��with the private sector�� to ��make available benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications.�� Information professionals must reach out to and educate the ICTD stakeholders � developers, donors, governments and people everywhere � about the invaluable expertise and experience available in our global professional community.

  We must become the brokers who offer our services to advance the urgent and critical measures required to bridge the ��digital divide�� now existing between developed and lesser developed countries.