The IDEAL Charter, licencia de revistas electrónicas para el Tercer Mundo

Abstract

Through my travels, I have become acquainted with a gamut of difficulties facing libraries in our poorest nations. First, such libraries can afford few high-quality scientific journals. If they can afford some, the mail systems are usually unreliable, which means journal issues arrive late or not at all. If issues are received, there commonly occur losses caused by users cutting out pages and stealing issues. Furthermore, if librarians manage to keep collections intact, paper in tropical areas usually has a short lifespan – presenting an inherent challenge for the archival role of libraries.

The IDEAL Charter for Low-Income Countries, launched this past February, addresses all these problems. Through this initiative, universities, research centers and teaching hospitals in the world’s poorest nations can gain reduced-rate access to IDEAL – the pioneering online resource library for science, technology and medicine