Pacific Knowledge Centre: Sharing information on children’s welfare issues throughout the Pacific

John Liebhardt

About the digital library

Please find the Pacific Knowledge Centre here:

http://tinyurl.com/25qanoh Or https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/liebhar3/public/Pacific%20Knowledge%20Library/Index.html

About the digital library

The Pacific Knowledge Centre is a partnership of local, regional and international development organizations, other institutions and individuals supporting children’s rights and family issues throughout the Pacific.

Membership is free and members may add content to the collection

Collection history

DL originally organized by UNICEF Pacific, which works in four major areas:

Child Protection Education Health and Sanitation HIV & AIDS

Along with: Climate change Emergency/Disaster preparation Gender issues

Why create the collection?

Many other groups/institutions work alongside UNICEF in one or more policy areas

Collection created to share information and resources amongst these groups and general public

As partners grow, collection should increase, slowly changing scope of DL

DL could house items outside of UNICEF’s expertise

Why create the collection?

Great need for sharing information amongst development agencies and local institutions dealing with children’s welfare issues

Information on these issues is currently widely dispersed with no standardized organization or access protocol

Major issue: internet speed

In recent survey of UNICEF partners, nearly half of respondents claimed slow internet connections make research very difficult

Pacific internet penetration very low (Fiji = 12%) Internet connection speeds very slow (My connection

avg. = 1.33 Mbps: 130th out of 160 countries.) As Internet penetration increases, local

infrastructure can’t keep up with demand, further slowing speeds

Why create the collection?

Currently, a majority of items pertaining to children’s issues rest on DLs and repositories of international organizations – designed for high-bandwidth users, creating access issues

Pacific Knowledge Centre will (hopefully) provide high quality information to local users in bandwidth-appropriate environment

Breakdown of collection scope

Collection topics and sub-topics

Children’s issues Child abuse Health Early marriage Corporeal punishment Child prostitution

Women & family issues Migration Nutrition Education Prostitution AIDS & STIs Rape

Collection topics and sub-topics

Economic issues Development Development

indicators Gender budgeting Economic dependence Economic gap

Disaster issues Emergency

preparation Environmental

emergencies Impact on livelihoods

How to organize collection?

Gathering items from many venues creates need for standardizing metadata for easier access

Also, transparent metadata will inform users of file contents before deciding whether to download

End result: A simple, (somewhat) systematic and interoperable metadata schema for these resources

How to organize collection?

The schema uses Dublin Core with some minor additions, including:

Research methods (as Type): Description of type of fact gathering, ie., statistical analysis, etc.

Original page (as Identifier): URL provided to report at page of original/publishing institution

AsPartOf (like Relation): Provides explanation if item is one chapter in larger piece

How to organize collection?

The collection’s access points: Subjects Keywords Countries

Underpinned by controlled vocabulary: United Nations UNBIS Thesaurus from United Nations

Bibliographical Information System

A very functional thesaurus covering all aspects of UN work and categories of development industry

Access points: Four major subjects

Access points: Keywords

Access points: Keywords

Subjects: Come from current collection scope, but can be added upon. I’d say four more maximum.

Will most likely change as collection and number of additional partners grows

Keywords: Index page contains partial, but representative list of most common keyword terms

This could also change with collection Countries: List of Pacific Nations with UN or

development presence

Interface design

Very simple interface with three major entrance points:

Subjects Keywords Countries

The sparseness of interface largely a result of low-bandwidth issues

However, user preferences (through a survey) did play a role

Interface design

Outside of low-bandwidth access issues, factors in usability could include:

Users with limited experience with digital libraries Potential for users with limited computer literacy Possible, but limited, chance of language barriers Well educated people certainly inhabit Pacific Island

countries, but UNICEF Pacific’s goal is to expand user base of digital library (and other resources)

Interface design

Other issues affecting functionality Browse by Keywords not a complete list, but a good

representation to keep interface clean and simple Attempted Tag Cloud for keywords, but was ugly. Tag

functionality may not be well understood in Pacific? Browse by country, using list instead of pull-down menu

because of belief that pull-down may not be noticed Also, many users of current digital library rightly

complained they couldn’t search information by country

Interface design

Two reasons for lack of search bar:Decision must be made whether to use Google or

in-house UNICEF search program Majority of collection consists of PDFs, but some

don’t appear to allow full-text searching. Uneven search coverage will skew results.

How to evaluate the site?

Low-bandwidth issues Can pages load in 7- 10 seconds on 25kps

connections? Are more useful items placed higher in site

hierarchy? Are there less than three graphics per page? Can users understand pages if graphics don’t

load? Do pages make very few requests for CSS files,

JavaScript?

How to evaluate the site?

Content Is content up-to-date? Are low-impact countries represented in digital

library? Presently, organizations providing content are

reputable, so no evaluation needed towards authority and accuracy. This could change with user contributions

How to evaluate the site?

User-centeredHow easy is the interface to use? Can user easily find pertinent information? Can user contribute content which enriches site?Are users questioned regarding content scope

and coverage? Are suggestions acted upon? Can user influence design and site evolution?

Future plans

Integrate DL to new UNICEF Pacific website Re-work interface for public consumption Install search mechanism Move collection to (non-proprietary) Greenstone Tweak Metadata schema (any suggestions?) Create supplementary listserve to discuss items,

acquire new materials and attempt to create user community