{"id":4189,"date":"2016-06-06T10:28:04","date_gmt":"2016-06-06T02:28:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/?p=4189"},"modified":"2016-06-06T10:28:04","modified_gmt":"2016-06-06T02:28:04","slug":"mzansi-libraries-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/2016\/06\/06\/mzansi-libraries-online\/","title":{"rendered":"Mzansi Libraries Online"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I went on a photo safari in Pilanesberg National Park<\/a> and saw an amazing number of African animals as we drove through the park – rhinos, elephants, wilderbeest, springbok, a hare, zebras, a giraffe and many more. My hosts, Charmaine who is on the SAOIM committee<\/a> and her 6 year old daughter, \u00a0were the best guides I could have had.\u00a0Photos forthcoming when uploaded. (I am so excited by the shots I took that I think I could easily post a photo a day for the rest of #blogjune and not bore anyone).<\/p>\n

I was using Charmaine’s fabulous Nikon, so I do not have any of the images yet… I took about 5 photos with my iPhone, so here is a very ordinary one of a giraffe.. (In the wild. In Africa! OMG!!!)<\/p>\n

\"giraffe\"<\/p>\n

The trip was equivalent to arriving in Perth at 5am and then being in Margaret River by 10:30am. During the drive,\u00a0Charmaine filled me in beautifully on libraries and librarianship in South Africa. She mentioned the funding the country had received from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation<\/a>, aimed at improving public libraries in South Africa.\u00a0\u00a0Part of this is a programme to refurbish 27 libraries and provide them with ICT equipment to allow free access to the internet as part of the Mzansi Libraries Online<\/a> project. (Another project is to provide access to over 600 “online libraries”<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The list of equipment that was planned for supply to each library in the pilot project<\/a> is impressive. There is a focus on disability access in each library.<\/p>\n

” Each library will receive equipment estimated at R470 000. The equipment will include a variation of the following lists determined in order of priority and based on the needs identified by the respective library and\/or provincial library authority: 20 computers (10 public, 3 games, 2 visually impaired and 5 office); 2 printers; 1 document scanner; software; 10 Tablets; 10 e-Readers; gaming room set up, including 3 computers, 3 X-Box console kits, 2 Play stations and gaming headsets”.<\/p>\n

What really struck me, however, is the way that the purpose\u00a0of the project reinforces my personal biases and core beliefs about what libraries are really about:<\/p>\n

” It is to position the public libraries as agents of democracy through nation-building and centres for development to be used for the improvement of the citizens\u2019 quality of life through access to information”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I went on a photo safari in Pilanesberg National Park and saw an amazing number of African animals as we drove through the park – rhinos, elephants, wilderbeest, springbok, a hare, zebras, a giraffe and many more. My hosts, Charmaine who is on the SAOIM committee and her 6 year old daughter, \u00a0were the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogjune-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3BXdd-15z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4189"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4193,"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4189\/revisions\/4193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}