Access to Digital Libraries for Disadvantaged Users

Introduction For the purposes of this paper, the term "disadvantaged" encompasses traditional minorities (African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans), persons with lower levels of income and education, those living in rural areas, the physically disabled, as well as developing countries as a whole. Definitions of the term vary; in the socio-cultural context, to be "disadvantaged" is to be "deprived of some of the basic necessities or advantages of life, such as adequate housing, medical care, or educational facilities" (answers.com, 2010). When one is counted among the disadvantaged, one is a member of "deprived people considered as a group" (answers.com, 2010). It is encouraging to see the inclusion of "educational facilities" among the basic necessities needed to provide improved quality of life. Nonetheless, ongoing issues such as inequality and lack of efficiency result, according to statistics presented during the Model United Nations Far West's 47th agenda, in approximately one billion people worldwide going through life without access to education, including 300 million children (MUNFW, 1997). When considering how the library and information science profession might help change these discouraging figures, it is logical to conclude that digital libraries, as the "digital face of traditional libraries" with an ability to serve "particular communities or constituencies" even when those are "widely dispersed throughout the network" (IFLA, 1998), should make for a good choice. Indeed, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with the advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web, new avenues for the dissemination of information rapidly emerged (Wikipedia, 2010). When computers became increasingly commonplace, access to information evolved from being restricted to physical space to being made available via remote access (ibid). In the late 1990s, aided by the fast growth of "computing networks, databases, and public awareness" (Borgman, 1990, 229), "scholarly and professional interest in digital libraries" grew rapidly, and large amounts of research funding were made available, quickly resulting in "research and practice in digital libraries exploding worldwide" (Borgman, 1990, 227). However, digital libraries did not become the instantaneous success many imagined them to be despite their ability to provide users with significant advantages such as the elimination of physical boundaries, round-the-clock access to information, multiple access points, networking abilities, and extended search functions (LisWiki, 2010). Subsequent research revealed that user acceptance of digital libraries primarily revolves around user-friendliness, ease of use, usefulness, and various other factors falling into categories such as interface characteristics, organizational context, and individual differences (Thong, et al., 2004). These expectations are largely the same for all users, regardless of the individuals' information technology background (Zabihi, et al., 2006). Where usability is concerned, it was found that "there exists an interlocking relationship among effectiveness, efficiency, satisfaction, and learnability [sic]" (Jeng, 2005, 47). While undeniably valuable, many of these research efforts centered on the academic community and involved users equipped with ready access to electronic information technologies, leaving out special needs considerations and raising the question as to whether the above-described user expectations apply equally well to different groups of the disadvantaged. It is the purpose of this paper to examine the state of accessibility to digital libraries for traditional minorities, persons of lower income and education status, and those living in rural areas, for the physically disabled, and for developing countries as a whole. Analysis includes description of tools currently in place, discussion of their effectiveness and relevance, and what might be done to further improve accessibility to digital libraries for the disadvantaged. …