[LIS-Forum] Fw: Fwd: Egyptian Knowledge Bank

After Qatar's initiative to provide access to subscribed e-resources to its residents (http://www.qnl.qa/find-answers/online-resources), now Egypt has initiated this. From: LIBLICENSE

Date: February 18, 2016 at 7:01:24 AM GMT+3 To: Subject: Egyptian Knowledge Bank Reply-To: LibLicense-L Discussion Forum

From: ElHassan ElSabry

Date: Wed, 17 Feb 2016 18:28:50 +0900

Dear List Members,

The Egyptian government have recently launched a website under the name of "Egyptian Knowledge Bank". The State Information Service claims it to be the biggest digital library in the world. It provides access "free of charge" to Egyptian citizens (categorized to four groups: researchers, students, children & general readers) to a multitude of resources including e-journals, textbooks, k-12 curricula, educational videos, and many other things. It also includes a platform to manage journals published by university departments. The list of 26 content providers include Elsevier, Springer-Nature, Sage, Wiley, Wolters Kluwer, Emerald, OUP, CUP and the Royal Society of Chemistry, among others like Cengage learning.

The website (www.ekb.eg) is only accessible using an Egyptian IP address and the National ID card number is required to create account. It does have the disadvantage of content being mostly in English (especially for the "non-researcher" categories of citizens). However, for many Egyptian researchers it is of great help. Many of them use to suffer from the poor level of access provided at their home institutions.

Following Liblicense-L for sometime, I do not often see posts from members coming from developing countries. So, I am not sure how well represented they are. But I would appreciate feedback from any one interested. I want to know if you are aware of similar experiences (even on a smaller scale) with other developing countries. Egypt has the population of about 90 millions and its research landscape includes 25 public universities, about 30 public research institutes with over 110,000 of active researchers (headcount, not FTE) and about a million university students (both undergraduate & postgraduate).

If your interested in more details about the project, you can check my post on the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) 's Backchannels blog. ( http://www.4sonline.org/blog/post/some_thoughts_on_the_egyptian_knowledge_ba... )

Thank you in advance.

ElHassan ElSabry Doctoral Candidate Science, Technology & Innovation Policy Program National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Japan