The Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme (APDIP) realizes how fast a published book gets out-of-date, especially in the fast-moving field of information and communications technology for development (ICT4D). APDIP has therefore donated 15 of its e-Primers to Wikibooks for free use and update (see list below).
In my opinion, this is good news twofold:
- On one hand, the reason APDIP says its leading the opening of the books — easy and fast content updating — is a heavy weight one, specially in the field of ICTs for Development (and Information Society in general) where things change at the speed of bytes.
- On the other hand, it does not make any more sense to copyright material issued by public institutions, and I would consider any organization under the umbrella of the United Nations system to be a public institution. While things made out of atoms are fair to be charged because of the concurring “materializing” costs, digital supports should be made freely available. In this issue, I expect the (c) on the APDIP materials to drop (also on their site) and be changed by a (cc) or a GNU FLD or whatever. And I’d also expect to see some other “products” (such as ITU’s databases), clearly of a wide public interest, to be entering the open access paradigm too.
These ICT4D Books belong to two previously issued collections, namely, the APDIP ICT4D e-Primers and the IOSN FOSS Primers, and can be found in the following places:
- ICT4D e-Primers, APDIP eLibrary
- ICT4D e-Primers, Wikibooks
- FOSS Primers, IOSN publications
- FOSS Primers, Wikibooks
The titles, so far, are:
- The Information Age
- Legal and Regulatory Issues in the Information Economy
- Nets, Webs and the Information Infrastructure
- Information and Communication Technologies for Poverty Alleviation
- Internet Governance
- e-Government
- e-Commerce and e-Business
- ICT in Education
- Genes, Technology and Policy
- Free/Open Source Software: A General Introduction
- Free/Open Source Software: Education
- Free/Open Source Software: Government Policy
- Free/Open Source Software: Licensing
- Free/Open Source Software: Localization
- Free/Open Source Software: Open Standards
[via The Development Gateway]
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