WORLD LIBRARIANS
Working with multiple partners and through a socio-technical workflow, the World Librarian team provides open educational resources to schools and libraries in remote offline schools and organizations Malawi and Kenya — and we’re expanding.
World Librarians is a program co-founded between UMass Amherst and ShiftIT in Malawi.
We encourage you to take a look at ShiftIT’s website to see the amazing things they do on the ground in Malawi.
Literature that describes the World Librarians Program
- Schweik, C.M., Meyer, C., Chinkondenji, P., Smith, J. and McHenga, P. 2020. World Librarians: A Socio-Technical System Providing Library Search Services to Offline Schools and Libraries in Malawi. World Development Perspectives. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wdp.2020.100234. Open access pre-print available here.
- Schweik, C.M. Smith, J. and Meyer, C. 2018. World Librarians: A Peer-to-Peer Commons for Closing the Global Digital Divide. https://jlsc-pub.org/articles/abstract/10.7710/2162-3309.2249/.
- How did World Librarians begin? Weiss, L. 2018. Information Possible. Bookmark Magazine.
- 2023 UMass Collegian newspaper story on Open Access Week 2023 presentation by our team
Partners
Shift It
Provides training and resources to bridge the digital divide
World Possible
Provides RACHEL, a device used to connect classrooms to the content
Keepod
Provides USB stick to every student for content access
Waruks Productions
Provides partnership in Kenya