Rethinking the Digital Divide: New Developments in East-Central Europe

Zsuzsanna Varga (1)

1 Central and East European Studies, University of Glasgow

My proposal offers to take account of developments in the digitisation of out-of-copyright textual material in East-Central Europe. Taking Western European digitisation as the norm and indicator of directions, my paper will argue that digitisation in East-Central Europe is behind, but there is an increasing awareness of the need to make large-scale investments. The Hungarian case argues that it the National Széchényi Library is expected to lead the progress, and further research will provide comparative data about the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Based on project description information retrieved from the site of knowledge institutions, as well as policy documents communicated and held by professional bodies, I will attempt to assess the shortterm developments and point at the pitfalls of these projected developments.

Mots clés: digitisation in East-Central Europe; national and university libraries; digital divide; national initiatives; collection development principles; metadata provision; Czech Republic; Slovakia; Hungary

Domaines: Sciences de l'information et de la communication

Zsuzsanna Varga. Rethinking the Digital Divide: New Developments in East-Central Europe. ELPUB 2020 24rd edition of the International Conference on Electronic Publishing, Apr 2020, Doha, Qatar. ⟨10.4000/proceedings.elpub.2020.14⟩. ⟨hal-02544918⟩