Zotero folder on rural decentralization & local governance

Sjon van t Hof | 8 August, 2013

From January 2009 to June 2013, the department of Information & Library Services (ILS) of the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) has maintained an information portal on rural decentralization & local governance (RDLG). Because of government cuts, the external link to this portal is expected to become inoperative soon after 8 August, 2013. However, the strong focus on developmental local governance in a rural Southern context is unique. There is no alternative way of finding this material, e.g. by the use of scholarly databases. Therefore, to safeguard some form of external access, a large part of the portal information has been transferred to the LocalGovernance folder in the Zotero account of an information specialist at KIT Library (the present author). This document provides a description of the Zotero folder as per 8 August 2013, in terms of: (1) purpose; (2) ICT infrastructure; (3) content by source type (e.g. 300 websites); (4) content by geography; (5) content by subtopic; (6) content by publication year; (7) information collecting; (8) web 2.0; (9) positioning; and (10) relevance. Purpose The purpose of the Zotero folder is to: (1) preserve a database of useful free, online material on rural governance for internal and external users; and (2) maintain free access to this database, even though no new material has been added since June 2013, nor is there expected to be new information added from that date. Searching Zotero can be searched in various ways, but the most advanced options are available only if one uses the Firefox extension, which allows field-wise Boolean searching and which has many other user-friendly capabilities. This is not the case with online public access folders such as the one on LocalGovernance. The search interface is straightforward as can be seen to the right. However, use of the search box only allows one to look for words in the titles and for author names. This is a pity, because the database has been provided with short, high-quality abstracts and with descriptors from the UNBIS thesaurus, which contains both descriptors for topics and subtopics and for geographical areas, see below. These descriptors become visible and clickable after opening a record from the search result list. The way this list is displayed can be modified by clicking on the bottom right button in the search interface (see image above). Websites (300) and organizations can be found using the tag websites. Content by subtopic The developmental aspects of local government in rural are a key focus of this information portal. Important aspects include: popular participation, natural resources, public services, local taxation, poverty alleviation, and capacity-building. The top-20 of keywords is composed of: local government (906), decentralization in government (694), governance (493), popular participation (317), public services (249), accountability (230), capacity building (213), poverty alleviation (210), community participation (197), democracy (183), development assistance (181), public administration (166), economic development (136), civil society (134), development strategies (117), natural resources (105), development planning (104), guidelines (97), land rights (95), and development policy (92). Content by geography Sub-Saharan Africa is a key focus of the information portal: in the top 40 geographical keywords we find south africa (147), africa south of sahara (99), uganda (96), ghana (79), tanzania (67), africa (66), kenya

(40), mali (39), ethiopia (36), senegal (33), west africa (32), malawi (29), benin (28), burkina faso (26), mozambique (24), nigeria (21), cameroon (19), niger (19), zambia (18), botswana (17), southern africa (17), zimbabwe (17), namibia (16), and rwanda (16). Asia (india (83), indonesia (60), asia (40), philippines (36), bangladesh (29), nepal (28), asia and the pacific (26), vietnam (21), pakistan (20), cambodia (19), china (15)) and Latin America are also well represented. latin america (53), brazil (40), bolivia (29), mexico (15). Content by publication year 1983/4 2 1991/2 1 1985/6 1 1993/4 1 1987/8 0 1995/6 1 1989/0 0 1997/8 7

1999/0 7 2001/2 26 2003/4 54 2005/6 117

2007/8 232 2009/0 333 2011/2 407 2013/4 24

Information collecting The information has been collected in four ways, viz. by: (1) Google Scholar alerts; (2) Twitter; (3) RSS; and (4) websites. Google Scholar is the most time effective, i.e. produces the most useful results for the least search effort. Currently, three alerts are used based on queries focusing on: (a) capacity-building OR capacity-strengthening; (b) planning OR monitoring OR evaluation OR budgeting; and (c) local development OR participatory OR community OR civil OR non-governmental. The remainder of the queries contains the following terms: (i) decentralization OR "local governance OR government; and (ii) developing countries OR Africa OR poverty OR rural development OR millennium OR mdgs. The minimum time requirement per item is 45 minutes: (1) searching: 15 minutes; (2) providing short abstract and keywords (UNBIS thesaurus): 15 minutes; and (3) indexing: 15 minutes. The target is to have 1 item/day, i.e. 30/month. This corresponds to 23 hours/month. The information is used for tweets. A tweet takes about 5 minutes/item, which corresponds to about 3 hours/month. The time needed for searching and abstracting has been limited to 6 hours/week, so about 1 hour/week is left to check a limited number of RSS feeds and websites. Web 2.0 The LocalGovernance account of Twitter has currently (15 May 2013) 512 followers. There seems to be sufficient scope for further growth to 1000 followers within about 1-1.5 years. Without detailed analysis it seems clear that new followers are increasingly people from the South with an interest in local governance. Meanwhile, most if not all - of the international organizations involved in local governance worldwide are among the followers, some with multiple, including individual, accounts. Referral to the portal site from Twitter is an important source of visitors. Alerts for the portals new additions are available as RSS and e-alerts, but their contribution is limited. It is very likely that a blog with short items on various aspects of local governance in a rural setting in the South would help to attract many more visitors. Positioning In that sense the collection can be considered complementary to what is available via databases. Significant other collections in the area are those of GSDRC and FLACMA-UCLG Municipal Library (now defunct), but they lack the same focus, the first being insufficiently geared to local government and the second mostly geared towards municipal local government in Latin America.

KIT information portal on rural decentralization & local governance

The situation as per 15 May, 2013
Since 2009, the department of Information & Library Services (ILS) of the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) maintains an information portal on rural decentralization & local governance (RDLG). This document provides a description of the portal as per 15 May 2013, in terms of: (1) purpose; (2) ICT infrastructure; (3) content by source type (e.g. 260 websites); (4) content by geography; (5) content by subtopic; (6) content by publication year; (7) information collecting; (8) web 2.0; (9) positioning; and (10) relevance. Purpose The purpose of the portal is to: (1) collect useful free, online material on rural governance for internal and external users; and (2) enhance access to KIT publications and bring related activities (trainings, conferences, projects) to the attention of potential clients. ICT infrastructure The information portal is implemented in: (1) the integrated library system of Minisis, M2L, which forms the digital heart of the ILS Library; and (2) the content management system SmartSite of Seneca. The search engine is provided by Vivisimo of IBM. The search engine cannot only search bibliographically, but enables also full-text searching of online documents. Searches can be refined in the left sidebar. The search help shows how to conduct a basic search and how to use the more advanced search options. The combination of content, indexing, and powerful software gives very good search results. Content by source type The information portal contains the following source types: e-publications (1,256), websites (260), audio
visual items (16), bibliographic databases (15), presentations (12), e-discussions (10), e-newsletters (9), ejournals (8), weblogs (6), and a directory of projects (1). Almost 80% of the total number of items (1595 on 15 May, 2013) consists of e-publications, while almost one-sixth consists of websites. Combined, they represent 95% of the entire content of the information portal. Special attention is paid to the collection of manuals and toolkits

and lessons learned. Content by geography

Sub-Saharan Africa is a key focus of the information portal: in the top 40 geographical keywords we find south africa (147), africa south of sahara (99), uganda (96), ghana (79), tanzania (67), africa (66), kenya (40), mali (39), ethiopia (36), senegal (33), west africa (32), malawi (29), benin (28), burkina faso (26), mozambique (24), nigeria (21), cameroon (19), niger (19), zambia (18), botswana (17), southern africa (17), zimbabwe (17), namibia (16), and rwanda (16). Asia (india (83), indonesia (60), asia (40), philippines (36), bangladesh (29), nepal (28), asia and the pacific (26), vietnam (21), pakistan (20), cambodia (19), china (15)) and Latin America are also well represented. latin america (53), brazil (40), bolivia (29), mexico (15).

Content by subtopic The developmental aspects of local government in rural are a key focus of this information portal. Important aspects include: popular participation, natural resources, public services, taxation, poverty alleviation, and capacity-building. The top-20 of keywords is composed of: local government (906), decentralization in government (694), governance (493), popular participation (317), public services (249), accountability (230), capacity building (213), poverty alleviation (210), community participation (197), democracy (183), development assistance (181), public administration (166), economic development (136), civil society (134), development strategies (117), natural resources (105), development planning (104), guidelines (97), land rights (95), and development policy (92).

Content by publication year 1983/4 2 1991/2 1 1985/6 1 1993/4 1 1987/8 0 1995/6 1 1989/0 0 1997/8 7

1999/0 7 2001/2 26 2003/4 54 2005/6 117

2007/8 232 2009/0 333 2011/2 407 2013/4 24

Information collecting The information is collected in four ways, viz. by: (1) Google Scholar alerts; (2) Twitter; (3) RSS; and (4) websites. Google Scholar is the most time effective, i.e. produces the most useful results for the least search effort. Currently, three alerts are used based on queries focusing on: (a) capacity-building OR capacity-strengthening; (b) planning OR monitoring OR evaluation OR budgeting; and (c) local development OR participatory OR community OR civil OR non-governmental. The remainder of the queries contains the following terms: (i) decentralization OR "local governance OR government; and (ii) developing countries OR Africa OR poverty OR rural development OR millennium OR mdgs. The minimum time requirement per item is 45 minutes: (1) searching: 15 minutes; (2) providing short abstract and keywords (UNBIS thesaurus): 15 minutes; and (3) indexing: 15 minutes. The target is to have 1 item/day, i.e. 30/month. This corresponds to 23 hours/month. The information is used for tweets. A tweet takes about 5 minutes/item, which corresponds to about 3 hours/month. The time needed for searching and abstracting has been limited to 6 hours/week, so about 1 hour/week is left to check a limited number of RSS feeds and websites. Web 2.0 The LocalGovernance account of Twitter has currently (15 May 2013) 512 followers. There seems to be sufficient scope for further growth to 1000 followers within about 1-1.5 years. Without detailed analysis it seems clear that new followers are increasingly people from the South with an interest in local governance. Meanwhile, most if not all - of the international organizations involved in local governance worldwide are among the followers, some with multiple, including individual, accounts. Referral to the portal site from Twitter is an important source of visitors. Alerts for the portals new additions are available as RSS and e-alerts, but their contribution is limited. It is very likely that a blog with short items on various aspects of local governance in a rural setting in the South would help to attract many more visitors. Positioning The strong focus on developmental local governance in a rural Southern context is unique. The active collection and sharing of current material allows practitioners worldwide to keep up with topical documents without any effort. There is no alternative way of finding this material, e.g. by the use of scholarly databases. In that sense the collection can be considered complementary to what is available via databases. Significant other collections in the area are those of GSDRC and FLACMA-UCLG Municipal Library, but they lack the same focus, the first being insufficiently geared to local government and the second mostly geared towards municipal local government in Latin America. Relevance According to Google Analytics there were 182 page views in 106 visits by 73 visitors, of which 40% returning visitors during the month of 11 April-11 May, 2013. Of these, 33 visits came from Twitter, 21 were direct (i.e. bookmark or similar), 21 came from Google search, and 12 came from a backlink on the GSDRC site. The number of downloads is typically in the range 100-120 documents/month. It would seem that these figures are well below potential. It is very likely that with growing Internet connectivity in sub-Saharan Africa and the rising importance attached to local governance for rural development, the relevance of the RDLG collection can grow considerably in the years to come.