The purpose of this paper was to explore African conceptions of digital libraries from the perspective of the historical literature. This paper argues that the concept of digital libraries is a western creation and that there was a need for developing societies to develop their own conceptions to guide their own digital library development agenda.,The paper is based on a literature review. The paper makes use of publicly-available literature on the theme of digital libraries from both the Western and African perspectives. The search terms used were “digital libraries”, “Africa digital libraries”, “electronic libraries”, “information communication technologies/libraries” and “institutional repositories”. A total of 89 publications were examined for this purpose.,The analysis revealed that most of the initial digital library initiatives in Africa emanated from the west with African countries benefiting from international initiatives to expand access to information resources to bridge the global digital divide. However, due to a number of contextual challenges such as lack of sustainable funding and inadequate capacity and strategy, the development of digital libraries was hampered. Thus, even though digital libraries enjoy considerable goodwill, there remain negative conceptions of digital libraries in Africa.,Information institutions in African countries must evolve a unified conception of digital libraries as this would largely drive the direction of digital library development towards achieving the developmental goals of the continent.,The study applies the attributes of innovation to explain contextual factors shaping African conceptions of digital libraries.

中文翻译：

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数字图书馆的概念：非洲的视角

本文的目的是从历史文献的角度探讨非洲的数字图书馆概念。本文认为数字图书馆的概念是西方的创造，发展中的社会需要发展自己的概念以指导自己的数字图书馆发展议程。本文基于文献综述。本文从西方和非洲的角度出发，利用数字图书馆主题的公开文献。使用的搜索词是“数字图书馆”，“非洲数字图书馆”，“电子图书馆”，“信息通信技术/图书馆”和“机构存储库”。为此，共检查了89种出版物。分析表明，非洲最初的大多数数字图书馆计划都源于西方国家，非洲国家从国际计划中受益，这些计划旨在扩大信息资源的获取以弥合全球数字鸿沟。但是，由于许多背景挑战，例如缺乏可持续的资金以及能力和战略不足，数字图书馆的发展受到了阻碍。因此，即使数字图书馆享有很高的信誉，非洲仍然存在对数字图书馆的消极观念。非洲国家的信息机构必须发展统一的数字图书馆观念，因为这将极大地推动数字图书馆发展的方向，以实现发展目标大陆。