ICT, Community Memory, and Technological Appropriation

Torréns, Rodrigo,
Centro de Teleinformación
Corporación Parque Tecnológico de Mérida
Universidad de Los Andes.

Núñez, Luis, A. Dr.
Centro de Física Fundamental,
Departamento de Física, Facultad de Ciencias,
Universidad de Los Andes, Mérida 5101, Venezuela y
Centro Nacional de Cálculo Científico, Universidad de Los Andes, (CeCalCULA),
Corporación Parque Tecnológico de Mérida, Mérida 5101, Venezuela

Urribarri, Raisa, M. Sc.
Laboratorio de Investigación Educativa “Simón Rodríguez”
Núcleo Universitario “Rafael Rangel”
Universidad de Los Andes, Trujillo,Venezuela.

(Refereed Stream)

The core mission of universities and higher education institutions is to make public the results of their work and to preserve the collective memory of the institution. This includes the effective use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to systematically compile academic and research achievements as well as disseminate effectively this accumulated knowledge to society at large. Current efforts in Latin America, and Venezuela in particular, are limited but provide some valuable insights to pave the road to this important goal. The institutional repository of Universidad de Los Andes (ULA) in Venezuela (http://www.saber.ula.ve) is such an example of ICT usage to store, manage and disseminate digital material produced by our University. What has really mattered is not the web portal itself, but the high quality of the content it hosts, the easiness to access the information, the frequent updates, its secure environment and most importantly, its wide and open diffusion. The design and deployment of an institutional repository in a large university such as ULA has plenty of challenges. The social appropriation of such novel technologies by the academic community, and hence the institution's commitment to challenge its own organizational culture, has shown to be a bigger obstacle than just the mere use of these technological tools. In this paper we elaborate on the overall process of promoting a culture of content creation, publishing and preservation within ULA. The results, limitations and major challenges of this university content repository will be reviewed, emphasizing on the political & socio-economic context, the process of adopting new ICT tools and the capacity building process necessary to keep faculty staff current in the use of these tools.