<http://purl.org/dc/terms/description>
"The following research has been carried out in order to assess the current state of access\r\nto both print and electronic scholarship at 6 universities in the developing nation of\r\nCameroon and to gather information about the perceptions and needs that students,\r\nprofessors and librarians have regarding open access to scholarly resources through the\r\nuse of the Internet. This has been done in order to discover how open access via the\r\nInternet can make a positive contribution to the scholarly lives of people who find\r\nthemselves victims of the digital divide and the knowledge gap and to promote the\r\ndemocratization of knowledge access via this mode of information dissemination. Using\r\nquestionnaires, this research asked 91 participants topical questions regarding these\r\nissues and discovered that the importance of increasing both access to technology and\r\nresearch literature is appreciated and supported. The questionnaires were prepared by\r\nJohn Willinsky and Henry Kang. Two librarians from Buea University in Cameroon,\r\nKivin Wirsiy and Rosemary Sutcliffe, were hired to distribute, collect and then send the\r\nresults back to Vancouver, Canada. The results of this thesis will be combined with the\r\nanalysis conducted by Kivin Wirsiy and Rosemary Sutcliffe to form a joint international\r\npublication of the larger project. What was found as a result of this study is both a source\r\nof concern and hope. Even though their access to the Internet was restrained and often at\r\ntheir own personal expenditure, the Cameroonians participating in this study were\r\ncommitted to the use and possibilities of this medium to increase their access to academic\r\nliterature and at the same time they positively anticipate overcoming the currently inferior\r\nstate of access by the ameliorating capacities posed by online journals both from abroad\r\nand, more so among students, from Africa, for their research and teaching."@en
<https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/831/items/1.0058189>