CGI.br’s Collection on Internet Governance: 5 years later | IGF 2023 Open Forum #98

Vinicius W. O. Santos

The open forum, co-organized by CGI.br (The Brazilian Internet Steering Committee) and ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), aimed to facilitate the exchange of experiences and knowledge on memory and documentation in the field of Internet Governance. CGI.br presented its efforts in designing a specialized library on Internet Governance and publishing official documents related to the subject.

Discussions at the forum focused on the challenges of managing and retrieving information in the dynamic field of Internet Governance. Participants expressed a strong interest in creating a comprehensive collection to organize, preserve, and retrieve the wealth of information generated in this rapidly evolving domain.

The project initiated by CGI.br and ICANN has grown significantly, incorporating various tools, practices, methodologies, and content types. This progress demonstrates the commitment and dedication of the organizations involved in ensuring accessibility and availability of valuable resources in Internet Governance.

Looking ahead, the session addressed the challenges and future prospects of the project. There are various obstacles to be addressed in the short and long term. The forum aimed to provide an overview of the project’s progress and foster discussions on overcoming these challenges.

Partnerships and collaboration emerged as fundamental pillars for successful work within Internet Governance, particularly in informational and archival projects. The absence of partnerships could impede the implementation and deployment of these initiatives, while collaborative efforts form the foundation of achievements in this field.

In conclusion, the open forum organized by CGI.br and ICANN served as a valuable platform for exchanging experiences and knowledge on memory and documentation in Internet Governance. It highlighted the importance of specialized libraries, the publication of official documents, effective management and retrieval of information, and establishing partnerships and collaborations for success in this domain. The project has evolved significantly, but challenges remain. Future prospects were discussed for continued progress.

Audience

The role of libraries in providing access to knowledge and the internet is significant, with a major impact on internet history and facilitating access. They bridge the digital divide by ensuring access to information and resources. In the context of internet governance-related events, having content available in the Brazilian language is seen as crucial for effective engagement and reducing inequality. Cgi.br collections greatly contribute to qualifying Brazilian participation in internet governance-related processes, while systematic organization and documentation are commended. Additionally, there is a call for a larger project on internet data archive that would benefit researchers, policymakers, and civil society. The use of machine learning algorithms for data categorization and the importance of partnerships and collaboration in internet governance projects are also highlighted. The absence of a taxonomy initiative in internet governance sparks curiosity, and the library sector recognizes the importance of the internet in delivering services and promoting information dissemination. Libraries are seen as more than just buildings, playing a vital role in educating for digital and information literacy. The close connection between libraries and internet service providers is emphasized, and there is a suggestion to explore the use of large language models for taxonomy extraction. Overall, the analysis underscores the significance of libraries, language inclusivity, collaboration, and technological advancements in internet governance.

Jean Carlos Ferreira dos Santos

The project at hand is primarily concerned with the development of the CGI.br and NIC.br collections, encompassing various activities such as documentation, publishing, and the design of a physical library. To efficiently manage and organize the collections, the project relies on the usage of tools like DSpace for the creation of digital repositories, Koha for library system operations, and ViewFind as a discovery tool.

Additionally, the library serves as an educational resource for capacity-building initiatives, providing valuable information and resources to enhance knowledge and skills. However, the project faces certain challenges. One of these challenges is the construction of controlled vocabularies, a crucial aspect in the field of internet governance. Likewise, the implementation, development, and maintenance of open-source tools present significant complexities.

Nevertheless, the project also brings forth several potential benefits. Collaboration and dialogue within the IGF community, for instance, can lead to numerous fruitful collaborations and exchanges of experiences. The project is open to establishing networks with other organizations and aims to maintain constant dialogue with the IGF community.

Furthermore, the project recognizes the potential of machine learning algorithms in the categorization of documentation, using them in the OECD AI Policy Observatory. Additionally, NIC-BI produces a substantial amount of data, reflecting the project’s commitment to data production.

However, challenges concerning data description, preservation, and reusability are noticeable. Describing the data effectively, preserving it for future use, and ensuring it can be reused poses significant hurdles that the project aims to address.

To improve data usage, the project actively seeks tools and standards that can be employed to utilize data more efficiently. Additionally, by incorporating standards and practices from library studies, the project hopes to organize the vast amount of content produced in the field of internet governance.

Standardised identifiers are deemed crucial for better content recovery and preservation within the internet governance community. The usage of digital object identifiers is recommended to prevent the loss of content.

A noteworthy objective of the project is to establish a taxonomy for internet governance. This initiative requires the cooperation of various stakeholders, including information science professionals, the technical community, and others. Creating a taxonomy will enable better organization and understanding of the interdisciplinary aspects of internet governance.

The importance of specific terms and concepts is acknowledged as aids in understanding the boundaries and components of the field of internet governance. By having a shared understanding of these terms and concepts, stakeholders can effectively communicate and collaborate.

The library created by the project seeks to meet the information requirements of the internet governance field. It has been designed to provide a comprehensive range of resources, expanding beyond traditional books. Additionally, efforts are being made to enable the Brazilian community and others to contribute to internet governance through the library.

Lastly, the project emphasises its openness to collaborations and contributions. By actively involving the community, the project aspires to build a stronger and more inclusive internet governance framework. After the session, the project encourages open dialogues, welcoming any questions or further discussions.

In conclusion, the project focuses on the development of the CGI.br and NIC.br collections. It employs various tools and technologies to manage and disseminate information effectively, while also addressing challenges such as the construction of controlled vocabularies and the implementation of open-source tools. Collaboration, dialogue, and the utilization of machine learning algorithms are recognized as valuable assets. The project also emphasizes the importance of data description, preservation, and reusability. By incorporating library studies, standardized identifiers, and establishing a taxonomy, the project aims to enhance information organization and understanding within the internet governance field. Furthermore, the project seeks to build a comprehensive library, engaging the community and encouraging collaborations and contributions. Overall, it demonstrates a commitment to the continued development and improvement of internet governance practices.

Vinicius W. O. Santos:
Good morning to everyone, the few ones that are with me here in the room, but also to those that are remotely following us. Also good evening and good afternoon for those in different time zones. Thank you for attending our open forum. This open forum called the, named as CGI.br’s collection on internet governance. Five years later, our intent with this session is to build upon a previous work that we have been done and also that have been presented here at the IGF to this community and to also advance these dialogues, advance some discussions, advance partnerships and so on. So I’ll just make a brief start and a brief description of what are we doing here and what are the main concerns we have and a bit of history, but very brief and then we go to the main presentation. Thank you. So this open forum, as I said, draws upon a previous open forum that was held at the IGF 2017 in Geneva. In that one, more than five years ago, almost six right now, called Memory and Documentation in Internet Governance, the Challenge of Building Collections. We described our history and the importance of building collections, shedding light especially to initiatives focused on developing internet governance. It was a very interesting session which provided a productive debate between participants and rich inputs on documentation processes and challenges in creating collections on internet governance. That time, the open forum was co-organized with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, ICANN, as means to exchange views and experiences within the initiatives of both organizations in terms of memory and collections in internet governance. ICANN emphasized its initiative focused on documenting, organizing and preserving institutional information and memory. In that time, ICANN was also releasing and launching a new initiative together with us. We as the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee, CGI.br, presented our initial efforts to design a specialized library on internet governance. We first introduced to the IGF community that time what we were planning and had recently deployed within CGI.br regarding documentation, memory and collection in internet governance. We also shared our experience on CGI.br’s documentation and outreach initiatives, including our publishing initiatives which cover different books and other publication formats, as well as various CGI.br’s official documents. Some questions really guided us back then in that discussion. I think it’s very important to mention those questions also now for us to move forward. In that time, we were talking about how do we establish practices, processes and technological tools to organize and retrieve information in internet governance fields? What are the particularities and challenges of managing and retrieving information about internet governance? This was the core of the discussion in that moment. These concerns emerged from the interest in creating a collection to organize, preserve and retrieve information produced in this field. Of course, we were dealing specifically with our activities as the background, so the activities of our organization, but we were also trying to envision how this experience could dialogue with other initiatives, other organizations, other types of work. From that time until now, the project has evolved in many aspects. The debate on the session back there allowed us to advance in the project to create and develop CGI.br and NIC.br collections. We at the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee and the Brazilian Network Information Center, we started to grow this set of tools, practices, methodologies, and also contemplating more and more activities and types of publication, types of content, and trying to organize them all. This time, we are now at this session to show to you, to present how this work has been evolving since there, and what are the main achievements of this work until now, and what are the main concerns we have at this moment, but also looking further. What are the challenges we are looking ahead, and how do we expect to address them in the short and long term? This is more or less the intent of the session, the basics, I would say, and I will pass now the word for the floor to my colleague, Gilles, that will present the actual status of our project right now, and then we will get back to the audience and hope to have some sort of conversation with those interested in these themes, and maybe some questions and answers, and we are available to any sort of dialogue. Thank you. Jean, the floor is yours.

Jean Carlos Ferreira dos Santos:
Thank you, Vinicius. Good morning, everyone, to attending our Open Forum TGI Collection on Internet Governance five years later. My role here is to report how it’s going since the previous Open Forum five years ago, and the idea here is to report the main activities of our collection. So TGI.br activities includes the production and dissemination of information on the use of development of internet in Brazil through its operational arm, the Brazilian Network Information Center, NIC.br. There is a wide variety of materials created by TGI and NIC.br, such as books, guides, reports, minutes of TGI.br meetings, resolutions, and technical notes and other outreach materials. During the pandemic, the number of audiovisual content has also grown significantly. Many events moved to the online format, and the videos, for example, were made available on YouTube NIC.br channel, and different areas in NIC.br also start producing different contents, for example, podcasts. And in order to not risk or afford to be just on more out of so many books, videos, images, and sounds, we developed permanent and well-established documentation process to preserve and make all that content available to Brazilian audience. So I would say that we have mainly three pillars that support the development of TGI collection. The first pillar is documentation of TGI.br activities, which involves organization, classification, and retrieval of minutes, resolutions, and other activities carried out by TGI.br. All the official documentation produced by TGI are made available online in our website. Another aspect involves the documentation, recording, and preserving memory of TGI.br’s activities and process. Making them recoverable is one of the main challenges. It’s necessary to thematically sort and catalog this internal information for use in TGI.br process, enhance transparency, and make it accessible to anyone interested in referencing or repurposing this content. For example, researchers, students, and anyone that would to understand how TGI works and how or what TGI do. And the second pillar encompasses our publications. For instance, TGI.br book series, this is just an example that the publication that we made, TGI.br book series is a book collection that started in 2014, focuses on references and studies on internet governance in both printed and online format. This series had a significant impact on the local community. These book collections aim to provide the community with access to essential references for internet governance. When the documents are not available in Portuguese, one of the steps includes translating these documents, these contents, into Portuguese. Just to mention some interesting examples, we have translated the WSIS Declaration, which was the first CGI book series that we published. The Jovan Corbaliha book, Introduction to Internet Governance, it’s a very important reference to understand what is internet governance, was a cooperation with Diplo Foundation. We have translated some reports through collaboration with the Internet and Juridiction Policy Network. For example, the Global Status Report and other documents. This publication are sent to a large number of libraries in Brazil. Our libraries partner network that receives CGI and TGI.br publications has approximately 700 entities across the country, including university libraries, public libraries, libraries of research institutions, institutions from third sector, civil society, and the business sector, among others. The books are also adopted by different capacity-building initiatives in different parts of Brazil, such as universities, schools, and others. So these publications are very important in different contexts in Brazil. Furthermore, it’s worth underlining that CGI and TGI.br embrace an open access model, so our publications are freely available for download on our website under a Creative Commons license. The Project Third Pillar involves designing a physical space to house the physical collection and support the community interested in internet governance subjects. In this sense, we have worked on creating a space with a specialized physical library, which brings together reference printed pieces on the most diverse topics in internet-related activities and areas of knowledge. This library is based at NIC.br headquarters. While working this way has been to conduct a bibliographical survey, monitoring the bibliographical production on internet governance and related subjects to integrate it to the collection, so we are permanently obtaining these new books, new publications on internet governance. Currently, the library has about 1,300 items. We have been prospecting the main academic bibliographic production related to internet subject, technical, social, legal, and others, reports, periodicals, technical documents as well, and also to document and store the entire CGI and NIC.br bibliographical production, so the idea is that the library protect and preserve the production of TGI and NIC.br. So it’s a diverse collection reflecting the internet’s interdisciplinarity. The library also supports NIC.br teams in their activities. It is also an educational resource useful for capacity-building initiatives, such as the Brazilian Internet Governance School and the Youth Brazilian Program, so they can use this library. So considering these three pillars, the project’s second phase aims to identify and sort the materials produced by CGI and NIC.br and estimate the amount of digital items and other materials, and then from there prospect tools and standards for organizing and making these materials available. So considering these three pillars, documentation, publishing, and design the physical library, the following step of the project was to focus on identifying specialized infrastructure for creating and managing collections. So we have been working a lot in prospect and choose good tools to create this collection, to make it useful. So at this stage, the support of the Brazilian Institute of Information and Science and Technology, IBICT, was essential. IBICT is a federal institutional organization in Brazil that gave us free consultation and support on exploring suitable tools and standards for creating, managing, and making information sources available. IBICT also guided us to identify cataloging good practice and standards for bibliographic items and digital objects. And considering the amount of existing materials, their formats, and the project proposal of organizing and enhancing their retrievability, the necessity for the following technology was noted during the process. We need an integrated library system used for book description and cataloging, creating of the online catalog for search in a system that make it possible for users to borrow books that allow the users using the physical library, a digital repository to register, sort, and organize digital materials and make them available in a structured way. We need a specific software to establish interrelationship between authors, their affiliations, and production and subjects. We need a tool that’s supporting interoperability standard was a factor that we used, support standards that enable the exchange of data and metadata across systems. Creation and management vocabularies and metadata models are essential to make the records standardized and indexing. Libraries integration, we need a tool that integrates different platforms into a single search interface. So we choose open source and free software. It was our philosophy. We choose software specialized in collection management that had a large number of users, and that software that many libraries use this tool. So just to briefly mention some of the softwares we have. been using. Here is just a representation of some tools that we use to create and manage all this content. This is a cora, a library system that provides online catalog of the physical collection, lending books and managing all library activities. It’s an open source software that has a large active community of libraries that use it. So it’s a tool that a lot of libraries in the world use this software. This space, it’s a software for creating digital repositories. This space can be used to manage and make digital objects available, including e-books, videos, audio and other documents formats. Many academic institutions around the world widely adopt this space. In Brazil, a lot of universities adopt this space to create digital collections. On this platform, we make the files available and describe the subject and the authors using Dublin Core standard to describe the files. And it also supports interoperability with other systems. Stematris, it’s a web application on creating and managing vocabularies and taxonomies. ViewFind, finally, is a discovery tool that integrates all these databases through a single search interface. So it’s a tool that allows the user to search in the oldest browser in this oldest database. So in addition to our physical library, repository development has advanced recently. So we have the physical library, but the repository is under construction. But we hope, we plan to launch it soon, making all Brazilian IGF materials available in organized and indexed collection. It includes the workshop reports, the videos. It is a strategy to increase the visibility and the impact of workshops and other materials of the Brazilian IGF. This is just a print screen of the collection. The repository interface, it’s under construction. It’s a work in progress. The repository allows to create some collection, subcollection, and, for example, this is a collection of the Brazilian IGF. We list our edition, and each edition has the materials, videos, reports, and presentations. It’s just, it is our last edition of Brazilian IGF, is a record. So this is our COHA interface, is the catalog. The users can search in this box and know what titles and books we have. So the collection has been growing in relation to the physical library, so that we will expand the physical space. In the future, it will be an open space in which the community can not only access our specialized collection, but also receive support to search and retrieve specific information efficiently, and taking full advantage from libraries’ vast collection. So in the future, the idea is to open this physical library for the community. We aim to expand interaction with the Brazilian community. Our collection is quite unique. Researchers, students, and practitioners, among others, will benefit from this library. So we hope that people from civil society, from private sector, can use this library in the future. So some challenges we are facing. For example, the vocabulary construction, the standards to make vocabularies, is the main challenge that we deal every day. Most cataloging processes and software require standardized terms, building controlled vocabularies is a challenge in Internet governance as a whole. In our previous open forum in 2017, this topic was pointed out as a barrier in general for retrieving information in Internet governance. One of the main challenges we face is the availability of collaborative and shared controlled terminology in Internet governance and related subjects. So we are working on vocabulary in the Internet governance area, focus on semantic retrieval of digital materials. Another challenge concerns the open source set of tools we adopt. They are very robust and meet our needs, but they perform equal or even better than private software. However, there is a significant complexity in its implementation, development, and maintenance. But we believe that this open source set of tools are also an important way to integrate our collection with other collections, establish network with other organizations, and spread more efficiently TGI and .br materials. At the same time that we also have access to new and different publications and materials from partner organizations. So just to conclude my presentation, the project, I would like to highlight that the project has a potential for many collaborations. We are open to exchange experience, sharing what we have been learning on building our collection or struggle with these tools. Building an Internet governance vocabulary is also part of the project. Next step, it will become a first pillar of the project. The idea is to create multilingual vocabulary, which allows us to index materials and standardize it in a structured manner. This work requires stakeholder collaboration. Our proposal is also to always be in dialogue with the IGF community. So we believe it’s essential to build a track on collection in this forum. So thank you. Now we are open to comments and questions.

Vinicius W. O. Santos:
Thank you. Thank you, Jean. Well, this was the overall presentation of our project and the actual status of it. I think, but before anything else, let me just correct something that I just forgot to do at the beginning. Let us introduce ourselves. My name is Vinicius. I’m here actually replacing Hartmut Glaser, that guy that you are just reading on the session description. He is the Executive Secretary of CGI.br in Brazil. He couldn’t come here, and I’m replacing him as the moderator of this session.

Jean Carlos Ferreira dos Santos:
We have many colleagues here from NIC.br and CGI.br, from the advisory team and also from specialized departments of NIC.br, departments that produce a lot of knowledge and a lot of materials that are inside of this scope we are just discussing here of how to sort, classify, and spread, and so on. Jean, that just presented the actual status of this project, is the coordinator of this project in NIC.br, CGI.br. We also have Amanda with us. She’s together with him in this project and will be helping us with the good report for this session, for us also to be able to index this report within the set of tools Jean was just proposing. Well, just to pass the floor to any interested person to make questions, I would just like to say that this session is very important for us because we do think that this is a subject that is not very much discussed, and we do believe that this is very important. For example, yesterday we had that main session on the future of digital governance, and we had a member of the library’s ecosystem making a question, and we were just chatting with him after the session, and chatting about these initiatives and other discussions related to libraries and access to knowledge. The library’s coalition is a very important coalition in the history of the IGF. Libraries had a very important role to the Internet throughout its history, mainly in terms of access to the Internet for some time, and now mainly for the access to knowledge, as we know. This is something that we are trying to also integrate in the scope of this discussion we are bringing here to the IGF community. The floor is open for questions. If someone has comments, questions, please feel free to ask for the floor. We have Alexandre, we have Everton, and that’s it. So please, Alexandre, feel free to. Everton. Thank you. Is it?

Audience:
Yeah, it works. Well, good morning. Thank you, Jean, for the presentation. Thank you, Vinicius, Amanda. I just would like to make more a comment than a question. We often see many Brazilians joining Internet governance-related events all over the world, and I just would like to emphasize how important it is to have content available for the audiences that we deal with, and the collections, the cgi.br collections is a great example of that, because it helps so much to qualify the Brazilian audience in order for them to reach out, to participate, to engage in processes, in Internet governance-related processes, in a much higher level than if they just showed up completely new to the environment. So cgi.br collections play a very important role for the community in growing that community qualification for the audience in Brazil. So that’s more a comment than a question.

Vinicius W. O. Santos:
Thank you. Thank you. Alexandre, please.

Audience:
Yes, good morning, everyone, and congratulations, Jean, for this amazing project, and I would say that since the last IGF in Geneva that you have mentioned, you really made a huge progress in systematizing all this documentation, and it is, for me, a good example to be followed by other Internet governance structures. I would say that besides this very good work that you have been leading, this should be the basis for a future, a more humblest project on Internet data archive, which is really very important, not only for researchers and policymakers, but the whole civil society community. So this is a very quick comment, and my question is, since we are dealing with non-structured type of data, documents and publications, have you ever thought of using machine learning algorithms to categorize this type of documentation based on the taxonomy? I’m asking that because at the OECD AI Policy Observatory, they do have algorithms that will, based on that given taxonomy, categorize all the documents related to AI, such as national strategies, or regulatory frameworks, or legal frameworks, and also technical documentations. These would really enhance even more the great potential that the work you have been leading in terms of constructing this database and documentation.

Jean Carlos Ferreira dos Santos:
Thank you, Alexandre. Yes, I think it’s a good question. We are trying to prospect all these tools and good practice on organizing data and materials. We are working now in text and videos, but we have a huge challenge about data. NIC-BI produced a lot of data, but we need tools and standards to use this data more efficiently or extract good insights from this data, and a big challenge is to describe it, preserve it, and make it reusable, apply other standards, specific standards for data to use and share this data. I think it’s our next phase of the project, how to use this data more efficiently. How to collect and preserve and make this data useful.

Vinicius W. O. Santos:
Thank you, Alexandre, for the question. Thank you, Jen, for the answer. Raquel, do you want to get the microphone?

Audience:
Yes. I also want to make a question. For the record, my name is Raquel Gato. I’m also from NIC-BI’s team, but this is an individual capacity question. For Jean and Vinicius, thank you very much, and Amanda, for your work and the presentation. My question is for someone who is listening and is inspired right now to replicate what you were doing and taking into consideration the five years lesson learned that you have, what would be the tips for someone to start this project, if you have two or three takeaways that could help someone to replicate?

Jean Carlos Ferreira dos Santos:
Thank you, Raquel, that’s a very good question. In fact, it’s a long way. We try to apply standards and practice from library studies, information studies field, and library studies is not a field that has a good interface with internet governance, but this field has a lot of tools and standards, open source tools, open source space, and software that can help organizations to organize this huge amount of content that internet governance produces all the time. I think we need dialogue with this community. For example, in Brazil, as I mentioned, it helped us a lot because they had expertise to identify the right tool, the right standard, and some of these tools are for free, but there is a challenge because we need knowledge to understand programming, to code this tool, so we need interface. with the technical community. And I think it’s this, and the other challenge is the internet governance communities produce a lot of books, reports, but we don’t have standardized identifiers, we don’t have, we don’t use codes to, that allows, recover this content, so a lot of things, we lost this content, and so we need to use this digital object identifiers, different ways to recover and preserve this content, I don’t know if I answered your question.

Vinicius W. O. Santos:
Thank you. I would just pass the floor to Alexandre, but just a brief comment, I’m the moderator, but I would also like to make a comment. Just building on what Jean just said, and also from some parts of his presentation, I think there is a word that is very important for many things related to internet governance, and it also applies to this discussion here about information and archiving and so on. Partnerships. We do need partnerships and collaboration. Partnerships and collaboration are the basis for many of our work within internet governance, and it’s not different from this kind of project we are discussing here. If it was not for the partnerships we had, like Jean mentioned, we probably would have had more difficulties and more barriers to be able to implement and to deploy things related to this project, and this is a work in progress, as he also mentioned, and we still need a lot of partnerships and collaboration to move forward. Alexandre, please.

Audience:
Just a curiosity, Jean, because we’ve seen that many organizations, like ISO or even OECD, are working on taxonomies for different specific specialized areas, such as AI, or even ISO is working on a taxonomy for ICT in health, but I haven’t heard yet any type of initiatives to create a taxonomy on internet governance. It’s just a curiosity if you have an idea, if there is anyone working on this type of creation of a taxonomy, and as Vinicius has just said, I strongly believe that this is a collaborative type of initiative, to build a taxonomy based on many stakeholders building this type of taxonomy. Do you have an idea if this exists or not?

Jean Carlos Ferreira dos Santos:
Yeah. As I mentioned, the library studies and information science have this kind of practice, but internet governance, since five years ago, every edition, IGF edition, there is a session or a workshop or DC that try to discuss how to build a vocabulary or taxonomy in internet governance, but I think there is the community struggle, what is this, why we need, how to, because internet governance is a diverse field, so we need a lot of collaboration, a lot of subjects and specialized knowledge, but we need to discuss in IGF, create more open forum, maybe a workshop to try to bring the community from information science, from technical community and other stakeholders to think about how to create a vocabulary, and I think it’s important to, important community think about what is internet governance, it’s an area, it’s a field, so when we think in terms of, it’s a field of knowledge, we need terms, we need concepts, we need to understand the boundaries, to identify what we are, so I think I’m philosophy a little bit. That’s good.

Vinicius W. O. Santos:
Thank you. Yeah. Please.

Audience:
Good morning. My name is Winston Roberts and the first thing I must say is to apologize for my late arrival, I have been unwell, I tried to send a message to Everton, but the phone call didn’t go through, so apologies for that. I’m, because I’m not well, I don’t want to speak a lot, but on the other hand, I am tempted to speak a lot because I should, because I am here on behalf of the International Federation of Library Associations, IFLA, and we are heavily involved in internet governance in the IGF process as one of the multi-stakeholder communities. I am not prepared for this session because I had not really planned to attend it, however, thanks to Everton’s invitation, I have come along and I seem to have arrived just in the middle of a very interesting discussion about libraries. So this is an interesting coincidence, but the question is, what do you mean by libraries? The library sector is like any global professional sector. It has regions and sub-regions and categories and types, it has technical standards for all its different types of operations, and we, when we talk about technical standards, we tend to mean standards for performance, standards for service delivery, we also mean standards for processes within libraries, but that’s not of great concern to you, I think. One area of standards that does concern us is coding, but I’m not an expert in that so I won’t comment further. I think the main thing to say is that we do have, I disagree with one previous speaker who said there is not really an interface between your sector and libraries. I don’t agree with that because we cannot deliver our services without using the internet. We cannot possibly do that because all our services depend on certain applications of the internet and the transmission of our information services depends on the internet. We don’t use physical transport so much anymore, we use the internet. And, you know, if you regard a library as a building with books, then it cannot disseminate its information without using the internet. On the other hand, a library is not anymore just a building with books. The library is a motor for generating information and disseminating information and it has to use the internet and therefore it has to use, excuse me, the libraries use the internet as a platform. We provide content services to, we put content on the internet, we deliver, we mediate between the internet service providers and our users and we provide information to our users. We help them understand the purpose of the internet, we help them understand, evaluate information they find on the net, we help them develop digital literacy and information literacy, which means learning how to understand the truth or untruth of the information they find on the net, how not to be fooled and how to use it constructively. We have a lot of things in common with the technical community. One of those is the inclusion of all sectors of society in the information ecosystems that we have today. Inclusion of all, regardless of whether they are men, women, children, regardless of their beliefs, their religions, their race, their anything, we do not discriminate. Information services are support for democracy and we educate our children using these information services, but also in education. Internet is used in schools, in school libraries, not just in textbooks but in information services which are online in classrooms, at least in many countries. So I feel I am turning into a professor in this comment. Sorry, I didn’t mean to come along and talk like an academic. What I suggest you do is if you want to know more about IFLA, you look at our website, which is www.ifla.org. It is based in the Netherlands. It has a secretariat in the Netherlands. My microphone is not working. Two of our senior people from headquarters from the secretariat are here at the IGF. One of them is Maria de Bradefeuille. She is Mexicana, but she speaks many languages. I will give you her name. Not that. I will give you her email to the secretary or somebody if you like. You could email her to ask her details. You could also email our policy director, Steven Weiber, whose name you will find on the Internet as well. You could email him to ask about our policies on the Internet, but particularly look at information on our website about the Internet Manifesto, which we are developing. We published our Internet Manifesto 10 years ago. It is being updated now because of all the new technical developments. Things go very fast, as you know, and a 10-year-old manifesto is very out of date. Remember that we are developing a manifesto for libraries, not for you, so we are trying to tell our members what the Internet is, how it is important for them and their societies. It is also important for you to understand how we use the Internet services that you are developing. The two sectors have a strong interface intellectually and politically in terms of policy. We have a regional committee for Latin America and the Caribbean, IFLA-LAC. You will find information. I do not want to give you names and addresses and emails now in this session, but look on our website and you will find the details of our regional committee and the members, the chair and secretary and the regional office. I think you should contact them and ask them all the questions you would like. If they do not know the answers, they will refer them to headquarters, but we are heavily involved in the policy process with the multi-stakeholder community. We support this IGF process. We have been doing this since it started in 2005. I have said enough. I am going to start coughing if I keep talking, so apologies again. If you want to ask me questions after the session, feel free to come and approach me. Thank you.

Vinicius W. O. Santos:
Thank you, Winston. Thank you for your intervention. Don’t worry, we were actually talking about libraries, really, and you just arrived at a very good moment. Well, you could not be in the first part of the session, but the session was about presenting our project in terms of how it is in terms of status and also discussing some of its challenges in terms of developing, advancing, but also in terms of collaboration and partnership, as we were just discussing when you arrived. So your intervention regarding EFLUT, that is something we try to follow as well within the ecosystem and also the dynamic coalition on libraries. All of this, we are actually following the developments as well, so all of this is very connected, so thank you very much for your intervention. Diogo, you had a question or a comment?

Audience:
Hello? Yeah, it’s working now? Okay, good morning. It’s not a question, it’s a comment or an idea, because Alexander mentioned about taxonomy and so on, and also machine learning algorithms, and we see, I mean, we are in a new way since the beginning of the year with large language models, and I do think you could explore large language models on this process, because we see many research from the technical point of view, possibilities of using large language models to extract taxonomies or try to identify. Of course, it’s not, will be the final taxonomy, but could help to extract insights, and it’s like a paradox, because a large language model hallucinates, because it does not have a curated knowledge there, but it’s also being used as a tool to extract taxonomies and then go to a process of human creating these and using again in new algorithms. So, it’s just an idea that you can push in the future with partners, and I mean, we can be a partner for this. So, thank you and congratulations for the project and for the presentation.

Vinicius W. O. Santos:
Thank you, Diogo, for your question and for your proposal of partnership. We will charge you anytime. But, well, I think we are actually arriving and reaching the time limit we have for this session. It’s almost 9.30 is the limit we have. Do we have any final comment or question? If not, I’m passing the word to Jean for Jean to say some final words, and then we can just close the session. Okay, thank you.

Jean Carlos Ferreira dos Santos:
Thank you, Vinicius. Just a few comments. Just to say thank you. I think we got a lot of insights for our next step, and just emphasize that we try to build a library that is just more than books. We try to attend all the necessities around the information on internet governance to enable the Brazilian community and others to participate and build internet governance, and we are open to collaborations and contributions. So, I think it’s this. So, thank you very much, and we can talk after the session if someone has some question. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. The session is closed. See you in other sessions, in the IGF and other moments. Thank you. Thank you very much. Arigato gozaimashita.