Rural Empowerment through Digital Knowledge Project in Hyderabad Karnataka, India : Regional Content, Access and Impact to Reach the Unreached

Abstract

In the light of Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005, National Knowledge Commission and Digital India initiatives by Government of India, the study signifies the role of Public libraries in general and rural libraries in particular as an extremely important element of the foundation of a knowledge economy and recognized to have a social function in making knowledge publicly available to all. In this paper the authors trace the existing literature on rural librarianship, highlights various smart village projects and government initiatives by Government of India in building and empowering rural masses with information. A case study of Digital Knowledge Project in Hyderabad Karnataka region is evaluated in terms of its relevance of digitizing the regional language content i.e., Kannada language ebooks for the rural masses in Karnataka and discusses the modalities of network architecture, digital literacy campaign and accessibility. Further the impact of such project on the rural community is also reported with the challenges of infrastructure and implementation of projects. © 2018 IEEE.