The final Report, Executive Summary, and
presentations from the September 2005 CODATA
Workshop on Strategies for Permanent Access to
Scientific Information in Southern Africa: Focus
on Health and Environmental Information for
Sustainable Development are now freely
available online. CODATA is the
interdisciplinary Committee on Data for Science
and Technology, affiliated with the
International Council for Science (ICSU) in Paris.
The Southern African workshop was one in a
series focused on issues related to the
preservation of and access to scientific
information resources in developing countries.
This most recent event was co-organized by the U.S. National
Committee for CODATA in collaboration with
the South
African National Committee for CODATA, the
National
Research Foundation of South Africa, and
the CODATA
Task Group on Preservation of and Access to
Scientific and Technical Data in Developing
Countries.
For the past several years I have had the pleasure of working with CODATA as part of the US National Committee and as Co-chair of the Task Group on Preservation of and Access to Scientific and Technical (S&T) Data in Developing Countries. It is gratifying to see the work pay off. This southern African workshop has already yielded a regional activity to begin documenting and sharing information on data sources for sustainable development in Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries. And while change and development appear to move slowly, the persistence of committed people does make a difference.