2. LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN Demographics Background Jesus Lau, Ph.D. jlau@uv.mx Universidad Veracruzana World Library and Information Congress, 69th IFLA General Conference and Council, Africa, Asia & Oceania, and Latin America & Caribbean Workshop Berlin, Germany, August 7, 2003, Thursday, 13:30-17:30

3. DEMOGRAPHICS OF LATIN AMERICA Countries Population Demographic growth Languages Share more similarities than differences 20 472 million 2% Spanish, Portuguese, French History, culture, religion

4. SOCIO-ECONOMIC OVERVIEW Undergoing economic structural reforms Market oriented measures Enjoys economic growth 4.1% expected growth - 1997-2001 Close trade links with North America GDP related to size of territory

5. LARGE GDP COUNTRIES

6. MID-SIZE GDP COUNTRIES

7. SMALL GDP COUNTRIES

8. TELECOMM PROGRESS Telephones Cellular phones Satellites 32 million 24 million 34

9. TELECOMM LARGE LA COUNTRIES

10. TELECOMM MID-SIZE COUNTRIES COUNTRIES PHONES SATELLITES TV TV ´000 BROADCAST SETS STATIONS “000 Dominican R 1901 18 728 Ecuador 5851 33 940 Guatemala 2101 25 475 Peru 7722 140 2,000 Uruguay 4512 26 725 Total 2,2157242 4,868

11. TELECOMM SMALL LA COUNTRIES

12. CYBER PROGRESS Users Web pages Internet nodes Internet growth 5-8 million 150 thousand 191,129 788% Btwn 1995-7

13. GLOBAL REACH Internet integrates Latin America Communication is easier and cheaper Creates greater information awareness Makes more information services available Contributes to have world class information users

14. LIBRARY DEVELOPMENT Countries have made library progress Academic libraries are the best Internet is more used at academic libraries School and public libraries are scarce Information is still paper-based

15. LIBRARY PICTURE Libraries Librarians LIS Schools Journals Published Newspapers 40,000 30,000 87 16,000 1,000

16. INFORMATION USERS´ BACKGROUNG Middle to upper class Urban Young Usually a student or college graduate Lower income stratas (largest segment of population) are out of library reach

17. CHALLENGE: INCREASE LOCAL TOUCH Provide services to the illiterate population Gather and organize local information Join efforts or face mass media overpower Define national information policies Increase information awareness among population

18. CONCLUSIONS Latin America enjoys economic growth Telecommunications are growing Libraries have improved Global reach: Internet makes LA libraries part of the world Local reach: LA libraries require better access to local data Challenge: how to meet info demands of lower income sectors of society

19. Let’s plan a more inclusive information future for all groups of society. Thanks! Jesús Lau Presentation available at: http://bivir.uacj.mx/lau *Data comes from different statistical sources used for a paper presented at ALA Conference, please see full paper for bibliographic details.