Documentation in a community informatics project

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to discuss the creation and sharing of information by Bangladeshi women participants in a community informatics project and to assess to what extent the information provided to them meets their short and longer-term needs. Design/methodology/approach The analysis is based on data collected during a workshop with village women in Dhaka and focus group discussions in rural Bangladesh in March and April 2019. The information continuum model is used as a framework to analyse the data. Findings The study shows that the women document their learning and share it with their families and communities and that they are very conscious of the importance of keeping analogue back-ups of the information provided to them in digital format. They use notebooks to write down information that they find useful and they copy information provided to them on brown paper sheets hung in the village community houses. Practical implications This paper raises questions about how information is communicated to village women, organised and integrated in a community informatics project, and more generally about the suitability and sustainability of providing information in digital formats in a developing country. Originality/value The paper shows how village women participants in a community informatics project in Bangladesh took the initiative to create and preserve the information that was useful to them in analogue formats to remedy the limitations of the digital formats and to keep the information accessible in the longer term.