Speakers:
Marie-Helene Mottin-Sylla (ENDA-SYNFEV APC-Africa-Women, Senegal)
Lut Verstappen (Documentation Centre Amazone, Belgium)
Meg Harris (Contemporary Women's Issues, U.S.A.)

Mottin-Sylla spoke about the creation of a program of electronic information for women in Africa, to circulate information among NGOs and grassroots women. There are mailing lists in both French and English, which has enabled them to find like-minded people. Most technical people in Africa are men, and it is men who get training and facilities. Women have no training or support and have to fight for access and organisation.
They prefer to be called Information Facilitators rather than Information Brokers. Internet Facilitators mediate between technicians and end-users rather than engaging in for-profit activities. They are part of a constituency, and must fight with and for them against policy makers, funders, IT people, etc. Funders in Africa see the Internet as being only for the elite, and so they refuse funding.
The mailing lists are currently more for information distribution than for discussion. Women need training to find information online, and they need to develop their skills in this area. They are not accustomed to using this medium for discussion of ideas. E-mail is cheaper and more accessible than the WWW for women in Africa.
Problems with constituencies include: many are not connected; difficult to find e-mail addresses of those who are connected; local groups aren't interested in networking more broadly; training, access, and support remain difficult; tendency to be passive consumers of information rather than active producers of information; language barriers - French events in French countries are circulating online in English.
Information Facilitation: They want more contact with other agencies, as well as training in methods and systematic skills. They also need more hardware capacity. The Internet can be used more effectively but they don't have the means.

Harris spoke about gathering and indexing online information. The Internet reduced the dependency on print information, by increasing the ease and speed at which people can gather information and make useful contacts. She describes indexing as categorising by subject terms, bringing like information together, coding information, and making it easier for researchers to find a significant amount of highly relevant information in one location. Indexing on the Internet involves gathering relevant html links, creating a web page with a focus, maintaining and verifying links, and cataloguing existing information. Harris brings up the issue of who determines what is good information.
Shortcomings of the Internet include sites and links which are not maintained, outdated or inaccurate information, the idea that everything is available online, the relevance of the material to the viewer's needs. Useful points of Internet searching include speed, convenience, easy access in Western countries. Harris also discussed the advantages and disadvantages of search engines versus maintained sites. She warns against using the Internet as your only research tool, advising that it be used instead as one tool among many. She concluded that while the Internet is a valuable search tool, there is no central index, and a cohesive network of indexers could add a lot of value to the Internet when searching for information on women.

Lut Verstappen addressed the question of how women's information centres can mediate between supply and demand of women's information on the Internet, particularly the World Wide Web. She began by introducing Amazone, a conference and meeting centre for the promotion of equal opportunities for men and women. One of Amazone's tasks is to act as a forum of information, including online information. The WWW is a powerful tool, is relatively cheap and accessible, and gives organisations an opportunity to express their specific aims. Verstappen addressed issues of where to find information, how to select information, and how to present that information. Rather than creating random lists of links, she suggests creating a structured and focused list. Information can be found in general search engines, feminine search engines, specialised web sites, and other media.
A problem with indices is their lack of clear selection criteria. It is impossible for indices to be exhaustive, and there is generally no indication of economic or ideological interests. All types of information are presented together in one list, and there is a lack of information about the origin and value of the data, as well as insufficient annotation. Verstappen also discussed the trap of Gatekeeping, whereby selection of information must not result in the exclusion of women's information so often seen in mainstream media.
Verstappen advises women's centres to be clear about themselves and their goals, to make sure their web sites are accessible, to make time for updating, to provide information in different languages, to ensure the information is relevant to your public, and to use your selection criteria as guidelines for your annotations. She concluded by using Amazone as a specific example of how these steps can be taken.
The discussion after the break covered the following points:

- information overload on the Internet

- focusing on essentials and the needs of your constituency

- the importance of refining your questions so you are specific; learning new ways of asking questions and getting information

- how Western countries can help Third World countries get online; how Third World countries can determine their information needs to see if being online is actually useful to them

- making your web site accessible

- making regional/national web site, databases, and networks

- the Internet is dynamic and constantly changing

- creating and maintaining a web site is costly, technical, requires funding and trained staff

- start-up funding can be found, but funding for ongoing maintenance is scarce

- large U.S.A. presence and bias online, often hard to overcome

- local and national governments have a responsibility to train people

- Internet access can be a powerful tool for people who are not privileged, especially people who are isolated physically or socially, but it is also not the ultimate tool

- Internet can also act to marginalise/isolate people further

- this is the age of information, and no country can afford to get left behind

- technicians create technophobia through language; the technical world is still run and ruled by men

- we need to create a new space for women online and a new vocabulary.