Project strengthens civil society, industry and academia

By Jeffrey Thomas
Staff Writer

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Washington — Ukrainian officials and legislators, university presidents, diplomats and representatives of Ukraine’s business community and civil society gathered in the Antonovych Library of the National University of Kyiv–Mohyla Academy January 26 to launch a project aimed at creating collaboration between universities and the business community.

The Electronic Library of Ukraine is a new national digital network that will improve access for the country’s students, scholars and businesspeople to the world’s academic and research information while making available for the first time on the international digital network the holdings of Ukraine’s libraries. This type of collaboration between universities and businesses is common in the United States but new to Eastern Europe, where during the Soviet era research and teaching were kept in strictly separate spheres.

The new project will “help reduce the divide between research and teaching,” says Marta Farion, the president of the Kyiv Mohyla Foundation of America, which initiated the collaborative effort. The foundation is based in Chicago, which has a sister-city relationship with Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine.

The Electronic Library “should foster genuine cooperation among researchers, whether they are academics, faculty or students,” said Farion, who is also chairwoman of the board for the project. “Electronic library ‘knowledge centers’ at Ukraine’s universities should enable users to learn how to locate information and ultimately should facilitate the country’s economic development, standards of public health and dissemination of information about technologies in agriculture and other areas. Access to electronic information should also help move applied research to the marketplace and stimulate successful and profitable industry and business partnerships.”

The U.S. Agency for International Development provided a grant to get the project started.

In its initial stage, the project’s participating partners and collaborators include the National University of Kyiv–Mohyla Academy, Y. Fedkovych National University of Chernivtsi, V. Karazin National University of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s Informatio-Consortium Association, and the Center for Technology Innovation Management at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

More private and public funding is needed to expand electronic library access to more universities than the initial three members, Farion said. “The long term goal is to make participation in the electronic library project available to all of the universities of Ukraine.”

“By providing Ukrainians with access to a global network of knowledge, the Electronic Library of Ukraine project will be an invaluable resource for building a stronger civil society, engaging Ukraine to more fully participate in the world’s community and make Ukraine more competitive on a global scale,” said former U.S. Ambassador William Green Miller at the project’s inauguration. The project “will not only allow thousands of academics, students and universities to immediately gain access to a wide range of information, but also will create new opportunities for generations to come.”

“There is a sincere recognition on the part of progressive scholars, scientists and dedicated individuals in leading institutions and the government that this project is essential to the country’s growth and development,” Farion said.

She said the need for the project was evident in the fact that, even 17 years after independence, Ukraine lacks the free and open communication with the larger world necessary for development.

“Ukrainian law and Soviet tradition still divide the academic and research worlds,” she said. “As a general rule, universities are not permitted to engage in research while research institutes do not have to share their work with the academic community, and neither group collaborates with the other.”

As a result, Ukrainian society receives little practical benefit from the research that is done, “and there is little opportunity to exchange information with researchers around the world,” Farion said.

“The successful formula of collaboration and mutual support between universities and the business community found in the U.S. is not only absent in Ukraine but is largely unknown. This isolation and the inability to participate and compete fairly in the world community was the key reason for organizing a team from the United States and Ukraine to help remedy the situation,” she explained.

“The project will begin a process of diminishing the culture of secrecy created by almost a century of Soviet rule,” Farion said. “It will encourage a culture of openness, collaboration and integration, first within the academic and research communities and then with other sectors of society as well. There is an expectation that with equal access to the world’s information resources, Ukraine will have the tools to compete politically and economically as a partner within the community of nations.”

The Kyiv Mohyla Foundation of America is a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization established to help the National University of Kyiv–Mohyla Academy and other institutions of higher learning in Ukraine “to reach excellence in education, innovative research, personal and intellectual growth of its students and faculty, in a democratic academic environment that will facilitate and further Ukraine’s democratic reform, with a focus on the rule of law, free market, business development and sustained economic growth within the global community of nations,” according to the foundation’s Web site. More than 45,000 Chicagoans consider themselves to be of Ukrainian ancestry, according to the 2000 U.S. Census.