KAZAKHSTAN DEVELOPS SMART CITIES: INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORIES AS BACKBONES OF DIGITAL KAZAKHSTAN

Abstract

As a young and developing city, Astana and its people is preparing its way to become a smart city. A smart city “improves the quality of life for its citizens through technological means” (Guerra, 2017). Kourtit, Nijkamp, & Arribas (2012) define smart cities as highly productive cities as they perform to have highly educated people. Digital Kazakhstan is a state program which aims to augment the quality of life of the mankind by introducing and integrating digital technologies to the citizens’ daily life.As technologies play a vital role in improving the people’s lives, it has also an effect in the field of education. The educational sector will directly benefit from this technological trend as students, faculty, and researchers will have a faster and convenient way of getting relevant results through the available online tools available in public or academic libraries. The state prepares its nationals to be information and digital literate making its people highly competent and competitive (Digital Kazakhstan, 2018). This paper introduces the development of Institutional Repositories as possible technological component of a smart city. In Kazakhstan, the government is pushing towards providing better online access to its citizens. With this advent of smart city, how can libraries deliver and establish itself as a driving force in developing a smarter city? A smart city is inclusive and it requires effective services that a cultural center just like a library could provide. Libraries are great partners in informing and engaging its citizens through its programs and services (Mersand, Gasco-Hernandez, Gil-Garcia, Burke, Sutherland & Figueroa, 2018). Smart cities should have smart libraries which serve as a central hub for continuous learning and knowledge sharing. Smart libraries are governed by smart people that offersmart place and smartservices (Schopfel, 2018). Libraries are now seen as centers that could be an avenue for social participation and collaboration and a place where smart people can sharpen their critical thinking skills. Innovative programs, workshops, and trainings are often part of a library service to enhance learning. The government is also embarking on digital library projects being spearheaded by the National Academic Library. The aim of this paper is to introduce the development of Institutional Repositories as possible technological component of a smart city. With projects being developed, how sufficient in terms of open access information does the five largest cities of Kazakhstan have? State universities have their own institutional repository projects that may be a good inclusion to the smart city project. A survey of Astana university libraries and other four major cities was conducted to find out the number of existing Institutional Repositories that could possibly support the goal of the government to realize its full potential to be an innovative smart city. Furthermore, the paper will highlight challenges that each library is currently facing in building an institutional repository with a goal of improving the open access environment in Kazakhstan