Nadia Caidi
Information infrastructures (IIs) are a complex arrangement of people, technology, institutions, content, and conduits. Their development is shaped by the environment in which they evolve and the visions ascribed to them by the various actors. This paper examines the assumptions, meanings, and definitions associated with IIs in four Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries: Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. In particular, it focuses on how one stakeholder group, the library community, frames the policy debates around IIs. In-depth interviews were conducted in 1999 with forty-nine (49) library policymakers in thirty-seven (37) institutions. The data shed light on the respondents’ collective story and visions, and helps us gain a better understanding of political and cultural differences in the development of IIs.