As it goes with other countries all over the world, the digital age is not coming, but has already come. In Thailand, average population spend over 100 minutes a day on the Internet, while book reading takes only 39 minutes.

This particular fact has a direct implication on an approach to promote knowledge access and usage. Traditional libraries, while still a prime source of quality knowledge and in-depth information, have seen a decreasing visit. Many former library users now depend on the Internet, and younger generation do not even see a necessity of the library.

Everyone sees the virtue of the Internet as a source of information and knowledge. Its democracy, globality and accessibility seemed to have won over the perceived elitist, locality, and restrictive accessibility of libraries. However, a democratic, or even chaotic, characteristic of the Internet results in information and knowledge being mixed up in ranges of quality, categories, authenticity, and usability. It is increasingly more difficult to find a good quality content among the vast sea of triviality. Generic search engine is not the cure, because the highest ranked results are inevitably generic content that is popular and/or being manipulated by art and science of Search Engine Optimisation.

Library as a prime source of quality knowledge content must adapt itself to this change. European national libraries were among the first to develop digital library faculty in a pursuit to recount themselves among the prime source of knowledge and to capture emerging opportunities arisen from changing 'patron' behaviour.

Thailand libraries have recently begun to venture into the field of digital content service. Starting at the OPAC system which allows the public to search the library catalogue via the Internet/Intranet. The IT system soon expanded to cater for every aspect of library management and service. The ILS (Integrated Library System) has been implemented by most medium to large size libraries, which provide electronic management of acquisition, catalogue, circulation, and the OPAC service.

However, the cost of proprietary ILS is exorbitantly high. Many high-profile library such as Thammasat University Library is investigating an open-source option, of which Koha is currently being viewed as most fit for large-scale libraries.

And due to Thai language being technologically different from languages that use Latin alphabets, open-source ILS such as Koha needs fixes and customisation. Kasetsart University and Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) are currently taking leads in the Koha customisation. A Koha community panel is being organised by National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA) with the aim to serve as a platform for Koha users and developers to meet and further their interest on open-source ILS migration.

Another development is being led by NSTDA. A series of lecture and workshop on digital standards will be taking place at major academic institutes around the country in this year. Starting on 27 January 2010 at Thammasat University, this effort is aimed to create an accepted set of digital standards for digital content providers, from file naming scheme, document and photo scan resolution, metadata and properties requirement, to connectivities standards such as XML and OAI. Widespread of digital standards adoption means users have a better chance to find exactly what they look or search for due to the content being properly named or embedded with metadata or information description that is recognised by search engine. Moreover the standards allow the work to be really usable because the documents were produced with adequate resolution and proper encoding, among others.

Both open-source ILS and digital standards movements will contribute to a creation of an online space for knowledge access and usage. However, a piece is still missing, that is the presentational layer. The central question is whether the general public can make sense of the information presented and being engaged in the content, in contrary to superficial level of usage which is notorious of the Internet. In light of this, ChangeFusion in partnership with and under the support of Thai Health Promotion Foundation's ICT Plan is pioneering a portal digital library called dlib.in.th which aggregate and present each topic of knowledge with respect to each genre's distinctive nature.

Finally, the role of ChangeFusion is a bridge that connect each party involved in the development of online knowledge platform, especially those from the library periphery, to share and co-create the future environment and space for learning centering on quality materials which are accessible and readily usable.