Having gone through a series of eIFL events, Cambodian Electronic Information for Libraries Consortium (Cam-eIFL) was finally established in 2004 on the volunteer basis and was licensed to operate by the Ministry of Interior on July 5, 2005 as a non-governmental, non-profit and legal body with special interest to promote education and researches by providing Cambodian students, scholars, and researchers access to online researches undertaken with millions of articles worldwide.

It is perceived that access to information is progressively essential in education and research and has a direct impact on the development of societies. Moreover, the empowerment of citizens and the spread of democracy depend on equal access to information worldwide.

In this regard, with the commonality of developmental interest in the field of education and researches shared by librarians from both governmental and non-governmental institutions, a series of eIFL events were conducted to brainstorm so as to gain collective ideas to bring e-resources to Cambodia—which means to build electronic resources, and to find the answers on how to establish the Consortium for Cambodian libraries. The first and second seminars were held in 2003 respectively at the Center for Khmer Studies in Siem Reap and Royal University of Phnom Penh. In the following year 2004, another two workshops were conducted at International Institute of Cambodia (IIC), one of which was a two-day workshop (July 7th-8th, 2004) looking at ways in which a Cambodian Library Consortium could help to expand the pool of electronic resources available in and to Cambodian libraries, and another one was a one-day held on September 8th, 2004 with primary focuses on how to manage the Consortium and to upgrade the capacity of development, both the consortium itself and the users. The efforts have come into fruit: the Cambodian Electronic Information for Libraries Consortium has been formed successfully.

For the time being Cam-eIFL is a full member of eIFL. During annual eIFL general assembly 2004 held in Poland, Cambodia was approved to be a full member of the eIFL with Mr. CHHUON Chan Than as a representative. eIFL is an independent foundation that works towards the wide availability of electronic resources by library users in transition and developing countries.

The Cambodian Electronic Information for Libraries Consortium is to be an association based on volunteer basis, and librarians’ commonality of interest in developing the country of Cambodia with education and researches promoted by access to electronic resources worldwide being on offer to students, researchers, and scholars. As an educationally-oriented Consortium, the Cam-eIFL remains convinced that “The number one thing we can do to develop the education and researches is develop access to electronic resources and the number one thing we can do to develop access to electronic resources is to do a better job with the Cam-eIFL’s missions and activities.”