*World Bank Open Knowledge Repository Introduces *
*Mobile-Friendly Design*

*WASHINGTON, January 23, 2013*—In keeping up with the rapid growth in
mobile usage worldwide, the World Bank just relaunched the *Open Knowledge
Repository (OKR*)—its open access portal to its publications and
research—on an upgraded platform specifically optimized for mobile use. The
relaunched OKR website, at
*http://openknowledge.worldbank.org*<http://openknowledge.worldbank.org/>,
features a “responsive web design” that automatically adapts to the screen
size of any device—whether desktop, laptop, tablet, or smartphone.

“Knowing that nearly half of OKR users are in developing countries where
mobile devices are increasingly being used to access the internet,
relaunching the OKR with responsive design was a no-brainer,” said Carlos
Rossel, World Bank Publisher. “Now, when users access the OKR from their
smartphones or tablets, they will have a greatly improved user experience.”

The benefits of this change will ultimately extend well beyond users of the
OKR. The World Bank and @mire—the DSpace service provider supporting the
development of the OKR—are applying the same responsive design principles
in the development of *Mirage
2*<https://atmire.com/website/?q=contributions/dspace-mirage-2>,
a theme for DSpace that will be freely available. *DSpace is the open
source platform* <http://www.duraspace.org/about_dspace> on which the OKR
is built, and it is used by more than 1,500 organizations worldwide for
their institutional repositories.

The OKR upgrade brings other user enhancements such as improved search,
related title recommendations, enhanced author profiles, and the adoption
of a new Creative Commons license specifically adapted for use by
International Governmental Organizations (*CC BY
IGO*<http://wiki.creativecommons.org/IGO>).
Currently, more than 13,000 publications are available in the OKR in PDF
and text formats. In the future, more file formats will be added, making
the mobile experience even more convenient for users.

Since the OKR's launch in April 2012, there have been more than 2.6 million
downloads of World Bank Group publications from 231* countries and
territories around the world. The OKR was recently described by Creative
Commons as *“…one of the most important hubs for economic scholarship in
the world* <http://teamopen.cc/carlos/>." It was also selected by the
American Library Association as one of the *“Best Free Reference Web Sites
of 2013.”*<http://www.ala.org/rusa/sections/mars/marspubs/marsbestfreewebsites/marsbestref2013>

In coming weeks, the World Bank will also be launching a mobile version of
the *World Bank eLibrary* <http://elibrary.worldbank.org/>—a
subscription-based website with special features designed to meet the
specific needs of researchers and libraries. Like the standard eLibrary
website, the mobile version will supply search results at the chapter-level
for its most recent titles, along with several user tools and features,
such as individual accounts for saving searches and favorites, and
customized content alerts.

*According to Google Analytics