The International Conference on Asian Digital Libraries (ICADL) is an annual international forum that provides opportunities for researchers and experts to meet and exchange research results, innovative ideas and state-of-the-art de- lopments in the digital libraries of their respective countries. Building on the success of the ?rst ?ve ICADL conferences, the 6th ICADL conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia aimed to further strengthen the collaboration and strategic alliance between the di?erent researchers and experts from the Asia-Paci?c - gion in the ?eld of digital libraries. Thethemeoftheconference,"DigitalLibraries:TechnologyandManagement of Indigenous Knowledge for Global Access," re?ects the shared belief of the - ganizers that success in the development and implementation of digital libraries in the k-economy is based on four key areas: the technologies that are employed to create a user-friendly environment, organization, interaction, navigation, and access to content; a knowledge management approach that ensures all types of knowledge (explicit, tacit and implicit) are included; indigenous content, which implies the creation of suitable and speci?c content to meet the needs of the indigenous community; and global access, which implies that content should be made available across time and space, and also implies that the content should be ?
exible enough to meet global needs. The ICADL 2003 began with an opening ceremony and a keynote address.