Community Development Resources

The Appropriate Technology Library and the Appropriate Technology Sourcebook!

The AT Library contains the full text and images fro over 1050 of the best books dealing with all areas of do-it-yourself technology. Learn more about this valuable resource!	The online version of the Appropriate Technology Sourcebook contains reviews of all the books in the books in the AT Library. View it Here

This is the online version of latest edition of the guide to practical books on village and small community technology. Over 50,000 print copies of the previous editions have been used in more than 130 countries to find a wide range of published technical information that can be used by individuals and small groups. In the new edition, 1150 publications from international and U.S. sources are reviewed, covering small water supply systems, renewable energy devices such as water mill and improved cook stoves, agricultural tools and implements, intensive gardening, conformal education, small business management, transportation, small industries and other topics. Extensive index. Price and ordering information are provided for each publication. The Sourcebook can also be used as the index for the Appropriate Technology Library on CD-ROM or Microfiche, which contains the complete text of 1050 books.

Click here to Learn more about the complete AT Library on CD-ROM!

What is Appropriate Technology?

Schumacher's famous introduction of the concept of "intermediate" (or "appropriate") technology has had a major impact on current thinking in the development field. Schumacher was a founder of the Intermediate Technology Development Group.

For Schumacher, solutions to the world's problems must embody the four qualities of smallness, simplicity, capital-saving, and non-violence. To that end he is a leading advocate of "appropriate technology" as a partial answer to global problems of food and energy shortages, alienation, and poverty. In the developing countries, designed particularly to suit agricultural conditions that are different from those in the industrialized countries, this technology should be superior to the primitive forms of the past. Yet it should also be simpler, cheaper, and all but independent of the energy requirements of today's technology of the rich. "One can also call it 'self-help' or 'people's technology"' says Schumacher.

"The task, then, is to bring into existence millions of new workplaces in the rural areas and small towns. That modern industry, as it has arisen in the developed countries, cannot possibly fulfill this task should be perfectly obvious. It has arisen in societies which are rich in capital and short of labor and therefore cannot possibly be appropriate for societies short of capital and rich in labor. The real task may be formulated in four propositions:

1) Workplaces have to be created in the areas where the people are living now, and not primarily in metropolitan areas into which they tend to migrate.

2) These workplaces must be, on the average, cheap enough so that they can be created in large numbers without this calling for an unattainable level of capital formation and imports.

3) The production methods employed must be relatively simple, so that the demands for high skills are minimized, not only in the production process itself but also in matters of organization, raw material supply, financing, marketing, and so forth.

4) Production should be mainly from local materials and mainly for local use."

Schumacher on technological complexity: "Any third-rate engineer can make a machine or a process more complex; afterwards, it takes a first-rate engineer to make it simple again." An excellent book.