RWSN Document Library

What is the RWSN online document library?

A major part of this website is the document library, which contains hundreds of documents, manuals and technical specifications, as well as publications produced by the network.

Our collection focuses as much as possible on practical knowledge because we want to help you to build, maintain and upgrade high quality rural water supply systems and services. While we have collated a diverse array of documents, we aim to provide the definitive online library for a few topics in particular:

  • Handpump Technology
  • Manual Drilling
  • Accelerating Self-supply

If we are missing something, then please let us know and we will upload it.

How to use the RWSN online document library

You can access the library in different ways:

  • the "Library" menu at the top of every page (between "Events" and "Blog")
  • "Library" blue boxes on most pages on the lefthand side, underneath "Regions and Countries" and "Collaboration"
  • "Library: {theme}" appears as the first sub-menu when you click on one of the "RWSN Themes"
  • At the bottom of many pages you will see a selection of documents from the library related to the topic of that page. At the bottom is a small blue button "more resources" that will take you to the library.
  • by typing what you are looking for in the "search..." box at the top of every page. When the results page comes up there are several check boxes that allow you to refine your search to just in the Library.

Once in the library you can refine your search the filters on the righthand side of the page, many filters have sub-filters. For example, if you select 'Sub-Saharan Africa' you are then given the choice of countries within that region (however not all countries are in the system to avoid having huge lists that generate zero results).

A tick mark will appear by filters that are select. Note that some filters are pre-selected by the menu that brought you there. For example: "Library: Self-supply" will only shown those resources categorised by that theme.

You can also sort the results by "Author", "Year", "Downloads" and "Title" by clicking on the small blue up or down arrow next the label.

How to download a document

When you have found what you wanted in the library, click on the title and it will take you a page that contains:

  • An illustrative picture or front cover of the document
  • A short description or abstract of the document
  • the bibliographical reference, using the Harvard system so that it can be copied and pasted into your publications when citing the work.
  • Hyperlinks to related parts of the RWSN website, or to related websites or recordings.
  • "Downloads (X)" the number in brackets tells you how many times the document has been downloaded. Below that are one or more grey boxes (some entries contain multiple entries). Click on the title to download. It also shows the document type (e.g. pdf) and the file size (Megabytes,MB)

Still can't find what you are looking for?

Send an email to ruralwater (at) skat.ch and we will do our best to help.