In the late 1990s, Paul G. West, then the Director of the Centre for Lifelong Learning at Technikon, South Africa, was on an overnight flight from Washington to Los Angeles with a four-hour layover in Denver. Instead of putting on his headphones and ignoring the people around him, he started chatting with the passenger in the seat next to him. The passenger turned out to be the first CEO of netLibrary, a division of OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc., based in Boulder, Colorado, and an e-content provider for libraries and publishers. As the two chatted, they began to realize how they might be able to work together to create something meaningful. The African Digital Library was on its way.