2nd International Conference on African Digital Libraries & Archives (ICADLA-2)

“This conference will create an opportunity for dialogue and discussion on the digitisation of African materials, consumed by Africans and created by Africans. Although there has been progress in this field, there is a huge backlog in terms of the preservation of African materials and we need to discuss ways of speeding up the process,” says Felix Ubogu, Wits University’s Librarian.

Delegates from libraries and archives, universities and associations, from across Africa gathered to discuss digitisation strategies at the 2nd International Conference on African Digital Libraries and Archives (ICADLA-2), held at the University of the Witwatersrand on 17 and 18 November.

Speakers from throughout Africa including Burundi, Namibia, Kenya, Morocco, Eritrea, Sudan, Nigeria, Uganda, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Malawi shared experiences of projects and drew attention to issues – and the challenges - of capacity and resource mobilisation, policy, legislative frameworks and African experiences, collaborative projects and programmes, international best practice and the international arena, technical issues and resource discovery tools to improve the availability of and access to African scholarly and cultural digital content to enhance the continent’s development efforts. The conference was preceded by a training workshop run by international expert Simon Tanner.

“It is important for the heritage and education sector to lobby to get the digitisation of libraries and archives on the agenda of African governments. As Africans we need to take ownership of our digital heritage and we need to have buy-in from our governments to ensure the long term preservation and sustainability of the digital resources and products for future generations,” said Michele Pickover, Curator of Manuscripts at the Wits Historical Papers Archive Wits, and a member of the conference organising committee.

While the focus of the conference was on developing knowledge for economic advancements in Africa, several presenters shared information about international best practice and initiatives…

John van Oudenaren, Director of the World Digital Library, Library of Congress, USA explained that the aims to digitize significant information about countries and cultures around the world and to make this available on the internet, free of charge, and in multilingual formats so as to: Promote international and intercultural understanding; expand the volume and variety of cultural content on the Internet; provide resources for educators, scholars, and general audiences and; build capacity in partner institutions to narrow the digital divide within and between countries.van Oudenaren made reference to a Library of Congress report Preserving Our Digital Heritage: The National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program 2010 Report , which describes a decade of action in digital preservation and outlays the short- and long-term plans to ensure libraries, archives and other heritage institutions in the United States can collect and provide long-term access to the resources of the 21st Century, and beyond.

In a follow up to this presentation, Sarah Kaddu and Ezra Kalule presented a paper describing their experience of working with the World Digital Library in Uganda – and their photographs of the neglected and damaged archives of the Jinja district and the Tooro Kingdom brought home the challenges they face – and brought home the reality of unequal resources and capacities.

In her presentation, “Europeana: A Network Model for the Creation and Sustainability of Cultural Heritage”, Dr Jill Cousins, Executive Director of the Europeana Foundation explained that Europeana was launched in 2008, with the goal of making information and knowledge about Europe’s cultural and scientific heritage accessible to the public, Dr Cousins explained that it operated by ‘networking networks’.

Vigdis Skarstein, National Librarian of Norway, spoke of her institutions initiatives to include ‘born digital’ and radio and TV broadcast as well as documentary material in the national library. Skarstein made reference to a project, ‘The Archive in Motion’ which investigates the ways in which archival concepts and practices have been transformed under the impact of the radical changes in writing and recording technologies that have taken place over the last century, and particularly with the introduction of digital technologies.

Simon Tanner, Director, King’s Digital Consultancy Services, Centre for Computing in the Humanities at Kings College, London, addressed the ‘values, impacts and benefits of digitisation for building national identity’. In his presentation he made the point that digitisation should not just be about making information available and accessible but about how these resources can change people’s lives, reminding the audience of Michele Pickover’s 2005 paper on the subject of archivists as agents for social change and that the digital archive could serve to educate, enlighten and entertain, to promoted and preserve culture and serve as a place where a community nourishes its memory and its imagination –connects with the past and invents its future. Tanner made reference to a recent United Kingdom JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee Report, “Inspiring research: inspiring scholarship”. and drew the audience’s attention to Old Bailey Online, a project that makes the proceedings of the Old Bailey between 1674 and 1913, available to researchers. Tanner concluded his presentation by suggesting 5 measures of value by which digitisation could be measured:

• Cultural value: People value the possibility of enjoying the digitised resources and the resultant research outputs created through the endeavours of academics and HE now or sometime in the future.
• Prestige Value: People derive utility from knowing that a digitised resource, HE institution or its research, is cherished by persons living inside and outside their community.
• Education Value: People are aware that digitised resources contribute to their own or to other people’s sense of culture, education, knowledge and heritage and therefore value it.
• Existence Value: People benefit from knowing that a digital resource exists but do not personally use it.
• Bequest Value: People derive satisfaction from the fact that their descendents and other members of the community will in the future be able to enjoy a digitised resource if they choose to.

In his presentation, ‘Towards Universal Access to All Knowledge’, Brewster Kahle founder of the ‘Internet Archive’ described the work of this non-profit project – which has digitised over 20 million records to date – and has made over a million books available online. Kahle also described the work that the project is doing in Africa and the partnerships it has formed.

Several presentations focussed on the pressing issue of capacity and resource mobilisation…

Chedza Molefe, African Union archivist, recommended that all digitization projects should start with proper resource mobilisation to ensure sustainability. Alexio Motsi of the National Archives and Records Service of South Africa called for resources to be deployed to support capacity building for digitisation while Deborah Wilson, University of the Witwatersrand, proposed the establishment of community partnerships.

Dr Magdi Khalifa spoke about knowledge management at the African Union, while Irene Onyancha addressed the question of capacity building activities for open access publishing from the perspective of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, referred the audience to the ECA Library website, and made a strong call for every knowledge generating institution to set up a digital repository.

David Larsen discussed his experience of working with digitisation initiatives at South African institutions in his novel presentation, ‘Collections and Markets: Pitfalls and Possibilities’.

On the subject of collaborative projects and programmes…

Daisy Selematsela shared information about the initiatives of the National Research Foundation, drawing attention to the report on an audit of South African digitisation initiatives and the organisations framework for managing digital collections. 

Amos Kujenga delivered a presentation on the African Digital Library Support Network which aims to strengthen the existing national centres and networks in southern Africa through centre specific investments and activities.

Africa Bwamkuu of the royal Tropical Institute delivered a presentation on The Open Access Repositories Capacity Strengthening Programme (OA-IRCSP), a joint initiative of the Association of African Universities (AAU) headquatered in Ghana, and the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) in the Netherlands. The aim of this initiative is to stimulate and strengthen the capacity of establishing intellectual output repositories based on open access principles among African universities.

Glenda Myers of the University of the Witwatersrand delivering a paper developed with her colleagues at the New York Academy of Medicine, described the“GreyLit Project” explaining that ‘grey literature’ covers a body of literature that cannot easily be found by means of conventional published channels, and includes government research, non-profit reports and reports from other primary resource materials Grey literature is often ephemeral and extremely difficult to locate in the African context, but it is beginning to play an increasingly important part in conducting the comprehensive literature searching required for the publication of systematic reviews in evidence-based healthcare.

On the subject of policy, legislative frameworks and Africa experiences…

Roger Layton, who has developed the eagerly awaited South African ‘National Policy on the Digitisation of Heritage Resources’ shared some thoughts on the ‘Principles of Digital Heritage’, and his company’s ‘ETHER’ project which he explained is an acronym for ETernal HERitage, and which aims to develop digital heritage systems that can live forever!

Abraham Azubuike of the Dag Hammarskold Library, United Nations, New York spoke on ‘Being Strategic about Digitization Projects’

Other ...

Presentations in the parallel sessions focussed strongly on national case studies and it was disheartening to hear how many challenges practitioners face as they go about the project of digitising national heritage resources. 

In contrast, Massimo Zaccaria’s presentation, “Developing New Approaches to the preservation and Sharing of Africa’s Printed Heritage: The Eritrean Case” was uplifting and inspiring.

Zaccaria described simply, how he and an Eritrean colleague, Azeb Tewolde and a few assistants had gone about the task of digitising Eritrea’s published heritage. With a small grant they purchased a couple of laptops and small manual scanners and set off to visit libraries around Eritrea using public transport, or bicycles. On arrival at a library they would set up an informal work station by pushing a few tables together and then get on with the job of sorting through the shelves to identify publications to digitise. Zaccaria explained that they had succeeded in scanning a significant percentage of the published documents and that in so doing they had managed to build up complete collections of journals by bringing together – in digital form - copies scattered randomly around the country. This inspiring account showed that, at the end of the day determination and will can overcome just about any challenge!

For further information, and a selection of abstracts, see the ICADLA-2 website

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