Building and Deploying a Collaborative Resource For and About Africa | 3 April 2081 Aluka: Building...

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Building and Deploying a Collaborative Resource For and About Africa | 3 April 208 1 Aluka: Building a Collaborative Resource For and About Africa 3 April 2008 Javanica Curry Assistant Director, Library Relations

Transcript of Building and Deploying a Collaborative Resource For and About Africa | 3 April 2081 Aluka: Building...

Page 1: Building and Deploying a Collaborative Resource For and About Africa | 3 April 2081 Aluka: Building a Collaborative Resource For and About Africa 3 April.

Building and Deploying a Collaborative Resource For and About Africa | 3 April 2081

Aluka: Building a Collaborative Resource For and About Africa

3 April 2008Javanica Curry Assistant Director, Library Relations

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Mission

Aluka is a not-for-profit international collaboration of educational and cultural institutions. Our mission is to build a high-quality scholarly resource of materials from and about Africa.

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Aluka: Need and Opportunity

NEED

Limited access to archival and primary source material, books, and journals • from Africa to the Global North• From the Global North to

Africa

Research on Africa is hindered by limited resources

Desire to share materials for research and build collections collectively

Limited library budgets

OPPORTUNITY

Facilitate global access to primary source and supporting materials• Help “level the playing field”

for scholars in Africa Digital library free in Africa

Aggregate digital content on a central, accessible platform

Provide a cost-effective opportunity for the academic community to build digital collections and share valuable content

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Aluka’s Approach

Content Development: aggregate scholarly content• Build high-quality curated collections• Enable individuals and institutions to contribute their

own scholarly collections about Africa

Technology: high-quality web-based platform• A scaleable platform offering full text searching, flexible

browsing, and an array of tools for viewing and sharing content

• Developing tools and processes for cost-effective ingestion of new collections

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Aluka’s Approach (cont.)

International Partnerships: capacity building• Work with partners to build technical capacity in digitization• Train librarians, faculty, and students in utilizing online

resources

Communities• Libraries:

facilitate access to collections and opportunity to contribute• Scholars, Faculty, and Students:

Build a network through Aluka by maximizing participation and use

• Foundations: seek philanthropic support for capacity building, new content,

and collaborations

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Collaboration and Contribution

Continuously growing collections and content with increased application across disciplines

Intellectual ownership remains with the contributor and advisory community

Dynamic platform facilitates information sharing and collaboration throughout the user base

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Content Area: African Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes

African Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes• Visual, contextual, and spatial

documentation heritage sites in Africa

• 5 sites in development

• 3D models, photographs, maps, books, GIS data, articles and other scholarly research material.

• Currently over 10,000 objects

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Content Area: Struggles for Freedom in Southern Africa

Struggles for Freedom in Southern Africa• Primary source materials on

liberation movements in Southern Africa organized in five themes

• Over 7,500 objects

• Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe

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Content Area: African Plants

African Plants• Collaborations with 50 institutions in Africa, Europe, and

the United States• 250,000 type specimens from Africa and the surrounding

islands • photographs , drawings, field notes botanical art, and

reference works

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Future Collections

African Ceremonies:  • A photographic collection (1,000 images) documenting various African communities

and their rituals, celebrations, and festivals from the archive of photographers Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher. 

 Timbuktu Manuscripts:

• Digital high resolution photographs of 300 manuscripts from private collections in Timbuktu, Mali.  Includes legal and secular documents (such as land deeds, wills, and other historical documents), poems, illuminated manuscripts, personal correspondence, and manuscripts about the natural world and medicinal plants.

Rock Art:  • Additional materials documenting Rock Art sites. 10,000 objects from the Trust for

African Rock Art and 40,000 images from the Rock Art Research Institute. We are still anticipating substantial slide collections to enter the archive documenting African Rock art.   

Heritage Sites and Landscapes:  • Lamu, Great Zimbabwe, Elmina, Axum, and Rock Art • Maps, drawings, photographs, field notes and excavation notes

Smithsonian: • Additional full length books and articles about sites already covered in the digital

library as well as those that will relate to some of the new sites to be included.

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Future Collections (continued)

Chilcote Collection: • Materials relating to the liberation struggles in Lusophone Africa that were collected by Professor Ronald Chilcote in the

1960s. This collection is being made possible by a collaboration with the University of Southern California.

Mozambique Revolution & Voz da Revolucao: • With the assistance of the Arquivo Historico de Mocambique, the remaining issues are being scanned for inclusion in the

digital library.

India & Southern Africa Collection: • E.S. Reddy, former Director of the United Nations Center against Apartheid, has donated a wide variety of books,

articles, pamphlets to Aluka for inclusion in the digital library. This particular collection focuses on how India was deeply involved in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.

 

Ranger Papers: • This collection of materials, which focuses on colonial oppression in Zimbabwe. The collection has been donated by

Terry Ranger, scholar on Zimbabwe and is being digitized at the Rhodes House.

Oral Histories: • The Oral History Project is an ongoing project with the intent of building a resource of oral histories about people’s lives

under colonial oppression and in the liberation struggles.

Anti-Apartheid Movement, Britain: • Additional materials at Rhodes House have been selected for inclusion in the digital library.

Allard Lowenstein Collection: • This collection, housed at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, contains papers on Namibia and South Africa

collected by Allard Lowenstein, who worked to increase exposure of the Namibia situation in the United States and at the United Nations. Notes from his trips to Namibia and his testimony at the UN are included in this selection of materials.

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Thank you.Javanica CurryAssistant Director, Library Relations149 Fifth Avenue, 8th FloorNew York, NY 10010Tel: (212) [email protected]