NetDiploma International Networking Project. Final Report.

NetDiploma is an international networking project funded by the UK Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) under the GCRF (Global Challenges Research Fund) scheme (Grant Ref: AH/R004277/1). The NetDiploma network’s aim has been to build a global multi-stakeholder network to mobilize and share knowledge and identify future collaborative research required to build a Digital Public Library of Africa (DPLAf) that will promote access to African indigenous information for everyone and support economic and cultural development. The project has taken a bottom-up approach to stakeholder engagement to understand the various research, development, engagement and advocacy activities required to build the future DPLAf

DIGITAL REPOSITORY FOR PUBLIC ARCHIVES: THE PUBLIC RECORDS AND ARCHIVES ADMINISTRATION DEPARTMENT OF GHANA IN FOCUS

There is increased growth of digital repositories the world over. Many libraries, academic institutions, governmental and archival institutions are establishing and implementing institutional repositories. In Ghana, despite the growth of institutional repositories in some of the universities, the Public Records and Archives Administration Department (PRAAD), which holds the country’s cultural heritage and history still, manages manual records. Day in and day out archives in their custody deteriorate due to frequent handling and the bad state in which the repositories are. There are no backups for the documents, thus, the archives that deteriorate beyond repairs are completely lost to future generations. The purpose of the study is to conduct a feasibility study on the establishment of a digital repository at PRAAD. Ten (10) heads of units participated in the study. A qualitative research design was used to carry out the study. A semi-structured interview was used to extract information from respondents.This paper reveals how beneficial digital repositories are to institutions that have them, especially its benefit to PRAAD. It reviews some challenges that hamper PRAAD from having a digital repository and suggests ways of getting PRAAD and its staff ready for a digital repository

Towards successful implementation of an Institutional Repository in a cross-border environment

Globally, institutions are increasingly using Institutional Repositories (IR) to manage their digital resources more effectively. An IR collects, showcases, archives, and preserves the intellectual and scholarly output of an institution. There are many available platforms including Open Source, Proprietary and Custom-built platforms (Sharif 2013; Jain et al. n.d). The focus of this paper is the implementation of Institutional Repository (Digital Commons), a proprietary hosted institutional repository platform by Bepress. Digital Commons is a suite of tools and services that enable institutions to manage, display, and publish on the web in a highly visible online showcase. It has professional-grade publishing tools with a peer-review workflow so that institutions can publish their journals, books, and conference proceedings. Digital Commons is well indexed in Google, Google Scholar and other search engines and offers the option of either open global access or restricted access. It has an additional SelectedWorks module that allows individual faculty and scholars of an institution to develop profiles and populate them with their scholarly works. As well as evaluating the Digital Commons platform; this paper addresses the challenges of cross-border implementation and suggests guidelines for institutions implementing the system. The common implementation challenges include the time required to get clearance from copyright holders; publishers who have ceased operating; helping authors understand why the institution should have their works showcased without monetary benefits; and additional workload on staff

Cross-border implementation of Institutional Repository: A case of Aga Khan University

Institutions globally have increasingly embraced Institutional Repositories (IRs) to collect, showcase, archive, and preserve their intellectual and scholarly output. Many benefits are gained from implementation of the platform including: the institution’s visibility, status and reputation is increased; authors get wider public access and visibility thus more citations for their work; long-term preservation of research; and the library benefits from its new role in information creation and distribution thus the opportunity to re-assert its importance in the face of declining user dependence on libraries for simple access to information (Sharif 2013). Despite the high uptake of IRs to manage institutions’ digital resources more effectively, little has been written on the experience of cross-border implementation. This paper seeks to fill this gap by presenting unique lessons learnt from the implementation of Digital Commons (DC), a proprietary hosted institutional repository platform by Bepress. The platform is implemented across AKU’s 7 campuses in 5 countries (United Kingdom, Pakistan, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania). The varying technological, economical, and cultural contexts of these countries have had effect on the implementation of the platform and have presented some unique and interesting lessons. Cross-border implementation faces many distinctive challenges. From AKU experience, these include lack of a national body for co-ordinating IRs in majority of the countries where AKU is operating; and inequalities in technical expertise, internet access, extent of use, and social support. On the other hand, institutions receive immense benefits from cross-border implementation. Key benefits include: IR helps address the unevenness in availability of researchers’ output where Africa for instance accounts for only 2% of the world’s research output (Christian 2008); and implementation team benefits from networking with colleagues. Being part of the implementation team and working collaboratively with the entire implementation team, the authors share the challenges and best practices learnt first-hand

Promoting access to indigenous information in Africa: Challenges and requirements

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal SDG16.10 advocates for ensuring public access to information, yet knowledge access and sharing are some of the key challenges in many countries, especially in Africa. The African Union Agenda 2063 strongly recommends access to African indigenous, cultural information to promote sustainable development but how might this be achieved? This paper shares findings from a project - NetDiploma - that built an international multi-stakeholder network of experts, professionals and various user communities to mobilize and share knowledge to explore the requirements for promoting access to cultural heritage and government information held in memory institutions, such as archives, for everyone in Africa. It identifies the key enablers and challenges associated with the long-term goal of making African government, indigenous and cultural heritage information accessible online in the form of a Digital Public Library of Africa (DPLAf) and the research and development required to realise this vision

Introduction

ASC – Publicaties niet-programma gebonde

The status of the implementation of institutional repositories in selected newly established universities in Kenya

Rationale of Study – Academic institutions worldwide have embraced institutional repositories as a means to showcase their research globally. In Kenya, the majority of academic institutions with effective repositories are established universities. Little is known of institutional repositories of newly established universities in Kenya. This study evaluated the status of the implementation of institutional repositories of universities established between 2016 and 2017 in Kenya. Methodology – The researchers used a descriptive research design in this study. Data was collected from professional library staff in three newly established universities using questionnaires. The actual respondents were selected through information-oriented purposive sampling. The sample size was twenty librarians from Kirinyaga University, Machakos University, and University of Embu. Findings – All the university libraries investigated had functional institutional repositories. The libraries had developed submission and metadata policies. The staff charged with implementing institutional repositories had relevant skills, understood the scholarly communication cycle, and were responsible for recruitment of institutional repository content. The challenges faced in implementing institutional repositories included low levels of awareness of the existence of IR by the intended users, reluctant of the researchers in submitting their research with the IR, lack of resources, inadequate staff, and submission policy. Implications – The findings of this study buttresses the place of information repositories as a platform to share research literature and open access to scholarly materials globally even for newly established universities in developing countries. Originality – Unlike the majority of research on institutional repositories in Kenya which focused on established universities, this study tells the story of newly established universities in Kenya

Unhiding African collections at the British Library for Development Studies

Based on a paper delivered at the 2013 SCOLMA Conference, Hidden Collections in African Studies

The Use of Electronic Journal Articles by Academics at Mzuzu University, Malawi.

The use of information technology for scholarly publication is now commonplace all over the world. Academic communities in Africa are part of this transformation. The purpose of this study was to investigate academics’ use of scholarly electronic journal articles at Mzuzu University and assess the factors influencing their behaviour. Data collection instruments used for the study were the use of a questionnaire to the academics, interview with Deans of Faculties and follow up e-survey to some academics at Mzuzu University. The findings revealed that most academics had general knowledge of the electronic journals and this did not vary with education. There was no significant difference between gender and searching skills. It was evident that majority of academics prefer local publications and the use of electronic journal articles was for teaching and research. However, there were some barriers including teaching responsibilities; a lack of ICT and telecommunications; unreliable power supply; access to journals was restricted to campus and a lack of local content. Therefore, the study recommends that teaching and learning techniques such as improved use of teaching methods should be employed in order to create some time for other academic work including research and publication which contribute to the knowledge economy and the socio-economic development of Africa in particular Malawi. The study also suggest that provision of reliable power supply and development of local repositories are likely to play a vital role in providing access to local content and encouraging publication of local materials

An exploration of the digitisation strategies of the liberation archives of the African National Congress in South Africa

A number of digitization projects undertaken by archival organisations in Africa failed to realise their goals of ensuring preservation and access of records. This is partially due to the lack of strategies to move from analogue to digital records. Despite many guidelines, standards and software systems developed by national archives, coalitions, professional associations, research groups and commercial organisations, digital records are still a challenge to manage. This study explored the strategies adopted by the African National Congress (ANC) in digitizing its liberation archives with a view to capturing lessons learnt. Qualitative data were collected through interviews with purposively selected employees of the African National Congress, Multi Choice, Africa Media Online and Nelson Mandela Foundation who were involved in the repatriation and digitization project of the liberation archives. Interview data were augmented through document analysis and observation. The key findings revealed that the ANC established an archives management committee that played an important role in the repatriation and digitization of liberation archives. The committee utilized former liberation struggle members to identify records in various ANC missions in different countries. It was established that although the ANC was aware of where its records were abroad, not all its records were repatriated to South Africa after the unbanning of the liberation movements. Furthermore, the finding revealed that the ANC relied heavily on Multi Choice and Africa Media Online as its archivists were not trained in digitization. A number of lessons learnt with regard to digitization of liberations archives are captured. The study concludes by demonstrating the importance of having a strategy in digitizing archival holdings. It is recommended that this study should be extended to other liberation movements in eastern and southern Africa.Information ScienceM. Inf