Public programming skills of archivists in selected national memory institutions of east and southern Africa

The National Archives are an important part of South African society because they serve as memory institutions. Fulfilling this mandate requires archivists to encourage societal engagement with the archives. This article sought to examine the role of an archivist’s knowledge and skills in promoting public archival institutions. Therefore, the perceptions and experiences of the directors of the National Archives, archivists who work at the National Archives and Executive Board members from the East and Southern Africa Regional Branch of the International Council on Archives (ESARBICA) were explored. This was achieved through administering questionnaires to all the directors of the National Archives in the ESARBICA region, and conducting interviews with archivists from this region as well as ESARBICA Executive Board members. The intention was to identify whether archivists from the National Archives in the ESARBICA region thought that they have the relevant skills to conduct public programming initiatives; if public programming was part of the core archival curricula in the region; and furthermore, to determine the availability and awareness of public programming training and education in the region. The study provides an overview of public programming, together with a better understanding of the significance of archivists’ skills and knowledge regarding public programming in the mission of encouraging greater use of archives.n/aInformation Scienc

Public programming of public archives in the East and Southern Africa regional branch of the International Council on Archives (ESARBICA): towards an inclusive and integrated framework

Public programming initiatives are considered as an integral part of archival operations because they support greater use of archival records. This study investigated public programming practises in the ESARBICA region. The findings of the study were determined after applying methodological triangulation, within a quantitative research context. This included the use of self-administered questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and the analysis of documents and websites. Participants in this study were ESARBICA board members, Directors of the National Archives and archivists from the ESARBICA region. Nine (69.2%) national directors representing different member states completed the questionnaire and eight archivists from the same region were interviewed. Furthermore, three ESARBICA board members were also interviwed. Legislation and country reports from ESARBICA member states were reviewed, together with websites of institutions within the ESARBICA region that offered archival education and training. Findings of the study indicated that public programming initiatives were not a priority. Reasons for this included lack of public programming policies, budgetary constraints, shortage of staff and lack of transport. Furthermore, the national archives were reluctant to rope in technology to promote their archives. Collaboration efforts with regard to promoting archives were shallow. Moreover, the investigation of user needs was restricted to existing users of the archives. In addition to all this, the archivists felt that they needed to improve their public programming skills. The study therefore suggests that the national archives of ESARBICA should focus on: legislation, public programming policies, advocacy, users, partnerships and skills. Taking these factors into consideration, an inclusive and integrated public programming framework was developed and proposed as a possible measure for improving public programming efforts in the ESARBICA region.Information ScienceD. Litt. et Phil. (Information Science

Towards a uniform strategy for taking archives to the people in South Africa

Archival institutions in South Africa are faced with a number of challenges, including preservation, meeting standards, giving access to their holdings and reaching diverse users. The fact that archives are managed in order to be used has created a greater interest in public programming. Archival legislation in South Africa makes provision for the national and provincial repositories to take archives to the people. This qualitative participatory action research study reports on the development of a uniform strategy that can be customised by national and provincial archives repositories in order to take archives to the people. The strategy was developed during a three-day workshop with the involvement of 14 archivists from the national and provincial archives responsible for public programming. The presentation and activities during the workshop stimulated discussions in relation to the development of the strategy. It became clear from the workshop that national and provincial archives were unable to reach out and attract people owing to an inadequate outreach strategy, the absence of a consistent message to the public, insufficient resources and limited skills among archivists. In the context of public programming for the whole national and provincial archival community, the need for a single archival language and a consistent message when making the public aware of the existence of archives was identified. As a result, a uniform strategy to be implemented over three years by national and provincial archives repositories was developed. It is hoped that as the archival community begins to convey a consistent message, they will be able to take the archives to the people, provided there is no interference from authorities outside the immediate archival sphere.Information Scienc

Teachers’ use of a school library in a South African township school: closing the literacy gap

This post-project study investigates the use of the school library at a primary school by teachers at the end of a literacy<br />project, without the guidance of the project facilitators at the school. The article gives background information about the<br />Academic Literacy Research Project Unit (ALRU) from the University of South Africa which established a school library at<br />school P as part of the literacy research project. The aim of the Literacy Project was to improve literacy levels and create<br />a strong reading culture that would later have a positive impact on the academic progress of learners at school P. The<br />Literacy Project involved training teachers in literacy and reading matters. In addition to the teacher training, a school<br />librarian was trained to manage the school library. At the onset of the post-project study, self-administered questionnaires<br />were drawn up to collect data on the teachers’ school library practices after withdrawal of the project team. The<br />questionnaires included qualitative and quantitative questions. The findings suggest that the school library is being utilised<br />and appreciated as an integral part of the learning process; however, the teachers seem to need further exposure and<br />training on information literacy. The authors hope that the information and interpretations provided in this article will be<br />helpful in achieving the goal of quality education in South Africa and especially in improving the reading and literacy levels<br />of all learners

A preliminary study of undergraduate courses in an open distance e-learning environment

Educators and archivists in Africa have repeatedly raised the need for redeveloping university curricula to reflect local and global best practice. An African education curriculum case study by the InterPARES project (2013–2018) that covered 38 countries out of 54 revealed the existence of few available archival training programmes in the continent. Literature further reveals that where educational programmes are available, the curriculum is mostly Eurocentric and thereby addresses archival issues from a Western perspective. As a result, the infinite problems facing archivists on the continent such as resources, skills, technology, infrastructure, advocacy, holdings, collaboration, displaced archives and many more (the list is endless) are not fully engaged. The archival programmes at the institution of higher learning appear not to address grand societal challenges such as unaccountability, poor governance, service delivery, as well as the low usage of archives repositories in the continent. In South Africa, there has been a call to use African epistemologies such as Ubuntu, a philosophy that provides an African reverview of societal relations or the Batho Pele, principles adopted by the post-apartheid South African government to guide and direct its public service and address imbalances of the apartheid regime. This study utilised the Africanisation pillar of Sibanda (2016)’s model to analyse the infusion of curriculum transformation into the ten modules for archives and records management in an open distance e-learning (ODeL) environment. In this regard, the content of ten archives and records management modules for a bachelor’s degree in an ODeL environment is analysed to explore the transformation of archival curriculum. Only one university in South Africa offers a fully-fledged bachelor’s degree with a major in archives and records management. The study established that an attempt was made to transform the archival curriculum at study material development and module delivery level. This resulted in a missed opportunity to transform archival curriculum in the development of the new bachelor’s degree being implemented in 2017. The study concludes by arguing that failure to decolonise the archival curriculum will result in archivists being highly unlikely to contribute to solutions to societal problems that are difficult to solve confronting South Africa using local solutions. It is recommended that transformation of the curriculum should start at a programme level rather than module level.Information Scienc

Perceptions of user studies as a foundation for public programming activities by archivists from east and southern Africa

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of user studies and the evaluation of services in the development of effective public programming initiatives by the public archives of east and southern Africa. Users of the archives are the backbone of effective archival services. Sadly, it appears that the records are more valued than the users of the archives in many public archival institutions. This trend has partly contributed to public archival institutions being invisible in the communities that they are meant to serve. The extant literature has demonstrated that public programming initiatives may help archival institutions to bridge the gap between users and public archives. However, the effectiveness of such programmes relies upon identifying user needs and designing programmes that will address these needs accordingly. Data were collected using multiple methods informed by a positivist epistemology. Directors of the National Archives affiliated to the East and Southern Africa Regional Branch of the International Council on Archives (ESARBICA) completed a pretested self-administered questionnaire. Eight archivists who attended the ESARBICA conference in 2013 and three members of the ESARBICA Board participated in face-to-face interviews. Data from the interviews and questionnaires were triangulated with data from country reports. Data was analysed through Microsoft Excel and thematic analysis. The findings reveal that most efforts of gathering information on user needs were only directed towards existing users of the national archives. The collected information was not utilised effectively to improve archival services or develop public programming initiatives. Archivists in ESARBICA need to put more effort into discovering the needs of their users. As the public archives in ESARBICA strive to serve their citizens, they should not forget that records are for their citizens. This study provides an understanding of how archivists can link user studies to public programming and a chance to think of how to increase societal engagement with the archives

PUBLIC PROGRAMMING SKILLS OF ARCHIVISTS IN SELECTED NATIONAL MEMORY INSTITUTIONS OF EAST AND SOUTHERN AFRICA

The National Archives are an important part of South African society because they serve as memory institutions. Fulfilling this mandate requires archivists to encourage societal engagement with the archives. This article sought to examine the role of an archivist’s knowledge and skills in promoting public archival institutions. Therefore, the perceptions and experiences of the directors of the National Archives, archivists who work at the National Archives and Executive Board members from the East and Southern Africa Regional Branch of the International Council on Archives (ESARBICA) were explored. This was achieved through administering questionnaires to all the directors of the National Archives in the ESARBICA region, and conducting interviews with archivists from this region as well as ESARBICA Executive Board members. The intention was to identify whether archivists from the National Archives in the ESARBICA region thought that they have the relevant skills to conduct public programming initiatives; if public programming was part of the core archival curricula in the region; and furthermore, to determine the availability and awareness of public programming training and education in the region. The study provides an overview of public programming, together with a better understanding of the significance of archivists’ skills and knowledge regarding public programming in the mission of encouraging greater use of archives

'Let the little children come to archives': schools as a conduit for taking archives to children

Public programming initiatives are considered an integral part of archival operations across the world because they support a greater use of archival records. In South Africa, public archival institutions are mandated in terms of section 5(1)(c) of the National Archives and Records Service of South Africa Act (Act No. 43 of 1996) (NARSSA Act) to reach out to the less privileged sectors of society, including children, by making known information concerning records by means such as publications, exhibitions and lending of records. As a result, public archives repositories in South Africa have designed programmes to take archives to school learners for the purpose of creating future users and expanding the use of archival sources. Despite efforts to take archives to the people in South Africa, it would seem that public programming methods that repositories use at schools are not effective in creating awareness and promoting public archives to attract school learners. This qualitative study utilised semi-structured interviews and observation as data collection tools to investigate schools as conduits for taking public archives to learners in the Gauteng province of South Africa. The key findings suggest that the public archives repositories in Gauteng do not use technology, particularly social media, to market their services to school learners. The main method of taking archives to learners is through invitations and participation in the annual archives week, which do not yield any positive results, as learners do not visit the archives afterwards. It is recommended that public archives repositories in Gauteng should consider using school learners who participated in the previous archives week as ambassadors to further recommend the use of archives to potential users and their peers. Furthermore, collaboration between archivists and teachers from neighbouring schools should be considered by including school projects that involve the use of “archives’’. In this regard, the repositories should be able to provide access to such learners. The study concludes that failure to adopt social media platforms to market archives would result in school learners not using archives

Towards a uniform strategy for taking archives to the people in South Africa

Archival institutions in South Africa are faced with a number of challenges, including preservation, meeting standards, giving access to their holdings and reaching diverse users. The fact that archives are managed in order to be used has created a greater interest in public programming. Archival legislation in South Africa makes provision for the national and provincial repositories to take archives to the people. This qualitative participatory action research study reports on the development of a uniform strategy that can be customised by national and provincial archives repositories in order to take archives to the people. The strategy was developed during a three-day workshop with the involvement of 14 archivists from the national and provincial archives responsible for public programming. The presentation and activities during the workshop stimulated discussions in relation to the development of the strategy. It became clear from the workshop that national and provincial archives were unable to reach out and attract people owing to an inadequate outreach strategy, the absence of a consistent message to the public, insufficient resources and limited skills among archivists. In the context of public programming for the whole national and provincial archival community, the need for a single archival language and a consistent message when making the public aware of the existence of archives was identified. As a result, a uniform strategy to be implemented over three years by national and provincial archives repositories was developed. It is hoped that as the archival community begins to convey a consistent message, they will be able to take the archives to the people, provided there is no interference from authorities outside the immediate archival sphere.

The role of archives in the promotion of documentary national heritage in Tanzania, South Africa and Botswana

National heritage is an important part of a country’s identity. When a nation appreciates its heritage, it becomes more likely that this heritage will be sustained. In Africa, a lack of appreciation for national heritage is not uncommon (UNESCO 2006), and therefore various efforts are directed towards changing this trend. This paper argues in the affirmative that archives are described as evidence of history and these records, therefore, have the potential to contribute to promoting national heritage. Archives serve as documentary evidence of the individuals or governments that created them. As such, citizens have a right to review such records to learn more about their national heritage. This article seeks to examine the role of archives in promoting national heritage. The perception and experience of national archival institutions on this matter is explored in three Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Branch of the International Council on Archives (ESARBICA) member states, namely Tanzania, South Africa and Botswana. Documentary review and questionnaires were employed to identify, among other things, the types of archival materials preserved in the national archives of each country with regard to national heritage, the number and description of individuals or groups that normally visit such repositories and the categories of information that visitors frequently request. The findings indicate that the three archives, RAMD, NARS, and BNARS, have a good number of archives of national heritage value. However, the number of professionals and strategies to manage, preserve and promote them is inadequate. There is a need to think out of the box to determine different ways to reach out to people and to promote access to information on our national heritage. For instance, social networking is an approach that none of the archival institutions in this study use to promote their collections, despite more and more people in these countries having access to social networks through mobile technologies. The study suggests that, while digitising records has proved to be one solution to preserving archival heritage, it is important that archival institutions use such technological advancement by digitising archival documents and then uploading them to their websites for easy public access