Digital Preservation of Mandinka Ajami Materials of Casamance, Senegal

Abstract

This poster outlines the international research collaboration between Boston University, the West African Research Center, and local experts in Senegal during a 15 month project --funded by the British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme-- to digitize, curate, and preserve over 14,000 manuscript pages written in Mandinka Ajami and Arabic. Technical workflows and challenges, as well as future research opportunities in this area will be discussed. Ultimately, research outputs from this project, along with documentation will be archived and made available at all three institutions, including the "African Ajami Library", an open access repository of aggregated Ajami materials from all over the continent.Grant from the Endangered Archives Programme: ‘The Endangered Archives Programme is supported by Arcadia, a charitable trust of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin and administered by the British Library’