Digitisation and access to Archives: Case study of Sarah Baartman and Khoi San Collections

Cornelissen, Rozanne Leigh

Digitisation and access to Archives: Case study of Sarah Baartman and Khoi San Collections

Master Thesis

2018

Abstract

Digitisation is occurring all over the world today. So to bring it to South Africa is one step in changing people’s understandings of Africa, because the information would be accessible to the world and the rest of South Africa. There are many challenges that have been debated around digitisation in Africa such as technological challenges, international relations or external institutions, the creation of a new kind of archive and the various digitising projects that have occurred in Africa specifically for creating online libraries. This study’s focal point is on two collections that are housed at the University of the Western Cape Archive; The Sarah Baartman and Khoi San Collections. The documents with regards to Sarah Baartman are the books of her story and how she became famous, but there is more to the books that we see in the shops or hear of. The collection of documents hold valuable information about her return to her homeland and the research of her descent. The Sarah Baartman Collection consists of the documentation that helped with the return of her remains. The University of the Western Cape Khoi San Collection consists of documentation of the Khoi San Conference that was held in 1994, with regards to the notion of becoming an identity and to view the Khoi San as people and not as just objects of study. The documents are basically faxes and letters that were sent to a Professor Bredekamp at the University of the Western Cape who was a participant in the conference. The University of the Western Cape Khoi San Collection is different from the Bleek and Lloyd Collections in that it is not someone’s journal or research but peoples voices of protecting the Khoi San Heritage. The two collections were chosen due to the fact that there was a gap in how to digitise collections that belonged to indigenous people/ descendent communities within South Africa and how to access these collections. The key purpose of the study is to determine the implications that digitisation has on Public Access. The aims of the study were to investigate the factors that determined decisions about how to digitise an Archive and how does Access impact digitisation. The data for this study was collected by the help of Archivists. The subjects of this study were archivists with the respected expert knowledge in digitisation. A semi-structured questionnaire was emailed to six Archivists. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the same six Archivists; the interviews were recorded on audiotape or hand written. On the basis of the results of this research it can be concluded that archives need to develop policies that incorporate consultations and take into consideration the descendent communities before the digitisation process occurs. There need to be cultural sensitivity towards collections of indigenous people which rarely occurs during digitisation. The recommendations that flowed from this study are: there needs to be further research in the curation of digital archives, needs to be more communication between archives and communities and digitisation policies need to be standardized.

Keywords

Heritage and Public Culture

Reference:

Collections

Masters

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