South African Digitisation Initiative (SADI)

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https://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/12494

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Now showing 1 - 5 of 13
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    A Policy Framework for the Digital Library
    (2013-03-07) Ubogu, Felix
    The paper argues that it is essential that an institution has an appropriate policy framework in place in order to ensure the long-term success of its digital library programme and that institutions do not have to reinvent the wheel but can adapt policies already in use by other institutions. Information gathered on digital libraries and repositories shows that many repositories do not have appropriate policies with regard to Content, Preservation, Metadata Re-use and Data Re-use. A comparison of the policies also shows a wide degree of variation, particularly in terms of depth and breadth of coverage. In South Africa, most institutions confirmed that they either had no policy or were in the process of drafting one.
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    Simple Cultural Heritage Preservation
    (2013-03-07) Prof. Dr. Suleman, Hussein
    Software systems coupled with digitisation for the digital preservation of heritage have become the norm because of the opportunities for vastly better discovery and dissemination over traditional preservation techniques. However, these systems often are built on the premise that digitisation by itself will lead to preservation and little thought goes into the design of the software systems. It is proposed that the design of these software systems should be principle-based, where the core of such principles can be extracted from an analysis of successful preservation systems. Systems built on these principles will arguably provide the best platforms for digital preservation of heritage. Among these principles, the notion of simplicity is key. Recent and ongoing work provide many operational examples of how simplicity and related ideas can be incorporated into the design of systems to maintain or increase the level of functionality and, arguably, improve the ability to preserve both content and services in the long term.
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    Overview of the Carnegie / NRF Digitisation Project
    (2013-03-07) Spingies, Heinrich
    In 2008, the NRF was awarded a grant by the Carnegie Corporation of New York to implement a Digitisation and Preservation Centre. The presentation will provide the delegates with an overview of the project, the accomplishments and challenges experienced to date and the way forward.
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    Here today… here tomorrow: sustainable digital collections – the Stellenbosch experience.
    (2013-03-07) Seyffert, Mimi
    The aim of this paper is to share the experiences of Stellenbosch University Library and Information Service in developing a digital collections repository, with specific focus on heritage collections. The Library’s strategic intervention of supporting, developing and contributing to high-level scholarly publication output includes the strategic goal of digitising unique collections within the Library and Information Service. This goal has recently been given new impetus with Stellenbosch University joining the Research Libraries Consortium and benefiting from a Carnegie Corporation of New York grant for the digitisation of heritage collections. The paper will look at the various processes we undertook to realise the aims of the project: from selecting and preparing collections for digitisation, liaising with external service providers, choosing a platform to host the content, making the content accessible and ultimately adding value to the collections. I will also discuss the challenges in keeping the integrity of original heritage collections and not jeopardising their context when transforming hard copy to digital. Finally, the paper will examine the ways in which we as the Library and Information Service ourselves have made investments to make these projects sustainable and to ensure not only the maintenance, but also the growth and further development of our digital collections.