Rolling out free and open source national heritage system to africa
Date
2015-05-29
Authors
Galimberti, Mariagrazia
Wiltshire, Nicholas
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Mowbray, South Africa
Abstract
OpenHeritage, a non-profit company based in South Africa, was founded in early 2015 to develop and rollout open source heritage management systems to African countries. These systems aim to foster heritage conservation, improve heritage management processes and increase stakeholder participation in heritage matters. The system supported by OpenHeritage follows the model setup by SAHRIS, South Africa’s national heritage system, which was launched in 2012. Namibia launched their national heritage management system, NAHRIS, in May 2015 and the next rollout is envisaged for Kenya in 2016. The broader vision is to implement the platform in at least 20 countries over the next 5 years. OpenHeritage liaises with each country independently, managing both country-specific software developments, which typically arise from different legislative requirements, and core features that are common to everyone. OpenHeritage has recently partnered with SPECTRUM and is working towards full compliance with their requirements for collections management. We conclude by highlighting some of the cross-border opportunities and benefits for heritage management and research created by OpenHeritage and its partnering countries.
Description
Keywords
Drupal-based African National Heritage Management Systems, Data aggregation, roll-out in Namibia