Scholarly communication and publishing: Digitisation

Digitising Africana materials and manuscripts

The conversion of diffcult to access hard copy Africana materials and manuscripts to digital formats is an ongoing project. Among some of the signifcant accomplishments in 2019 was the OA publication on the institutional repository, WIREDSpace, of rural education reports, Deaf Centre e-books, the journal title Symposium, and, the history of the Johannesburg College of Education (JCE). Similarly, the digital surrogates of the SAIRR, non-racial sports and security court trial papers were uploaded to the HP AtoM digital library.

Ms Eve Gray presents at the Open Access (OA) Seminar, Solomon Mahlangu House, Wits, 2 October 2019

The digitisation programme aims at not only widening access, but also long term preservation of the priceless research treasures in the custody of the University. To this end, the successful testing and launching of the Archivematica preservation software platform in 2019 represented a signifcant milestone. In the area of hard copies, 36 items were treated for conservation by the Special Collections Librarian. Additionally, the Humphrey’s Collection of Thomas Baines paintings was relocated to the Wits Art Museum for long term special curation.

National digitisation capacity building initiatives, 2018-2020

Under the Wits-NRF Digitisation Capacity Development Initiative, the Library organised seven workshops and training sessions, covering overarching digitisation concepts and issues, such as project management, digital repositories and asset management, and metadata creation.

Paul Weinberg facilitated the Digital Curation Worshop, 24-25 April 2019.