Hi folks,
Another one.
Katim
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: DEV DIGITAL Multilingual West African Digital Library
Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2000 11:36:09 -0500
From: "Lessard, George" <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: Media for Development in Democracy <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
-----Original Message-----
From: Donald Zhang Osborn [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, December 01, 2000 12:39 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [GKD] Multilingual West African Digital Library
Dear GKD Members,
The appended announcement concerning the "Multi-Lingual Digital Library
for West African Sources" may be of interest.
Don Osborn [log in to unmask]
[log in to unmask] www.kabissa.org/bisharat
**********************************************
The National Science Foundation has awarded its first-ever Collaborative
International Digital Library Project with Africa to Michigan State
University
For More Information:
http://www.AfricanDL.org
Prof. Mark Kornbluh
Tel. (517) 355-9300
Email: [log in to unmask]
Prof. David Robinson
Tel. (517) 353-8898
Email: [log in to unmask]
Prof. David Wiley
Tel. (517) 353-1700
Email: [log in to unmask]
East Lansing, MI--- A new project at Michigan State University (MSU)
with research teams at the Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire (IFAN)
and the West African Research Center (WARC) in Dakar, Senegal will help
to overcome the "digital divide" between the wealthier nations and
Africa. As information technologies transform education and
communications around the globe, the digital divide is enlarging the
information and education gap between those countries with significant
resources and those without. Thanks to a path-breaking $380,000 grant
from the National Science Foundation, research teams will work to narrow
this gap by building a "Multi-Lingual Digital Library for West African
Sources."
Over the next three years, the "Multi-Lingual Digital Library for West
African Sources" will develop a multi-media digital library of West
African sources in multiple languages that includes sound, text and
image content from multiple countries. These materials will be made
freely accessible over the Internet in the United States, West Africa,
and throughout the world - many of them for the first time. For scholars
and students conducting research and teaching about West Africa as well
as teachers and students of Africa and African languages in both the
United States and West Africa, the potential impact of this project is
tremendous.
"One of the most exciting aspects of this project is that it will allow
the partners to explore some of the most pressing challenges facing
academic researchers - challenges of intellectual property, digitization
and delivery --in a multi-lingual, multicultural context," said
Professor Mark Kornbluh, Director of MATRIX: The Center for Humane Arts,
Letters and Social Sciences Online at MSU and Executive Director of
H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences OnLine. "The enormous inequality
in the flow of global electronic information raises particular
challenges to designing the structure of any international digital
library that involves African and American partners. This project will
address these concerns head-on. Our goal is to develop and initiate a
system for the creation of digital collections of scholarly materials
that can dramatically increase the flow of information from, to, and
throughout Africa."
David Wiley, Director of the MSU African Studies Center and Professor of
Sociology, commented, "The huge expense of maintaining traditional
libraries and archives - as well as the unstable political climates and
the pressing social and economic needs of many West African countries -
have significantly limited Africans' access to materials documenting
their own history. Many print materials, as well as photographs and
historical manuscripts, in West African research libraries and
collection are rapidly deteriorating. At the same time, a wealth of oral
histories and other documents have been collected by researchers around
the globe that remain preserved in collections outside of Africa, making
them inaccessible to most students and scholars in Africa. By digitizing
these manuscripts, journals, photographs, and oral histories, the
"Multi-Lingual Digital Library for West African Sources" will both
preserve these valuable materials and repatriate these research and
cultural materials to their countries of origin while also increasing
their access to researchers around the globe."
David Robinson, Professor of History and African Studies at MSU, noted
that this "Multi-lingual Digital Library for West African Sources" also
will provide a valuable model for creating and distributing a diverse
array of materials in technologically poor areas. "The focus of this
project on West Africa poses special challenges in dealing with the low
level of connectivity and the limited training of collaborators to
create the digital library system and make it accessible to potential
users in the scholarly and educational communities," he said. "At the
same time, West African universities, scholars, and teachers all
recognize the unparalleled potential of the Internet to provide both
access to resources for teaching and research and an avenue for
scholarly publication. This project aims to develop models for
multinational collaboration and strategies for overcoming connectivity
inadequacies that allow for future capacity building."
The past several years have seen an explosion of efforts by the U.S.
Agency for International Development, the U.S. State Department, and
others to increase Africa's connection to the Internet. By providing
economic and institutional support, this project links the strength of
existing MSU scholarly collaborations in Africa and the United States to
create digital collections of scholarly materials. These will
dramatically increase the flow of information to, from, and throughout
Africa.
To a great extent, the real strength of this collaboration rests on the
expertise of its partners. IFAN, the key partner institution in Senegal,
is arguably the most important research institute in West Africa. WARC,
also based in Senegal but serving all of West Africa, draws a wealth of
researchers and students from across Africa and around the globe each
year. MSU's African Studies Center has been a premier Title VI National
Resource Center for decades with a long, strong record of service to
African students, faculty, and institutions. The African Studies Center
and MATRIX: The Center for Humane Arts, Letters and Social Sciences
Online, in partnership with H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences
OnLine, have provided ongoing training, technical support, and a
computer laboratory and server system over the past several years.
The partners hope that this pilot project will demonstrate the
tremendous potential of the Internet in Africa for research, teaching,
and outreach as well as a model for student and scholarly collaboration
across ethnic and national boundaries. We anticipate that MSU will build
on its considerable reputation in African Studies to take a leadership
position in the digitization of African Sources and make them available
to the broadest range of interested persons, and that this project will
continue well beyond the expiration of the current NSF grant.
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