Aluka is both participating and exhibiting at WAC-6.  This morning, Prof. Martin Hall chaired a great session - “Digital heritage and global realities: responses from Africa and the Arab world.”  In addition to weighty questions about fragile and limited bandwidth in the developing world and the ethical implications for digital initiatives engaging with the developing world, we also discussed the very real and practical challenges that scholars and archivists are facing in Uganda, in the preservation and cataloguing of their archival and historical memory.  How exactly does one digitize and preserve a 45 rpm record or film reel?  If the reel in question is from 1975, which governmental office does one seek permission from?

There were also excellent presentations by Susan Whitfield from the International Dunhuang Project.  Michael Ashley spoke about his work at UC Berkeley on the Digital Nineveh Archives - a multilingual and multi-institutional digital repository about this important Iraqi heritage site near Mosul.  Finally, we heard from two smaller, but equally important initiatives.  Retracing Heinrich Barth is a stunning traveling and virtual exhibition (recently on display at the Brunei Gallery at SOAS) seeking to connect and bridge the citizens of present day Agadez, the historical figure of Heinrich Barth, and Sahelian immigrant communities living in the UK.  I highly recommend visiting their site; also, check out the digitized 3 volumes of Barth’s Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa in Aluka.  Culture 2000 shared a fascinating project to create an online documentation of Melka Kunture - an early Paleolithic site in Ethiopia - using GIS and IKONOS satellite images.  There is clearly much more to be done and it is fascinating to consider what role we can play in generating more interest in these sorts of digital heritage initiatives.  The image below was from a GIS session in the afternoon - another session in the “Archaeology in the Digital Age 2.0″ theme.

Among the many events this past year to celebrate Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday on July 18th, one of the most poignant was the reunion of the surviving defendants of the 1956 and 1964 South African Treason trials. About 25 other co-defendants were brought together this past March and during the multi-day affair, spent a few hours with the former President of South Africa, discussing, among other things, the Rivonia trials, where seven of the participants were sentenced to life in prison. Though many of the nearly 150 defendants have died since Mandela was released from Robben Island prison in 1990, this is surely historic. The 1956 defendants and their families posed for photographs at Constitution Hill in Johannesburg.

The chief executive of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, Achmat Dangor, expressed Mandela’s wishes in a statement: “This is in line with his view that the struggle was fought and won by a collective and not by an individual. He wishes that their roles in the liberation struggle be acknowledged and honored,” he said.

One of the collections in the Struggles for Freedom section of the Aluka site is the 1964 Rivonia Treason Trial transcripts. Some of the attendees including Ahmed Kathrada and Ben Turok are also noted in the collection.

Those related to victims of a violent crime often turn inward after such a sudden loss. Some, however, turn outward towards the community that caused their heartbreak in an effort to change it for the better. One woman is receiving South Africa’s highest honor for her efforts to continue her daughter’s work improving the lives of South African children.

On August 25th, 1993, 26-year-old American Amy Biehl was murdered in Cape Town. She had been in South Africa on a Fulbright Scholarship, studying local women’s social advancement. Those involved were released from prison and given amnesty after confessing before Archbishop Tutu’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Her parents, Peter and Linda Biehl, forgave the four men convicted of the crime.

In their daughter’s honor, the Amy Biehl Foundation Trust was created. This organization carries out a vast array of educational endeavors, from sports, music, art, health and mentoring in an effort to steer underprivileged South African children from violence and towards positive change in their communities. Forgiveness is a principal virtue of the organization’s mission. One of the most heartening examples of this is that two of the men involved in Amy’s murder, Ntobeko Peni and Easy Nofemela, now work for the Foundation. In a recent interview with the Associated Press, Biehl’s mother explained her motives for reconciliation: “people who lost their children, they want to do something about it,” she said. “People don’t want a death to be in vain or senseless.”
Because of Linda Biehl’s “outstanding spirit of forgiveness in the wake of the murder of her daughter and contributing to the promotion of non-racism in post-apartheid South Africa,” she is being awarded the Order of the Companion of O.R. Tambo, one of the highest governmental honors. The award is named for the late African National Congress hero Oliver Tambo.

News articles about Amy’s case can be found in Aluka.

Teachers can spend hours combing through sources looking for that perfect set of materials to use in class, only to have to find them again the next time they want to use it. With Aluka and the Share a Tag function, you don’t have to.

So what is a tag?

A tag is a word or phrase that you use to classify and save an object. It is like a label on a photograph. A tag can be anything you want it to be, anything that helps you remember the material.

So, if you find an object that might be useful later for class, click Add/Edit tags and add the tags and comments you want. Click Save and these will be saved in My Aluka for later viewing. If you want to create a collection of objects for students to investigate in a class, give all the objects the same tag. For example, in a history class, you might label the objects History 101. All your materials with that tag will be saved and grouped together.

How do I share a tag?

Once you have found all the objects you want, go to My Aluka and click on the tag. From there, click Share this tag. You then have the option of entering email addresses individually or copying and pasting the provided URL into a syllabus or assignment. The students then click on the URL and can see the objects you have tagged.

How can this help me?

Sharing tags can promote interaction in a class. If you see something that might help a fellow student, you can share it with them. If you have a group project, simply share what you find with those in your group. The possibilities are endless.

Aluka is pleased to announce the release of over 900 digital objects about Aksum as part of the Heinz Ruther collection in the African Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes digital library. According to Professor David Phillipson, Aksum was a “capital of a major civilisation during the first seven centuries AD…it arose from the gradual fusion of an indigenous farming population with immigrants from southern Arabia who had settled in the region several hundreds of years previously. Although few in number, these immigrants introduced to the Ethiopian highlands important cultural traits, including literacy in a Semitic language, which have retained prominence in the region ever since…Much of the belief, liturgy, tradition, art and architecture of medieval and modern Ethiopia may be traced back to Aksumite origins. Aksum is classed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.”

This important documentation which includes 3D models, laser scans, and GIS data sets, complements a large set of digitized research and documentation about Aksum already available in Aluka: the documentation and research of the late Neville Chittick and Cambridge University’s Professor David Phillipson, archived at the British Institute in Eastern Africa, as well as the research and documentation from a team of archaeologists at Boston University and the Università degli Studi di Napoli ‘l’ Orientale’ led by Prof. Rodolfo Fattovich, Professor of Ethiopian Archaeology at UNO.

In June 2007, the Struggles for Freedom in Southern Africa content area was launched in the Aluka Digital Library. One year later, there are 48 collections online representing Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, North America, South Africa, Western Europe, and Zimbabwe. Some of the existing collections will continue to grow such as Core Readings, ES Reddy Collections, Lowenstein, Ranger Papers, amongst others.

Collections being added to the Aluka Digital Library in summer 2008 include the Ball Interviews (Angola), E.S. Reddy Southern Africa Collection, Lunstrum Interviews (Mozambique), Mudeka Interviews (Zimbabwe), and Thompson Interviews (Zimbabwe).

Some of the collections and materials that are currently in development include:
Bibliographies, Finding Aids, and Resource Guides
Black and White Journal (Zimbabwe)
National Archives of Namibia
Pieter Boersma Photographs on Southern Africa
Raymond Suttner Interviews on Underground ANC/SACP
Ronald Chilcote Collection from the University of Southern California
Searchlight South Africa Journal
Secret Portuguese Police Archives, National Archives of Portugal
South African Democracy Education Trust

Aluka hopes that you have found the Struggles content area a quality scholarly resource of use to your needs and that you will share it with fellow colleagues and students. We welcome your comments on Struggles; please feel free to send these to Angelique Mahal.

Well not really. We’re probably more apples and oranges given that Aluka is a non-profit initiative and that Google, well, is Google. But we’re both trying to improve the world and help people find information and knowledge through advances in ICT’s. During the eLearning Africa conference in Accra last week, the organizers set up Nnoboas (networking sessions). Aluka hosted a networking session. The session sought to explore opportunities for partnerships between for profits and non profits in the area of e-learning. We’ve also posted a new flickr set of images from last week’s conference and training workshop at the University of Ghana, Legon. A special thanks to the staff at the Balme Library, University of Ghana, Legon for hosting the workshop and to the executive leadership of the Ghana Library Association for encouraging their member libraries to participate.

In late 2006, the Struggles for Freedom in Southern Africa content area began the oral history project by asking a group of scholars and professors to contribute a selection of their respective oral histories to the Aluka Digital Library. The Struggles content area seeks to document the complex and varied ways that the struggles for liberation unfolded in Southern Africa and the contribution of unique primary source material such as oral histories detailing the lives of peasants, workers, women and men of all ages who experienced colonial oppression as well as the policies and practices of those in power that affected their lives constitute a critical part of the Aluka Digital Library.

Since a year and a half ago, Aluka has received contributed collections of interviews on Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and liberation activists in the global north. Some of the topics include women involved in the armed struggle in Zimbabwe; dock workers in Mozambique; the relationship of music and politics in late colonial and newly independent Angola; key figures in the South African liberation struggle; key FRELIMO leadership; imprisonment and detention in Rhodesia; and squatter women in South Africa.

Additional oral history collections that have been contributed to Aluka and that will be added in the coming months to the Digital Library are the Ball Interviews on contract workers in Angola; additional Isaacman Interviews on peasants displaced by the building of the Cahora Bassa dam in Mozambique; the Lunstrum Interviews on the politics of territory in Mozambique’s Massingir District bordering South Africa; the Thompson Interviews on peasant farmers resistance to colonial demands in Zimbabwe; and the Mudeka Interviews on generations of Mozambicans living and working in Zimbabwe.

If you are interested in learning more about the Oral History Project at Aluka or would like to contribute your oral histories, please contact Angelique Mahal at angelique.mahal@aluka.org.

Michael Gallagher, Rahim Rajan, and I have been preparing recently for two important events that will take place in

Accra, Ghana at the end of this month - see a previous post about this. Preparations for these events are now complete.Training in the use of the Aluka digital library is expected to attract about 50 participants and will take place at the University of Ghana Legon, University ICT Building, on Tuesday, May 27th from 9.00 to 13.30 hrs. The event has been organized in collaboration with the Balme Library, at the University of Ghana Legon, and the Ghana Library Association. Our local organizer is Mrs. Angelina Armah an Assistant Librarian at Balme Library. She has done an excellent job helping Michael and I to coordinate the logistics for the training session.The eLearning Africa 2008 Conference will be held at the Accra International Conference Centre (AICC). Aluka will exhibit at stand M 02 at the AICC exhibition hall throughout from the 28th - 30th of May. I will be speaking at the Conference in the Designing and Delivering eLearning: Repositories, Knowledge Banks and Online Resources (DES25) session at Committee Hall 2 on Thursday May 29th from 16.00-17.30 hrs. There will be simultaneous translation of English/French during this session.

On Thursday May 29th from 16.00 to 17.45 hrs in the Demonstration and Best Practice Area (DEM15), Michael will host a demonstration of Aluka during the special session that will highlight new innovations and best practices including new tools and services for eLearning.

We have also suggested and offered to moderate a networking session, “Nnoboas”. Nnoboas is a word in the Twi language which means “working together for the common good.” Our Nnoboa will take place in partnership with a Mr. Nuhu from Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto, Nigeria. The topic will be “Exploring Partnerships between Public, Commercial, and Non-Profit Organizations.” It will take place on Thursday, May 29th from 14:00 - 15:30 in Room 217. We look forward to seeing you next week.

Aluka is now on Twitter!

What is Twitter? According to Twitter’s own FAQ:

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? Bloggers can use it as a mini-blogging tool.

So, what does this mean for Aluka? This is just another way for us to get in touch with our community. We will be twittering on a diversity of topics including:

• Recent content on the Aluka web site
• Webinars and online training sessions
• Conferences and other events
• Current events relevant to Aluka and Aluka’s content
• New features of the web site
• Links to Aluka created media: training videos, podcasts, Flickr sets, etc.
• Stories from the Aluka community
• And many more!

If you’re not already on Twitter, create an account, browse to the Aluka Twitter page and select ‘Follow.’

As has been mentioned elsewhere on this blog, Aluka will be present at the eLearning Africa Conference in Accra, Ghana from May 25-31. Look for live Twitter updates in the coming week from our team in Ghana.

Also, just a quick reminder that Aluka has presence on Flickr, Facebook and YouTube.