[Afridig] Afridig Scoping Grants : Criteria for assessment

[Keith Breckenridge]

Dear all,

After many conversations, I thought it would be a good idea to restate the
priorities we have in mind for funding the full proposals for digitisation
and development next year.  The ten different issues we have concerns about
are listed in the scoping grant letter which I've pasted below (they're not
identical for each project but the broad areas are similar and
overlapping).   In assessing the big proposals, however, we have a shorter
list of priority concerns.  These are:

1)  Collaboration.
We will only be funding a handful of the 30 projects, so the proposals that
can assemble many related concerns around a single process / platform will
be very attractive.  This is a Supra-Institutional Programme, so we are
particularly interested in cross-campus collaborations.  We'd like to
encourage you to find each other by looking at the projects at
http://wiser.wits.ac.za/afridig (although not all of the projects listed
there have received scoping grants).  There may also be other projects
we've not heard about that can be pulled together into the full proposal.
If you'd like us to suggest suitable partners, please write to
afdhumanities at gmail.com.

2) Insourcing institutional capacity
One major objective of the programme is to re-awaken the universities'
digitisation capacity, broadly conceived.  That can take many forms, but
the main idea is that the core skills and resources should be available to
other projects at the home instiution/s after your project is completed.
Putting pressure on your own library to get its act together is a good
idea!  We have been working hard with the Wits Library on this, and they
will very shortly appoint a full time Digicentre Manager who can assist
each of the projects, and we're keen to help with similar efforts on the
other campuses.  I'll introduce the Wits Digicentre person to this list
when we have an appointment.

3) Exposing sources produced by black authors
Projects that can help to expose works produced by black authors that are
currently difficult to source or distribute will be prioritised in an
effort to counter what we see as a powerful bias in the available on-line
materials and a serious problem with humanities teaching and research.

4) Standards-based cataloguing and discoverability.
This project's long-term goal is to support a southern African on-line
materials aggregator that will help to structure and reinforce the
scholarly priorities of researchers based in this region.  To do this we
believe that all of the work should be produced using a standards-based
cataloguing and publishing tool.  Atom is one obvious platform but each
project may have its own favourite, as long as the goal of standards-based
cataloguing is clear and achievable.

I hope that all makes sense, but please shout if you have any further
questions.

Yours, Keith


*----------------------*

*1 Technical requirements of digitisation*

   -

   Describe the facilities required (digitisation hardware, digitisation
   processes, cataloguing software, and preservation storage)
   -

   How will the project cost and resource each of these?

*2** P**referred* *digitisation partners*

*Libraries: **UCT, Wits Digitisation Centre, Pretoria, Stellenbosch, UWC **or
commercial partners*

   -

   Details
   -

      Contact person
      -

      Describe facilities (Digitisation hardware, cataloguing software, and
      preservation storage)
      -

      Estimated cost for digitisation of materials

3 *Describe the scope of the materials to be digitised:*

   -

   Description of the collection
   -

   Number and current form of Pages / Objects / Sites
   -

   Number of bibliographic objects
   -

   Location / Holdings
   -

   Subjects covered : Keywords
   -

   Time periods covered by decade
   -

   Geography covered by region
   -

   Form of digital objects

4 *What standardised cataloguing software will the project use?*

A core goal of this programme is to produce accessible digital materials
that adopt global cataloguing, publishing and preservation standards. Which
of the following will the project use?

   -

   AtoM
   -

   Omeka
   -

   Drupal (how standardised?)
   -

   Dspace
   -

   Other standards-based tools

*5 How will this project diversify and enrich existing collections of
humanities research materials?*

*Another goal is to increase the exposure of unavailable or scarce works
that have been produced by black writers by making them available in
standards-based on-line formats. *

*6 Describe collaboration details: *

*With which other projects (**short descriptions are **listed at
https://wiser.wits.ac.za/
<https://breckenridge-org-dot-yamm-track.appspot.com/Redirect?ukey=1jedBAhnsQ5e2tjAPsfllcJI2mfFCv3ReD4VDFoAxpTA-0&key=YAMMID-61243788&link=https%3A%2F%2Fwiser.wits.ac.za%2Fafridig>*
*afridig**) can you foresee working? **Inter-campus collaboration and
resource sharing is an important criterion.*

*7 Where **and how **will this material be hosted?*

*8 What are the plans for the long-term preservation of high-resolution
images, and other large data formats?*

*9 What is the plan for the long-term sustainability of this collection,
its publication and preservation? *

*10 Do examples exist – locally or internationally – of similar projects?
And, if so, please describe them.  Have you made contact with the project
leaders? *

-------
Keith Breckenridge  *W I S E R* - The Wits Institute for Social and
Economic Research, University of the Witwatersrand | Pbag 3, PO Wits,
 Johannesburg, South Africa, 2050 | Phone +27(0)11-7174272 | Web:
wiser.wits.ac.za
| <http://wiser.wits.ac.za> *Biometric State*, CUP, Sept 2014
<http://goo.gl/nJKK5N> | Co - Editor, Journal of African History
<http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=AFH>.
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