[Afridig] Afridig Scoping Grants : Criteria for assessment

Mon Jan 7 11:53:27 SAST 2019

Dear Keith & Hlonipha (and Hilde at Africa Open, Stellenbosch, for info)

Greetings and all good wishes for 2019.

Thank you for your message of 29 November (below) - all points duly noted.

I am not sure when everyone re-opens their office, but am writing to say that I am starting to work on the full proposal for the digitization project for which Africa Open (where I am based) received a scoping grant of 25k for a preliminary proposal. 

This money was not yet available by the time we at Stellenbosch went on recess in early December - it had not come into our account, from WISER. 

So what I am mainly wanting to know here is, when will we receive it? 

One of the things I want to use it for is to buy a mobile digital scanner-camera to scan music manuscripts on the hoof. 

Another is to travel to the UK and elsewhere (from France, where I live most of the time) to seek out some of the material I want to present in my full proposal. 

Both of these things require money.

I note that the closing date for uploading the full proposal online is 20 February, which is about 6 weeks away.

Kind regards

Christine

> On 29 Nov 2018, at 13:49, Keith Breckenridge <keith at breckenridge.org.za> wrote:
> 
> 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 <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 <mailto: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 Preferred 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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