GLAM/Newsletter/December 2024/Contents/Nigeria report
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Digitization of Heritage Archives in Nigeria
Digitization
In an effort to encourage GLAM activities in Nigerian, a discourse on how to get archives from custodians, curate it, and digitize the archives started. The process of getting the archives up on Wikimedia Commons under a free license was a tedious yet revealing and educating process, Some archives from Nigeria's first generation architects have been uploaded on Wikimedia Commons to enhance research and bridge knowledge gap in the area of Nigerian Architectural history and the built environment. The year 2024 recorded the uploads of over 500 archives, this led to training workshops and virtual webinars events on archive preservation and Digitization. The framework used to get this done is being replicated for other digitization projects in Nigeria. So far about 1500 Large scale, hand drawn architectural blueprints have been digitized with over 900 freely accessible under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 4.0, the other Archives without a free license Creative common attribution were largely based on ethical considerations and local laws in the country. Some of the archives had sensitive information and data that could be a breach to National security and safety of users of the buildings whose floor plans were digitized and preserved leveraging Wikimedia Commons.
Archival Material Preservation Work Process
The process of preservation of Archives involves a conceptual framework, a step by step approach, starting from stakeholder meetings and engagement, inclusion of relevant stakeholders from Local institutions to global partnerships. Understanding the role of custodial relationships and engagement in making accessibility to archival material easy, making the custodians a major part of the work process and preservation journey and also getting them involved in various decision processes of the archival material Digitization and preservation, lastly the involvement of the local Wikimedia Community in Nigeria, the digitization of Archives made room for trainings on the use of PattyPan, Wikidata, Commons and Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Heritage User Group Nigeria (currently awaiting recognition from Affcom) were greatly involved in the process, with some members volunteering as curators, others writers, moderators, speakers and trainers to see the archives preserved on Wikimedia.
Future of Nigerian Archives
Collaborations on different levels have been established to ensure continued digitization and preservation of Archives in Nigeria. The Heritage archives in Nigeria requires an intervention and what can be done is to secure necessary collaboration and partnership till when they can be preserved sustainably and are prevented from further decay and deterioration based on their brittleness, age and poor maintenance culture and storage conditions as seen in many archiving institutions. The Future of Archives in Nigeria is an emerging discuss in the Wiki Verse and discussions on how to properly preserve and share these valuable information with the world are underway.
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- Argentina report
- Brazil report
- India report
- Netherlands report
- New Zealand report
- Nigeria report
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- Public Domain Day report
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