Leveraging the Network: Building and Deploying a Collaborative Resources from and About Africa: An Introduction to Aluka.
Presented by Javanica Curry, Assistant Director, Library Relations, Aluka.
The need — resources from and about Africa are limited. Archives, libraries, and primary resource materials are dispersed and difficult to access. Digital resources can help level the playing field. Also oral tradition is hard to capture
The Mission — not for profit to put all these disperse resources online from and about
Africa.
Aluka approach — collection development: aggregate high quality curative collections from museums, libraries, etc., and put them in a digital library. They are also taking advantage of institutional contributions.
The technology — solid technology that is scalable, web based, and cost effective.
International partnerships — participation is critical. As participation grows so does understanding. Training librarians is important. Most critical is to make this project for the benefit of Africans.
Sustainability – participation, access, and contributions, technology, leveraging the network effect via participation.
Content area — African Plants Initiative – manuscripts, specimens, photographs, drawings, field notes, etc. Contains 288K objects.
Struggles for Freedom in Southern Africa — historical sources documenting the struggle against apartheid. Includes newspapers, underground literature, government documents, correspondence, oral histories, finding aids, etc. Selected by 6 national committees of scholars. Contains 180K pages.
African Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes — visual contextual and spatial documentation of African culture and heritage. 15 sites have been documented in phase I. 3D models, aerial photos, excavations, maps, notes, books, historic letters, GIS data, scholarly articles, photogrammetrics. Contains over 10K objects.
Aluka has a public site restricted to abstracts and thumbnails, indexed in Google. Member libraries can see the full site for a trial period until the end of the year. They want feedback from the membership. Contains all primary resource material with some secondary review material.
Objects can be measured and images manipulated using the image viewers tools.
You can save items to a MyAluka account. User can also share items in their MyAluka account with other registered users. Users can share saved items with up to 20 email addresses. But again, they must be members to access the data.
The content now in Aluka is just a start. It is important for the user community to participate. The content areas can grow but it depends on what becomes available from participants. This metadata is all indexed in Google.
Aluka is a discovery tool. We don’t need to put everything in that exists in Aluka, but have it serve as a starting point containing important items to serve as pointers to more extensive collections.
Free Access to Aluka Available through June 2008.
Aluka is pleased to offer our individual users free access for the duration of the JSTOR Partner Preview.
You can create an Aluka ID to gain access through 30 June 2008. Your access will work both on campus and remotely.
- Learn more about how your institution can participate in Aluka for continued access.
- View a list of participating institutions.
Through your Aluka User ID, you can tag and save materials in the Aluka digital library, share your tags with others, add annotations to tagged materials, and save customized searches.
Questions? Please contact user_services@aluka.org.
