Information Industry News
London, UK. | October 27, 2022
The Big Ten Academic Alliance and its fourteen member universities recently announced they will become founding members of Africa Commons, the latest project from Coherent Digital.
Launching in beta at the 2022 Charleston Conference, Africa Commons is a large-scale, multi-year project to digitize, disseminate, and discover African cultural materials.
Its first module, History and Culture, indexes over 600 organizations, 2,100 collections, and 250,000 documents pertaining to Africa from 1500-2000. The Africa Commons’editorial board is chaired by Dr. Buhle Mbambo-Thata, University Librarian, University of Lesotho, who is also the Charleston Conference keynote speaker.
Says Coherent President Stephen Rhind-Tutt, “African cultural materials are scattered across thousands of collections with different indexing and user interfaces. Many are also at risk. History and Culture is a comprehensive place for discovering, collecting, and preserving them.”
History and Culture is made free to African institutions and funded by member organizations like The Big Ten Academic Alliance. Ten percent of revenue will go to digitization projects in Africa.
Jenni Wilson, Sales Director, said, “We’re grateful to the many individuals at BTAA who have supported this project from the very beginning. Their feedback directly shaped its development, and we look forward to a continued partnership.”