Abstract
Large-scale digitisation has become a global trend during the current decade. More and more digitisation projects are also being launched in South Africa. Organisations and institutes like the Western Cape Archives, the library services of some South African universities (such as the University of Pretoria, Stellenbosch University, North-West University), NALN, SADiLAR and Nuuseum, among others, are all involved in projects focused on expanding the body of South African texts that are available digitally. However, the extent of these projects, especially regarding the digitisation of Afrikaans texts, is not clear. In fact, the digitisation of Afrikaans sources currently leaves much to be desired. These projects do not necessarily share a common goal, since some of these projects are centred on the preservation of historical documentation or a language form, while others hope to promote research in a particular field or make information more accessible.
This article aims to report on some of the digitisation projects currently being undertaken by North-West University and the Virtual Institute for Afrikaans (VivA). These projects, namely the Digital Bibliography of Afrikaans Linguistics, Digital Bibliography of Afrikaans Literature, Historical Corpus for Early Afrikaans (1675–1925) and the Archive for Historical Afrikaans Sources, are only a proverbial drop in the bucket with regard to the digitisation of Afrikaans as a language.
The terms digitisation, digitalisation, digital archive, digital library and digital corpus are defined in this article with a focus on discerning digitisation (the process by which soft copies are developed from hard copies, usually by means of scanning documents or taking pictures of items) from digitalisation (the process by which soft copies are encoded, commonly using optical character recognition [OCR] software). Furthermore, the distinction is made between a digital archive or digital library, where documents are housed and stored in soft copy, usually as PDFs, and digital corpora, where the data from the soft copies are encoded, searchable, statistically analysable, and usually stored in .txt format.
These distinctions and terminological clarifications are presented as a means of understanding how a series of smaller digitisation projects have been utilised as an attempt at large-scale digitisation. The first digitisation project outlined in this article is the Digital Bibliography of Afrikaans Linguistics (Digitale Bibliografie van die Afrikaanse Taalkunde [DBAT]), which was initially based on the Digital Library for Dutch Literature (Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren [DBNL]). Work on the DBAT started in 2004 and the digital database was formally launched in 2008. The DBAT was established to provide national and international linguistic researchers with a database containing the bibliographic information of all the available literature on Afrikaans linguistics as a means of aiding researchers in finding literature for research. By 2015, a Digital Bibliography of Afrikaans Literature (Digitale Bibliografie van die Afrikaanse Letterkunde [DBAL]) was launched to perform the same function for literary researchers.
Whilst these two databases aided researchers in identifying the available literature on a topic, and in which library these resources are housed, users increasingly expressed the need to gain access to these resources digitally. In order to address this need, DBAT and DBAL initiated digitisation processes, thereby allowing users to gain access to full-text digital copies of resources where possible.
In 2019, the Virtual Institute for Afrikaans (VivA) started working on a digital Historical Corpus for Early Afrikaans (1675–1925). This project aimed to both preserve historical texts written in Early Afrikaans and provide a source of data for linguistic research. Unfortunately, the pandemic of 2020 prevented visits to libraries and archives to acquire and digitise the historical texts. As a result, the decision was made to focus efforts on digitising the texts that were readily available and make these texts accessible online by establishing a Digital Archive for Historical Resources.
This article serves as an introduction and progress report of the digitisation projects that are underway, and invites persons and institutions interested in digitisation to work together towards achieving shared and separate outcomes. This article aims to present the projects detailed herein as a possible starting point for the development of similar digitisation projects in other languages. A number of the challenges encountered in these digitisation projects are also briefly presented, because these challenges can be obstacles for other languages as well. These obstacles include access to texts and resources such as financial support, human capacity, and the necessary technology to perform the digitisation and digitalisation processes. The lack of a collective vision regarding the digitisation of Afrikaans texts, and eventually a Digital Library of Afrikaans, also hampers progress. Challenges like the duplication of work by different institutions as part of their digitisation projects are also outlined, since these challenges translate to the digitisation processes of other South African languages.
Keywords: Archive for Historical Afrikaans Resources; Digital Bibliography for Afrikaans Literature (DBAL); Digital Bibliography for Afrikaans Linguistics (DBAT); Digital Library for Afrikaans; digitisation; digitalisation; Historic Corpus for Early Afrikaans; Virtual Institute for Afrikaans (VivA)
- This article’s featured image by Gerd Altmannwas obtained from Pixabay.
Kommentaar
Ek weet nie of die projekte bewus is van die ongelooflike versameling Afrikaanse letterkunde wat gehuisves word in die Johannesburgse Biblioteekdiens se African Studies Library nie. Tevore het die versameling bekend gestaan as die Strange Library of Africana. Ek is oortuig dat daar vroeë Afrikaanse werke slegs in die bepaalde biblioteek gehuisves word. Dis nie slegs Afrikaans wat versamel is nie, maar ook al die ander inheemse tale. Ek dink die gebou is ongelukkig huidiglik nie oop vir die publiek nie weens noodsaaklike instandhouding. Dit was op 'n stadium beleid om alle Suider-Afrikaanse letterkunde (nie slegs goeie nie) aan te koop vir bewaring.