The Ulwazi Programme: a Model for Community Digital Libraries in South Africa
•
0 likes•148 views
IFLA 2015: Session 174a Born of changes in the political context and the policy environment, the Ulwazi Programme is a South African library initiative that has been set up by the eThekwini Municipal Library’s Libraries and Heritage Department. Its aim is to record and share, in both English and Zulu, the local histories and cultures of communities served by the municipal library in the greater Durban area. The Programme does this by using the existing library infrastructure and freely available social technologies to create a wiki, much like Wikipedia, but localised for the eThekwini Municipality. The presentation further argues that the Ulwazi Programme advances the library’s efforts to be an inclusive institution and contributes to social cohesion at a local level.
Recommended
More Related Content
What's hot
What's hot (20)
Viewers also liked
Viewers also liked (20)
Similar to The Ulwazi Programme: a Model for Community Digital Libraries in South Africa
Similar to The Ulwazi Programme: a Model for Community Digital Libraries in South Africa (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
The Ulwazi Programme: a Model for Community Digital Libraries in South Africa
- 2. The Ulwazi Programme: A Case Study for Access, Skills and Development Niall McNulty
- 3. LIS Transformational Challenges • Inadequate in rural areas & former apartheid ‘homelands’ • Uneven access to ICTs • Shortage of relevant resources for potential library users • Continuing neglect of indigenous languages • Lack of reading and information literacy
- 5. The Ulwazi Programme • What is the Ulwazi Programme? • The Goals of the Programme • Ulwazi Programme Model • How does it work? • Special Projects • Ulwazi Programme Statistics • Achievements • Output:Theory of Change • Output:The Digital Memory Toolkit
- 6. What is the Ulwazi Programme? • Initiative of the Libraries & Heritage Department of the eThekwini Municipality • Conceptuliased by ex-Head of IS, Elizabeth Greyling • Programme to collect and share local knowledge and histories in local language • Insufficient management systems for local knowledge perpetuated lack of local content on the Internet • Poor digital literacy in local communities
- 7. What is the Ulwazi Programme? • Developed in line with UN Millennium Development Goals and the WSIS Action Plans - refined over time • Calls for access to info for all, capacity-building and development of local content in local languages • Potential of the existing library infrastructure to facilitate the participation • Developed by using open-source software, in collaboration with the public library and local communities • Local wiki for eThekwini Municipality
- 8. Goals of the Programme • Preserve and share local,‘indigenous’ knowledge • Build capacity in digital skills • Develop a sustainable digital library of local relevance and in local language • Encourage local communities to become part of the global information society • Promote social inclusion and contribute to socio- economic transformation
- 9. The Ulwazi Programme Model LIBRARY SOCIAL TECHNOLOGIES COMMUNITY
- 10. The Ulwazi Programme Model Community • Hold Knowledge • Validate • Contribute Library • Infrastructure • Support • Resources • Funding • Facilitate Training Technology • Open-source • Social Media • Mobile Devices
- 12. The Community? • Fieldworkers: trained in oral history methodology, basic digital media skills and software • Volunteer fieldworkers, community members, record knowledge and histories • Formal researchers from heritage and library departments, universities, local museums, community development projects • Special target groups such as artists, community historians, poets, writers • Schools
- 13. Library
- 14. The Library • Anchor partner – stable position (community and government structure) • Uniquely placed - library penetrates semi-rural / peri-urban areas • Offers infrastructure and resources • Facilitates training • Supports the technology and data collection • Provides content management and information skills
- 16. Open-Source and Social Media • Combination of open-source software and social media • Open-source software: freely available, no licensing fees and a common philosophy of sharing • Social media used to create new entry points for the programme, including: • Facebook,Twitter & Flickr • Although search results are main entry point
- 17. Going Mobile • 89% of all Internet use in South Africa is via mobile devices • Currently, over 78% of visitors access the website through a mobile device • Scaled down version of Ulwazi platform automatically presented on mobile phones and tablets
- 18. Setting up the Programme
- 19. The Nitty Gritty Planning •Research •Design •Budget •Promotion •Target Areas Implementation •Selection •Recruitment •Training •Data Collection •Content Management •Media Management Sustainability •Organisational Structure •Project Management •Technology Management •Fieldworker Management •Equipment Maintenance •Promotion
- 21. Schools Project
- 22. Schools Project • Grade 10 IT students at township and rural schools around the eThekwini Municipality • Taught basic web and research skills (email, adding content online, finding info on the Internet) • 8 weeks long, extra-mural activity • Thematic approach: School History, Family Histories, Places of Significance and Aspects of Local Culture • 4 articles to the Ulwazi Community Memory Wiki • Online test with certificates
- 23. Heritage Map
- 24. Statistics: visitors Better quality of visitors • 224% more pageviews • 21% increase in time on platform February 2009 - February 2010: 21, 125 visitors VS February 2013 - February 2014: 309, 386 visitors
- 25. Statistics: NewVS ReturningVisitors • Visitors are finding worthwhile content on the Ulwazi Programme platform • They are returning to it as a source of information • 10% increase (from 25.5% to 35.6%) in returning visitors
- 26. Linguistic Communities: Most visitors from KwaZulu-Natal, the eThekwini Municipality & Joburg Visitors: South Africa
- 27. Analytics: Keywords & Content Zulu proverbs Coming of age ceremony Part of lobola negotiations Zulu folktales Dreams Clan praises Coming of age ceremony Stage of lobola negotiations Spiritual herb Indian dessert Afrikaans game
- 28. Social: Newsletter Feb 2014 Feb 2015 • Sustained increase in Ulwazi Programme newsletter subscribers • An increase of 60%
- 29. Social: Facebook • 538 likes on Facebook (Jan 2014) • 1205 likes on Facebook (Feb 2015) • 124% increase
- 30. Achievements • Increasing numbers: 35 000 (March & April 2014) visits per month, 43 922 (May 2014), 61 740 (Aug 2014), 63 898 (June 2015) • Established digital library of local history and knowledge in English and Zulu - over 800 articles in Zulu and English • Trained 15 fieldworkers in digital skills • Collaborated with four township and rural schools • Enhanced digital literacy & skills
- 32. Output: Digital Memory Toolkit
Editor's Notes
- Good morning everybody. My name is Niall McNulty and together with the then head of Information Systems at the eThekiwni Municipality Elizabeth Greyling, I launched a digital library of indigenous knowledge in 2007 called The Ulwazi Programme. I thank IFLA for the opportunity to present on a project I was very passionate about and I hope you find value in this example of what an African library in the digital age may become.
- I’d like to begin by situating the project in the larger post apartheid South African information landscape. The Ulwazi Programme addresses some of the library and information sciences challenges as outlined in the South African LIS Transformational Charter which include: access to ICTs which is uneven in south africa, particularly the rural areas and former apartheid homelands. access to relevant resources in indigenous languages, which either are not recorded or not easily available lack of reading and information literacy
- Some of the recommendations of the LIS Charter are: to use ICTs to promote access to information; to provide relevant content in local, indigenous languages; to promote and strengthen literacy, both reading and information and to foster cultural expression and social inclusion.
- This is an outline of what I am going to discuss this morning. I’ll start with an explanation of what the Ulwazi Programme is, the project goals and how the model is structured. I’ll then discuss special projects associated with the programme, project statistics and achievements, and then close with a brief overview of two project outputs.
- The Ulwazi Programme is an initiative of the Libraries and Heritage Dept of the eThekwini Municipality, which was originally conceptualised by Elizabeth Greyling. It’s aim if to collect and share local knowledge in local languages, to develop a usable management system for this knowledge, to publish local content on the Internet and to improve digital literacy in local communities.
- The Ulwazi Programme was developed in line with the UN Millennium Development Goals and the WSIS Action Plans which calls for access to information for all, capacity building and development of local content in local languages. The Plan also identifies the potential of existing library infrastructure to facilitate community participation in this process. The online components of the Programme were developed using open-source, social technologies which allows for collaboration between the public library and local communities. Essentially the website is a local wiki for the eThekwini Municipality.
- So, to summarise, the goals of the Programme are to: Preserve and share local, ‘indigenous’ knowledge; Build capacity in digital skills; Develop a sustainable digital library of local relevance and in local languages; Encourage local communities to become part of the global information society; and Promote social inclusion and contribute to socio-economic transformation.
- This is a simplistic diagram which illustrated the project model and the three pillars on which the programme rests - the library, the community and social technologies.
- This is another illustration of the model. The community holds and can validate the knowledge; they need to contribute this knowledge freely. The library has the infrastructure and resources and can facilitate training and provide support. The technology is open-source, social and optimised for mobile devices.
- These photographs illustrate three examples of community engagement in practice; On your left is Anton Lembede’s family being interviewed for a short web documentary, to the right an oral history is being conducted with Ela Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi’s grand-daughter) and in the centre a group discussion is being held between elderly members of the community and local schoolchildren. This content is all recorded and added to the Ulwazi platform.
- The Ulwazi Programme definition of community is broad and includes: Fieldworkers trained in oral history methodology and basic digital media skills to record knowledge and histories; Formal researchers from heritage and library departments, universities, local museums, and community development projects; Special target groups such as artists, community historians, poets and writers; and Schools
- These picture illustrate various aspects of the library. On the left I am working with volunteers in the Ulwazi programme office; to the right is the traditional library environment and in the centre is a group discussion being held outside a container library in a rural area of eThekwini.
- The library is the anchor partner in the model. It has a stable position within community and government structures and is uniquely placed, penetrating semi-rural/peri-urban areas. It can offer infrastructure and resources such as broadband internet connections. The library facilitates training, supports the technology and data collection, and provides content management and information skills.
- These photographs illustrate the technology being used with the website as it appears on a desktop and a mobile device.
- The technology is a combination of open-source software and social media. This software is freely available, with no licensing fees. Social media such as Twitter and Facebook are used to create new entry points for the programme, including although search results from Google are the main entry point.
- This is not unique to South Africa but reflected in a number of developing countries where fixed line connections to the Internet are not available. Almost 9o% of all Internet use in South Africa is via mobile devices and 80% of visitors access the Ulwazi website through a mobile device. Thus a scaled down version of Ulwazi platform for these users is essential.
- This a diagrammatic representation of the steps involved in initiating and running the project. It is a circular and loops back into itself as the project required constant refinement and input from fieldworkers with access to new, un-recorded data. The steps include: setting project goals and objectives; planning different aspects of the project; recruiting fieldworkers; training fieldworkers in digital media and oral history methodology; data collection in the field; submission and management of content; and ongoing promotion of the project and it’s work.
- This is another representation, in more detail, of how the project was managed to ensure the best utilisation of limited resources. The planning phase included research, project design, budgeting, promotion and deciding which areas to target. The implementation phase included the recruitment and training of fieldworkers, data collection and content management. The sustainability phase related to project, technology and fieldworker management; equipment maintenance and ongoing promotion.
- Once the platform was developed a series of special projects were run over the years to use collect content and disseminate it in unique ways. Memories of Inanda was a series of web documentaries consisting of oral histories from elder members of the Inanda community in Durban. These were only released online and are available though video sharing applications such as YouTube and Vimeo.
- These photographs are from a project which was run in township schools. To the left are participating learners with their certificates, to the right the project website and in the centre is Elizabeth Greying running a session with learners.
- The project was run with support of the Goethe Institut. Grade 10 IT students participated and were taught basic web and research skills. A thematic approach was taken with research conducted on School History, Family Histories, Places of Significance and Aspects of Local Culture. Learners had to submit 4 articles to the Ulwazi platform and completed a short online test and were presented with certificates.
- A heritage map was developed which was a visual representation of the website resources and also a navigational tool to access these resources,
- Statistics tracked by Google Analytics showed a continued growth in the number of visitors and also a more sustained engagement with the platform. Between 2010 and 2014 visitors to the website increased from 20,000 to 300,000 per annum. They also spent an average of 20% more time on the website meaning they found value in the content and were navigating to different pages.
- There was also an increase in returning visitors which means users are viewing the Platform as a source of information and finding worthwhile content on the website.
- If we look at were users were accessing the website from, most visitors were from the eThekwini Municipality and Gauteng. This is were the Zulu linguistic communities are dominant so it makes sense that users are accessing locally-relevant content in local languages.
- These are the keywords people are putting into search engines such as Google to find the Ulwazi Programme’s website and are a good indication of the types of content users are interested in. A high proportion of these search terms are in isiZulu and most are concerned with cultural practices and local history and heritage.
- On the social front there was a sustained increase in subscribers to the newsletter.
- As well as a steady increase in fans on the Facebook page.
- Some achievements from the project as plotted against the South African LIS transformation charter: Access - a steady increase in the number of visitors to the website, making it one of the most popular Zulu-language online platforms in the world; Relevant resources - a digital library of local history and knowledge has been created; Literacy - through the fieldworker and schools project a number of users were trained in digital skills leading to an increase in information literacy.
- The theory of change was drafted out of research into the Ulwazi Programme. It states that by developing a Local Knowledge Platform, and thereby providing access to locally relevant information in local languages (for example, information about East London in Xhosa), one can have the following impacts: broad skills development; improved access to relevant information; the promotion of languages / localisation of digital information; support of social cohesion; and contribution to a knowledge society (in which information is leveraged as a resource) / economy (leveraged for economic gains) This theory of change feeds into South Africa’s National Development Plan 2030, addressing issues of: social cohesion, promoting marginalised 'indigenous languages', skills development and economic growth.
- The Digital Memory Toolkit came out of the work done around developing the Ulwazi Programme model. It is an introductory training manual offering information and guidance on setting up digital memory projects. The toolkit was produced to assist African organisations, libraries, archives, museums, and schools to initiate and run their own digital memory projects, using free, open-source technology and community volunteers. It includes sections on project planning and management, which software to use, training, oral history methodology, and digital resource management. Overall, the Digital Memory Toolkit is designed to "address a lack of digital literacy in community memory projects by giving project teams the insight and tools necessary to develop these types of projects. " The toolkit is divided into 3 parts: Part 1: Project Management Part 2: Digital Media Training And E-Skills Development Part 3: Case Studies And First Hand Accounts