A workshop on Digital Resource Management

Posted on August 16, 2009

DISA (Digital Innovation South Africa) recently hosted a 2.5 day workshop in Durban with the aim of providing a comprehensive overview of the nuts and bolts required for the successful management of digital resources. The opening address was delivered by Professor Nelson Ijumba, Vice-Chancellor of Research at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

The keynote speakers addressed issues around the need for taking charge in changing times and leadership development coupled with entrepreneurial skills development. Currently South Africa has around 2.2 million entrepreneurs but requires an additional 2.25 million new entrepreneurs. Energy, fight, faith and most importantly new skills are required for this development.

Day one presentations looked at issues of planning, digitisation, work flow management, quality control and preservation. The structured discussion, chaired by Kay Raseroka, Library Director, University of Botswana, looked at the benefits of digitisation including the economic benefits and requests were made for more 'templates' to assist set-up of digitisation projects.

Day two presentations, by invited speakers, showcased a wide variety of experiences around digitisation of different formats such as music, video, archival materials. It also included website design and set-up with a look at long term digitisation sustainability issues. The structured discussions, chaired by Alexio Motsi from the National Archives, looked at sustainability in terms of business approaches, private-public partnerships and community versus commercial issues.

The last day presentations covered a variety of content management software solutions and the workshop ended with a call to broaden the librarian and archivist’s vision to that of being in the business of providing information and facilitating development of knowledge.

Presentations are available from the DISA website

Pat Liebetrau, DISA