Post 4: Collaboration and Digitisation

Atifa Rawan and the University of Arizona Libraries (UAL)

The University of Arizona has committed itself to working with Afghanistan Higher Education to rebuild Afghanistan academic libraries since 2002. Atifa Rawan, an Afghan-American UAL faculty librarian, has made six trips and has completed extensive library assessment, reports, staff training and digital library development.  Rawan is the 2005 recipient of the American Library Association Elizabeth Futas Catalyst for Change Award for her work in Afghanistan and her contributions to US libraries.

The UA in partnership with the ACKU and Nancy Hatch Dupree has collaborated on ‘Preserving and Creating Access to Afghanistan Literature’ a project that will catalogue, digitise and create metadata for the center’s collection covering the period from Jihad period, 1989 to 2006.

ACKU Collections Kabul University

The project has 15 staff members in Afghanistan who, with Rawan and UAL colleague Yan Han, are also building a preservation infrastructure at Kabul University that the 19 universities in Afghanistan can eventually use to access the digital information.

Dupree serves as the historian on the project checking both the value and validity of the materials.

A grant from the National Endowment for Humanities (NEH) has funded the project.

Afghanistan Digital Library Initiative:

The UA is also a member of the Digital Library Alliance (DLA) which includes universities around the world and in Afghanistan.  The Afghan eQuality Alliances: 21^st Century Universities for Afghanistan initiative is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Washington State University.

The aim is to establish a digital library environment including a centralised integrated library system built with open source software.   This centralized ILS will initially support four academic universities in Kabul (Kabul University, Polytechnic University, Kabul Medical University and Kabul Education University), with a view to including other regional institutions throughout Afghanistan.

Rawan and Han have worked on the project since 2005.

Kabul University Central Library

New York University and the Afghanistan Digital Library:

The Afghanistan Digital Library is a project of New York University Libraries with the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Reed Foundation, and the W.L.S. Spencer Foundation.

The project is collecting, cataloging, digitizing, and making available over the Internet as many Afghan publications from the period 1871–1930 as it is possible to identify and locate.

Phase 1 of the project, undertaken in 2005, has drawn materials from the collections of several private collectors as well as from the holdings of New York University Library and the British Library.

Phase 2, undertaken in 2006, involves training staff at the National Archives in Kabul in conservation, digitization and cataloging of materials held in various public and private collections inside Afghanistan.
Although not in English, the following video shows the interior and part of the collections of the National Archives.

My search for this post has been the most time consuming to date - initially searching on information found in articles via the Swinburne Library databases; I found several useful abstracts and in both instances was linked to Google scholar.  Frustratingly, I then found that the full text wasn’t available.  Because the history of my subject is so recent I’ve posted information that is the most recent I can find, although in the instance of the Afghanistan Digital library this means a reference date of 2005.  Initially this was a pilot project but the Afghansitan Digital Library website remains active and the project is still listed on the New York University's webpage indicating it is ongoing.

In my search via library databases, Google scholar and Google I have discovered further collaborative efforts other than those reported here, and have tried to logically divide these efforts into 2 posts – this one concentrating on current collaborative digital projects.   

References:

Han, Y and Rawan, A 2007, ‘Afghanistan digital initiative: revitalizing an integrated library system’, Information Technology & Libraries, vol. 26 no. 4, pp. 44-46, Academic Search Complete , EBSCOhost, viewed 7 September 2011.

Han, Y 2010, ‘The road to digital: building unique Afghanistan collections’, OCLC Systems & Services: International digital library perspectives, vol. 26 no. 1, pp. 46-57, Emerald, EBSCOhost, viewed 15 September 2011.

Everett-Haynes, LM 2008, Librarian leading UA effort to build Afghanistan's libraries, University Communications, University of Arizona, viewed 7 September 2011, < http://uanews.org/node/19718>.

Afghanistan Digital Library 2005, About Afghanistan digital library, New York University, viewed 15 September 2011, < http://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/about.html>.

Malden, C 2005, Atifa Rawan named Futas winner, American Library Association, viewed 7 September 2011,
<http://www.ala.org/Template.cfm?Section=News&template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=90940>.

NYU Digital Library Technology, Projects, New York University, viewed 15 September 2011 < http://dlib.nyu.edu/dlts/projects/>.

Thunder004 2088, Afghan National Archives, 25 Aug, viewed 15 September 2011, <http://youtu.be/KP-7C472cNs>. 
2008, 'Kabul University Central Library' [image] in stepnout's photostream, Flickr, viewed 15 September 2011, <http://www.flickr.com/photos/stepnout/2981246389/in/photostream/>.
2008, 'ACKU Collections Kabul University, Central Library' [image] in stepnout's photostream, Flickr, viewed 15 September 2011, <http://www.flickr.com/photos/stepnout/2983333858/in/photostream/>.