In South Africa, the laborious process of digitizing archives

Audio 02:21

Azizo Da Fonseca, project coordinator, in the digitization center of the University of Wits (Witwatersrand).

© Claire Bargelès / RFI

By: Claire Bargelès Follow

4 min

In South Africa, after the fire which devastated part of the Jagger library two weeks ago, within the University of Cape Town, the issue of digitizing the country's documents and archives has been put back on the table. table. 

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The most valuable works on the lower floors could be spared, but the disaster revealed that only a fraction of the library's collections had been digitized, even though the University of Cape Town is a pioneer in this area.

Because if everyone agrees on the importance of saving historical documents and making them available online, the process is much more complicated than it seems.

A report from our correspondent in Johannesburg.

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