Search results

The purpose of this study is to highlight the indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) preservation efforts in South Africa, with a focus on the National Recordal System and the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Documentation Centres (IKSDCs) across South Africa.

Anchored in the interpretivist paradigm, the qualitative research approach was adopted to explore the objectives of the study. The multiple case study method was considered appropriate and adopted for the study. The data for this study was collected through comprehensive face-to-face interviews and Web content analysis. The population of the study consisted of the staff at the IKSDCs in the selected academic institutions. The purposive sampling technique was used to select the following set of participants in each academic institution: IKS managers/coordinators, digitization officers and online collection administrators.

The findings provide an in-depth understanding of the IKS landscape in South Africa. The findings and recommendations of this paper would be useful to researchers who wish to know more about digitization efforts in South Africa. It would also be useful to all stakeholders and policymakers.

The paper brings to the fore the efforts of the South African government in preserving IKS through documentation and digitization. The paper highlights the sources of indigenous knowledge, types of indigenous knowledge captured, how the indigenous knowledge is ingested in the repositories and how the data is captured. Generally, the roles of the IKSDCs in the capture and preservation of IKS are highlighted.

The purpose of this study is to assess the digital preservation policies and plans for long-term digital preservation in selected repositories in South Africa, with a view to develop a digital preservation framework for the preservation of Indigenous knowledge system (IKS) in South Africa.

Through the multiple case study research design, data was obtained from eight respondents in four Indigenous Knowledge Systems Documentation Centers (IKSDCs) in institutions that are part of the National Recordal Systems (NRS) initiative across four provinces in South Africa using in-depth face-to-face interviews. Data collected was also supplemented with the content analysis of several policy documents in South Africa.

The findings reveal that there are no digital preservation policies in place in the institutions, especially long-term digital preservation for IKS. However, some of the institutions are formulating policies that will include the management of IKS collected in the institutions. This study also reveals that digital curation, policy formulation and disaster preparedness plans to some extent are measures said to be in place for the digital preservation of IKS.

This study focuses mainly on the NRS initiative in South Africa. Indigenous Knowledge (IK) related to traditional medicine, traditional plants and food are currently being digitized at the IKSDCs by IK recorders. This study will help in ensuring that the South African Government’s effort and investment in digitizing IKS and making them accessible online is not wasted. This study will help mitigate the risk of damage and alteration over time, either deliberately or in error.

This study fills a gap in the literature on the digitization and digital preservation of IKS from the context of the NRS project in South Africa. Very few studies have been carried out on the digital preservation of IKS in Africa. This study also proposed a framework for the digital preservation of IKS in South Africa.