The
National Centre for Arts and Culture (NCAC) commenced a three-day symposium
aimed to addressing the importance of collecting and archiving oral tradition
archives in the digital age on Tuesday.
Held
at the Paradise Suites Hotel, the symposium was part of efforts to highlight
the value of oral archives and also to provide a forum for internationally
renowned scholars to share ideas on the relevance of digital archives for
research in the fields of Digital Humanities.
The
event, funded by The Gerda Henkel Foundation, was attended by scholars and
university professors from USA, Germany, England, Jamaica, Guinea, Guinea
Bissau, Australia, Senegal and The Gambia.
Speaking
at the opening of the symposium, Baba Ceesay, Director of National Centre for
Arts and Culture, expressed regards to the founder of the National Archive and
Museum, Alhaji Bakary Sidebe, for his work as a collector of cultural heritage,
and as a keeper of collective historical knowledge.
“It
is my firm belief that the symposium will make a great contribution to the
field of Digital Humanities and digitization of knowledge,” he added.
Also
speaking at the ceremony, Dr Isatou Touray, Minister of Trade and Regional
Integration, said, “It is important that at the outset, to remind our esteemed
guests of some of the previous efforts to take this invaluable archive from the
analogue to the digital age since 2003.”
She
said it was in that year that the NCAC received a US Ambassador’s Fund grant
for Cultural Preservation to convert some of the highly deteriorated tape from
reels to CD’S. Through this project, hundreds of archival materials were saved
for posterity.
Natomba
Chilufya, a representative from The Gerda Henkel Foundation, said The Gerda
Henkel Foundation is a non-profit foundation which aims to promote science,
primarily by supporting specific projects in the field of the humanities: with
a specific scope.
“It
also prioritizes research projects that are of outstanding quality and
therefore promises to achieve the greatest benefit with the funding made
available,” she added.
She
stated that the first partner institution for the coordination of the programme
in Africa was the graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of
Stellenbosch, South Africa.
“It
is therefore with regard to the focus of the Patrimonies Programme that the
Gerda Henkel Foundation was able to approve support of the project of Professor
Henning Schreiber for the digitalizing of the archive of Bakary Kebba Sidibe,
which has important documents on the history and culture of The Gambia and its
neighbouring countries,” she concluded.
