Creating new connections: shared digital curation of the Royal Commonwealth Society (RCS) southern African collections at Cambridge University Library
Funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York
Creating new connections: shared digital curation of the Royal Commonwealth Society (RCS) southern African collections at Cambridge University Library is a two-year project generously funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
The project to consider and develop approaches to co-production and co-curation using the holdings of the RCS relating to southern Africa.
Collections
The RCS collection is an enormous repository of information, pictorial and written, print and manuscript, on the Commonwealth and Britain's former colonial territories. Founded as the Colonial Society in 1868, the RCS collection was acquired by Cambridge University Library in 1993.
The material relating to southern Africa encompasses personal papers, manuscripts, diaries, drawings and watercolours, photographs, pamphlets and ephemera, newspapers, journals, maps, cartoons, official government publications, directories and monographs. It is an unquestionably diverse range of material, rich in research potential. The collection, however, is intrinsically problematic in that it represents for the most part the perspective of the coloniser and settler. Similarly, with the exception of a small amount of digitised material, the bulk of the RCS holdings relating to southern Africa are accessible only to those able to physically visit Cambridge. The material is effectively set apart from the communities which it documents.
CUL RCS pamphlet collection
CUL RCS pamphlet collection
Project aims
1. To develop and promote engagement with groups or individuals in or closely related to southern Africa, whose local and personal knowledge will enhance understanding and interpretation of the RCS collections.
2. To draw on these relationships to develop a digital collection relating to southern Africa hosted via Cambridge University Digital Library (CUDL), an established platform for sharing images and metadata, freely available to anyone with an internet connection.
3. To carry out a concurrent programme of conservation, through surveying, assessment and targeted treatment, to secure the long-term preservation of this material.
The project represents a first step in opening up the collections to communities and researchers in southern Africa, where the material originated in the first place, and globally. The creation of a dedicated digital collection relating to southern Africa, drawing on local and personal knowledge, will allow more robust interrogation and interpretation of the collections than has previously been possible.
The project commenced in November 2021 and is due to finish at the end of December 2023.
Reports and minutes of evidence of the South African Native Affairs Commission, which are now digtised and available on Cambridge Digital Library (RCS.Case.a.152-156)
Reports and minutes of evidence of the South African Native Affairs Commission, which are now digtised and available on Cambridge Digital Library (RCS.Case.a.152-156)
"Ingoma yenu ngiqale ngayizwa, ngayizwa ngayeya ngokungaz, namuhla sengiyayiqonda ngiyayithobela.
(When first I heard our tribal songs, they seemed to me of little worth; but now their message echoes in my heart)"
‘Ngizw’ Ingoma’ (‘I hear a singing …’) by Benedict Wallet Vilakazi, 1935. B.W. Vilakazi (1906-1947) was a Zulu poet, linguist and academic. The RCS library holds copies of Vilakazi's main works, together with a range of vernacular literature from southern Africa.
Resources
Cambridge Digital Library
Newly digitised material, with accompanying enhanced metadata, will be added to Cambridge Digital Library throughout the second year of the project (2023).
Five Hundred Year Archive and EMANDULO
The Five Hundred Year Archive (FHYA) is a project led by the NRF Chair in Archive and Public Culture, based in the History Department at the University of Cape Town. This project aims to bring together southern African archival material to increase accessibility and provide contextual information. In partnership with the University of Cape Town, material digitised as part of this project will be shared on EMANDULO, a platform developed by the FHYA to actively promote the sharing of digital resources.
Engage
Contact the project team
To get involved or to learn more about the RCS material relating to southern Africa please contact rcs@lib.cam.ac.uk.
Blog posts
The project team write regular blog posts on the Cambride University Library's Special Collection blogsite.
Project team
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
Collections items featured:
View from mountain road or Lancer's gap [Lesotho] (RCS/Marnham S/17).
‘Photographs of the peoples of South Africa’ (RCS/Y305O).
Canteen stores, Chieveley, c. 1900 (RCS/Y305H/1).
Elephant: Christmas card (RCS/Marnham Y/41).
The Park, Maritzburg, Natal [KwaZulu-Natal], c. 1899 (RCS/Y305F/3).
Kirstenbosch, Cape Town (RCS/Marnham X/43).
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