The Department of Information Studies, University of Ghana, the Ghana Library Association, and the Ghana Library Authority are organizing the Fourth International Conference on African Digital Libraries and Archives Conference
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BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON AFRICAN DIGITAL LIBRARIES AND ARCHIVES (ICADLA)
ICADLA is governed by a seventeen member Standing Committee drawn from a cross-section of African national and tertiary institutions through the efforts of non-politically affiliated African and globally-minded librarians, archivists, and related professionals. ICADLA is held every year with the purpose of examining the opportunities, challenges, options, and their implications for a robust African digital future.
The theme of ICADLA-4 is: Strategic Framework and Action Roadmap for Africa’s Digital Libraries & Archives. It will take the form of a one (1) day workshop and a two (2) day conference and will be held at University of Ghana, Legon Ghana from 27 - 29 May 2015 May 2015.
The ICADLA-4 will provide a forum for African Institutions to examine and review: development of national and international policies in relation to Africa’s special situation; best practice for collaborations and partnerships for institutional and national repositories; success factors for developing trusted repositories and ensuring the sustainability digital projects; standards, guidelines, models and best practices for metadata, system design, digital preservation, user interfaces and services, usefulness, impact, and performance evaluation; legal framework for promoting and protecting intellectual property, privacy, and electronic publishing; technical infrastructure - software, hardware, bandwidth, open source and open systems; development of institutional capacity, human resources and skills; adopting integrated approach to, content selection, digitization, curation and preservation; special need for scientific and statistical data management in Africa; funding for digital libraries, archives and museums.
The First International Conference on African Digital Libraries and Archives (ICADLA-1) was held in the United Nations Conference Centre, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on 1–3 July 2009. It was organized by the libraries of the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) under the auspices of the Africa Section of the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA). It consisted of two events: Building on Knowledge: Strategic Roundtable with Intergovernmental Organisations on Putting Libraries on the African Development Agenda; and Connecting Africans to their own resources: developing policies and strategies for Africa’s digital future. The outcome of the conference was a “Declaration and Recommendations on knowledge for development in Africa and the digitisation of African knowledge and heritage.”
The Second International Conference of African Digital Libraries and Archives (ICADLA-2) was held at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa from 14th to 18th November 2011. ICADLA-2 was a two part event consisting of a three-day training workshop designed for library and archives leaders and decision makers, and a two day strategic digitisation project and programme planning conference attended by professionals from libraries and archives, universities, and associations from across Africa and beyond. The theme of the ICADLA-2 conference was Developing Knowledge for Economic Advancement in Africa. This was designed to underline the purpose of digitisation in Africa: to expand opportunities for access to knowledge for human and economic development.
The theme of ICADLA-3 was: Digital Libraries and Archives in Africa: Changing Lives and Building Communities. It took the form of a 3 day workshop (Digital Futures) and a 2 day conference and was be held at Al Akhawayn University, Ifrane, Morocco from 27th – 31st May 2013.
The ICADLA-3 provided a forum for African Institutions to examine and review: how to establish and sustain digital collections; business models for the preservation and management of digital collections; policy development and strategic frameworks; collaborations and partnerships in digital repository building; standards and best practice; technical infrastructure, such as: metadata, software, development support needs; rights management; proprietary technologies vs. open source; digitisation capacity and skills; content selection (cultural, social, governmental, scholarly, scientific and pedagogical); trusted repositories; impact and evaluation of digital libraries; management of born-digital collections and legislative alignment.