News

SCOLMA Seminar: Digitising public and private archives: the case of the Naija Archives project at IFRA-Nigeria

Digitising public and private archives: the case of the Naija Archives project at IFRA-Nigeria

Vincent Hiribarren, Institut Français de Recheche en Afrique (Nigeria)

Please join us for the first SCOLMA Lunchtime Seminar Series of 2022!

For more information on the project, please see the project page, or more information on our event page on Eventbrite.

Tuesday, March 1st, 14:00 (GMT)

Tickets free – event held online via Zoom.  To register and attend the event on Zoom, please visit our Eventbrite page.

CALL FOR PAPERS: SCOLMA 60th Anniversary Conference

SCOLMA 60th Anniversary Conference

Africa and the Environment: Documenting and Archiving a Changing Climate

Wednesday 29 June 2022

SOAS, London and online

CALL FOR PAPERS

Africa’s natural environment is rich and diverse, ranging from its wildlife and plants to its land and resources. It is also one of the continents most severely affected by climate change, with increasingly erratic weather events adversely impacting biodiversity, agriculture and those living there. This conference will explore library and archive materials relating to Africa and the environment and how they are collected, catalogued, preserved and used in research and teaching. We would welcome papers relating to a range of media including documents and manuscripts, photographs, newspapers, historical printed collections, audio-visual material and born-digital material.

Subjects might include:

How the archives of individuals and organisations working on environmental issues are being preserved and made available

How library and archive materials are used to chart and address climate change

How collections are used to research renewable energy in Africa

How current field research is being preserved and published

How environmental challenges affect libraries and archives in Africa and how they respond

Librarians, archivists and researchers are invited to submit abstracts of up to 350 words for consideration to Sarah Rhodes (sarah.rhodes@bodleian.ox.ac.uk) by 31 March 2022.

SCOLMA Conference 2021 (online) – Booking now open!

Booking is now open for the SCOLMA Conference 2021, Monday 14th June.

The conference will be split into a morning session (10:00-12:50) and an afternoon session (14:00-16:00) please book both events to receive the links to attend both of the sessions.

Bookings close 24 hours before the start of each event, and you will receive the links to join and abstracts via the email you register with on Eventbrite.

Programme:

Morning Session (to book the morning session 10:00-12:50 please see our Eventbrite page)

10.00                 Welcome 

10.05–10.50   Keynote

‘Empowering African Languages through Publishing: Whose Responsibility?’

Munyao Kilolo (Ngugi wa Thiong’o Foundation and Jalada Africa, Kenya)

10.50–11.00    Break 

11.00–11.40    Panel 1:  African Languages and Library Collections, Past and Present

‘Bible translations into African Languages and Missionary Records in the Bible Society Archives’
Onesimus Ngudu (Bible Society Collection, University of Cambridge Library, UK)

‘Africa in the SOAS Library Special Collections’
Dominique Akhoun-Schwarb (SOAS Special Collections, University of London, UK), in cooperation with Dawn Wright (SOAS Library, University of London, UK)

11.40–11.50   Break

11.50–12.50   Panel 2: Yorùbá? and Beyond  

‘The Yorùbá Language Collections at the British Library’
Kólá Túbòsún (Yorùbá Names Project, Lagos, Nigeria)

‘From Crude Journalism to the Mainstreaming of an Indigenous-language Newspaper: Lessons from Alaroye’
Francis Amenaghawon (North-West University, South Africa) and Abiodun Salawu (Indigenous Language Media in Africa Research Entity(ILMA), North-West University, South                                  Africa)

‘Afrocentric Commemorations WW1’
Dr Yewande Okuleye (University of Leicester, UK)

12.50–14.00  Lunch break 

Afternoon Session (to book the afternoon session 14:00-16:00 please see our Eventbrite page)

14.00–14.40  Panel 3:  African Languages and Library Collections, Past and Present 

‘African-language Publishing and the British Library’s Collections’
Marion Wallace (British Library, UK)

‘Somali language books in Leiden’
Jos Damen (African Studies Centre Library, University of Leiden, Netherlands)

14.40–14.50  Break 

14.50–15.50  Panel 4: African languages in teaching, publishing and research 

‘Language and Scholarship: A Survey of Materials in the Ghanaian Local Languages in the Johannes Zimmermann Library’
Korklu A Laryea (University Library, University of Mines and Technology, Tarkwa, Ghana) and Rosina A Anati Budu (Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology, Mission and Culture,                 Akropong-Akuapem, Ghana)

‘Publishing in the Media of Indigenous Languages: Is it Worth it?’
Kgomotso Mothokhumo Ambitious Theledi (University of Witwatersrand, South Africa)

‘The Papa Mfumu’Eto 1er Papers as a teaching resource’
Daniel Reboussin (George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida, USA)

15.50–16.00 Summing up  

16.15–17.00  SCOLMA AGM (To attend the AGM – please contact Sarah Rhodes for the Zoom link)