Title of the project
DigAlex NPC
The Digital Alexandra: A digital library of South African languages, literature, and cultural history
Project description
The aim of this project is to establish, run, expand, and maintain a digital library of indigenous South African languages, literature, and cultural history. It is designed as an open digital library that offers (as far as possible) free access for readers and users. The Digital Library for Dutch Letters (www.dbnl.org) can be a model.
Rationale
The huge cultural capital locked up in South African language, literature and cultural texts is becoming increasingly inaccessible because books are not reprinted.
The practically available canon of the rich South African textual heritage is therefore currently very small and may even disappear.
There are few books available for readers and for teaching indigenous languages in schools and universities.
In digital form, books can be easily distributed and easily made very widely accessible – which is very important in a country with a low literacy level.
Books are perishable and exposed to fire and water damage. A digital library is an important way to preserve the textual heritage for the future.
A well-curated digital libarary is a particularly valuable resource for readers, students and researchers. It is a living project to which new texts/material will be added continuously.
Today's information technology makes such a library feasible and sustainable.
The public celebration of 100 years of Afrikaans as an official language in 2025, as well as other celebrations like the 200 years that Xhosa has been printed, create unique opportunities to launch and to mobilise public support for such a broad South African project.
User’s survey
An electronic survey was made among members of the ALV and SALALS (the linguist’s association).
More than 80% of the respondents thought there was a need for a digital library
The need is especially for access to texts as an essential resource for research and the preservation of the heritage.
The respondents especially want to be able to read or download books online and download articles.
They prefer to read the texts in pdf format on their laptops.
3.6% of them were willing to pay to use the library and 3.4% were willing to make a voluntary financial contribution to the library.
The main functions that the library must offer are source and data searches, comparison of texts and corpus analysis.
They think the last edition approved by the author should be included or it should be decided individually for each book.
76% of respondents favoured including all the indigenous languages in the library.
24 respondents were willing to collaborate on the project as experts, editors, or proofreaders.
The process
The establishment of the library means that a significant amount of texts are scanned, converted into readable text (OCR process), edited, processed into computer-readable form and made available by means of an online platform. Recognized protocols and standards will be followed in the selection of texts and in their digitisation, preservation and publishing on the Internet.
To be effective, the library will also need to be maintained and supplemented over the long term.
Participants in the project
This is a joint project of SADiLaR and staff of the North-West University, with the cooperation of NUUSEUM, NALN and volunteers.
The National Library, Pretoria University Library, and North-West University Library services are already informally cooperating on the project. Memorandums of understanding still need to be formalised.
Management
DigAlex NPC, a non-profit company, was registered to house the project. The directors are Prof. H.M. Viljoen (NWU languages, chair), Dr. Adri Jansen (NWU Library Services), Dr. Lizabé Lambrechts (NUUSEUM), Mr. Wyno Simes (NALN), and mnr. Juan Steyn (SADiLaR). The ideal is to appoint a full-time project manager to run the project. Task teams for Digitization and editing, Management, Technical operations, and Marketing will assist him or her.
Additional IT expertise will have to be contracted to launch and run the project. In the first phase, the project would have to rely heavily on the work of volunteers.
Proposed content
The first phase of the project (the first three years) will focus on making available a core or study collection of texts that are out of print and not available digitally and on texts that are urgently needed for prescribing purposes.
Initially, it is planned to include 100 texts in each of the indigenous languages. In the longer term the plaform can be expanded to enable computational reserach (e.g. corpus research) in literature, linguistics, and c\cultural history .
Later, a translation module can be added to enable translation and comparison between languages and literatures.
Proof of concept
A demo website is being developed in Google Sites. It has not yet been published but can be shown to interested parties.
Existing websites like the Digitale Bibliotheek van de Nederlandse letteren (dbnl.org) and Literature Online (https://about.proquest.com/en/products-services/literature_online/) show the potential of such a digital library.
Budget
For the first phase, the first three years, a budget of R3 million per year is estimated.
Proposed Funding Model
Apart from applying to recognised funders, the public will also be mobilized to contribute to a central fund that would ensure that the project will be sustainable
Supporters
A broad range of organisations have already expressed their support for the project. This includes the SA Akademie, the Afrikaanse Taalraad, the Afrikaanse Letterkunde-vereniging, the ATKV, LitNet, the departments of Afrikaans and Dutch at US and the NWU, NALN, and the Poëziecentrum in Ghent.