The Michigan State University Digital Curation Planning Project is a collaboration led by the UAHC with the MSU Libraries and MATRIX, and supported by the Office of the Vice Provost of Libraries, Computing and Technology. Anticipated project outcomes include a digital curation plan and guidelines to ensure trustworthy preservation, management, and stewardship of the university’s digital assets and intellectual property. The project team includes MSU archivists, librarians, IT specialists, and digital content managers.

For more information on the MSU Digital Curation Planning Project, visit http://msudcp.archives.msu.edu.

In this 31st episode, part 2 (of 3) in a series on African Diasporas, hosts Peter Alegi and Peter Limb discuss Dr. Robert Vinson’s (History, College of William and Mary) work on the spread of Garveyism in South Africa and its political and cultural impact. Vinson joins the discussion and explains how black men and women in the 1920s and 30s appropriated Garvey’s ideas of racial pride, pan-Africanism, and modernity to sustain themselves and to propel South Africa’s struggle for freedom.

Held jointly with the Council of State Archivists and themed “Sustainable Archives,” the conference offered attendees opportunities in educational sessions, workshops, repository tours, section and roundtable meetings, special SAA business, social events, and networking. SAA is North America’s oldest and largest national archival professional association.

The Women in Science website is a new digital media archive that uses KORA, MATRIX’s digital repository application, to deliver text access to the written works of several women scientists, including the works of the marquise Du Châtelet, and biographies written by leading historians of science.

The website is available through the participation and support of the MSU Department of History, the MSU Lyman Briggs College, and the MSU Libraries.

To visit the Women in Science website, visit http://womeninscience.history.msu.edu/

To learn about KORA, visit http://www2.matrix.msu.edu/kora/

MATRIX in cooperation with MSU’s Department of History and African Studies Center, has won a $750,000 award from the US Department of Education to partner with African scholars to collect oral histories, folklore, and songs from Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, South Africa, and Tanzania.  Over a four-year period, the African Oral Narratives project will digitize and provide free web access to 20 collections of oral narratives in 16 African languages.  These audio and video materials can be used by students, teachers, and researchers to document indigenous knowledge and democratize history by representing the voices of ordinary men and women often left out of the official written record.

To learn more about the African Oral Narratives project, see MSU News.

A $250,000 National Endowment for the Humanities grant will fund a new MATRIX digital library project on Islamic Practices in West Africa.  Four scholars, including MSU’s University Distinguished Professor David Robinson from the Department of History, will conduct research on various aspects of Muslim life in Ghana and Senegal.  Collaborating scholars will conduct video interviews and collect photographs and archival documents.  MATRIX will publish four case studies on the web organized in thematic galleries that will feature each scholar’s research materials and documentation.

Typically intellectual work–like that planned for this project–is published in academic journals most often consulted by content experts and specialists.  In designing this project MATRIX and its scholarly collaborators deliberately chose a web publication outlet in order to ensure broad public access to the content.  As a result, other researchers can use primary-source materials in the digital collection to develop new scholarship.  Teachers can also use the resources in the classroom, for example by having student look at the documents and photographs, and listen to the voices of regular men and women from an important part of the world.

Access to the Islam in West Africa digital collection is free and accessible through the African Online Digital Library (http://aodl.org).