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LAUNCH OF DIGITAL
COLLECTIONS
The Library and Information Service
launched SUNDigital Collections, our new digital collections platform
focusing on heritage collections owned by the Library, on 13 November
2013 to an audience of academics, researchers, librarians, donors of
collections and members of the Stellenbosch heritage community.
Alderman Conrad Sidego, executive mayor
of Stellenbosch, was the guest speaker at the launch and commented on
the importance of preserving heritage collections and specifically what
he referred to as the “intimate history” of our town, university and
community.
The Rector and Vice-Chancellor of
Stellenbosch University, Prof Russel Botman, ceremoniously opened
SUNDigital Collections to the public by clicking on the link to the
collection on the Library’s website and thereby taking us “live”. Prof
Botman spoke about the importance of having primary resource material
openly accessible for research to any person with an internet
connection.
Ms Ellen R Tise, Senior Director: Library
and Information Service, stressed the importance of libraries taking
their collections to wherever their users are, and SUNDigital
Collections has done exactly that. The platform will continue to grow as
an integral part of the service we offer as an academic library, not
only to the research community at Stellenbosch University, but also the
broader South African community and, in fact, the entire world.
SUNDigital Collections currently hosts 19
collections which include the Vrye Weekblad newspaper, Die Zuid-Afrikaan
newspaper, images from the James Walton vernacular collection, the Hugh
Solomon historical African map collection and two music collections held
by the Documentation Centre for Music (DOMUS) – the Albert Coates and
Stefans Grové collections. The digitisation of these six collections was
made possible by funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Further digitisation projects have
followed, including the addition of the Stellenbosch Discussion Forum
Collection and the Information on Stellenbosch Municipality newsletters,
both of which hold important information on the community history of the
town of Stellenbosch.
Please visit the collection at
http://digital.lib.sun.ac.za/
and see for yourself the potential research waiting to be unlocked in
SUNDigital Collections.
Mimi Seyffert
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Prof Russel Botman presses
the "launch button" at the launch of Digital Collections.
(Photographer: Anton Jordaan)
From
left to right: Prof Russel Botman, Prof Eugene Cloete, Alderman Conrad
Sidego, Ms Ellen Tise and Prof Sampie Terreblanche.
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