Restoring Archival Materials Through Digitalization South Africa

Background Information

Africa is projected to be vulnerable to climate change which led to flooding and natural fires that destroy both infrastructure and archives materials (Dube, and Nhamo 2020). In recent years: South Africa has experienced natural disasters caused by climate change which contributed to wildfires in areas such as the Cape Peninsula and flooding (Dube, Nhamo, and Chikodzi, 2021). This study is supported by Ogbomo, Ejedafiru & Olukotun (2023) who found that human factors and natural disasters affect the management of archives materials. Valuable African literature was threatened when the University of Cape Town suffered from fire during the fire disasters (Hoffman, Rick Rohde, Gillso 2019). A joint initiative was established to recover archives materials lost caused by a fire disaster. The case of the University Cape Town library demonstrates another aspect of ensuring continuity after the loss of archives materials (Jethro 2021). The remaining archives materials preserved in the archives repository need to be digitized to ensure the accessibility of such rich archive materials. Despite natural disasters causing loss of property and people, they also led to the loss of archival materials with historical, cultural, and scientific significance (Kirkwood 2021). As the urgency of climate change has risen to the political agenda, there has been equal recognition of the need to strive towards restoring archival materials caused by natural disasters.

A similar story unfolded at the parliament of the Republic of South Africa where records were historical, cultural records were destroyed because of fire. It seems that archivists were powerless as they watched those images of the loss of archives materials in parliament. This is because most of the archive’s materials lost and preserved in the parliament were irreplaceable. Organizations are to be ready to deal with disasters neither caused by natural disasters nor fire.

To begin with, apart from highlighting the cultural importance of the archive’s materials, restoring damaged archive materials is essential. Archives institutions have a role in preserving records with historical, cultural, and social significance (Delaney & De Jong 2015).

The rationale to conduct this research is the loss of archives of materials in South Africa and in other countries such as Nigeria through human factors or natural disasters (Ogbomo, Ejedafiru, and Olukotun 2023). It is significant to assess whether the organization developed policies, procedures, and processes to mitigate the loss of archives materials. Organizations without neither policies, procedures, procedures, and processes may not afford to deal with the challenge of losing archives materials.