Report: Digitization of the Kenya News Agency Archive
Prepared by: Abbas Mahmood
Prepared for: Wikimedia Kenya
Date: August 2, 2012
Background & Context
I was invited to join a digitization working group created by the Kenya News Agency & the Kenya ICT Board that was aimed at laying a strategy for the digitization of KNA's content. Last week, the working group had our first meeting, and my main goals were to 1) talk about non-commercial use of content, 2) use the Aljazeera Creative Commons Repository as a case study, and 3) learn from other stakeholders that were involved.
KNA has a repository of (mainly) photos (6,000+) related to Kenya’s history and culture dating back to the pre-colonial era. But due to budgetary constraints, the photos are stored in non-ideal conditions and their risk of damage or deterioration is therefore high. Moreover, their content is currently underutilised due the difficulty in retrieving the photos and lack of public awareness.
The working group has around 20 members with folks coming from different backgrounds: studio producers, film makers, Kenya National Archives staff, AMREF Library staff, Bank of Africa staff, Creative Commons staff, freelance photojournalists, Ministry of Information & Communication staff, Kenya ICT Board staff and myself.
Summary
It was agreed that one of the potential customers of this project will be Wikipedia; and that some of the content will be donated to Wikimedia under a free licence. (Note that the digitized repository will be used for commercial purposes, but we’ll get a small content donation for purposes of publicity and awareness).
Also, some of the photos that KNA has are caption-less or lack the relevant metadata. It was suggested that we(the working group) explore the use of online collaboration (such as wikis or social media) to engage with the public and inquire about photos which don’t have known descriptions. We therefore expect citizen engagement to help us in identifying some of the photos.
[We discussed lots of other issues which I have intentionally omitted since 1) the final report is not out yet; and 2) it’s not relevant to you guys.]
Conclusion
We are now creating a proposed roadmap on the way forward which will be presented, next week, to the Permanent Secretary of Information & Communication, Dr. Bitange Ndemo, for final approval before we proceed with this project.