IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/sek/ibmpro/6809039.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The future of accessing our past: collaboration and digitisation in libraries, archives and museums

Author

Listed:
  • Andrea Potgieter

    (University of Johannesburg)

  • Kagiso Mabe

    (University of Johannesburg)

Abstract

Technological innovation has led to disruptions in the global economy. In South Africa, one such disruption has been the shift towards the digitisation of resources that were previously only available in hard copy. Institutions most notably affected by the digitisation drive, have been libraries, archives, and museums (LAMs), which serve as important cultural heritage organizations. Considering the significant financial implications of a digitisation project, this paper explores the possible benefits and challenges that are faced when LAMs collaborate with each other, when digitising content. This qualitative, cross sectional study compared results from the data of 21 interview transcripts, which were first analysed through thematic coding in ATLAS.ti, and then analysed in Leximancer, a software tool which applies natural language processing to text. The results discuss relevant themes and concepts, revealed during the interviews with digitising-focused employees, at various LAMs in South Africa. This paper aimed to illuminate which user-generated perceptions of concerns and opportunities should be noted when an organization considers a collaborative technological intervention, specifically in the context of LAMs in South Africa. Findings showed that the sharing of technology, skills and knowledge was prevalent when considering potential benefits of a collaborative digitisation project, while access to resources and the inefficient use of resources, were identified as significant challenges in collaborative digitisation projects. The novelty of this discussion lies within the triangulation of results by using different analysis tools, and the value of the research is the unique view given of the challenges and opportunities which arise when a collaborative digitisation project is deployed.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrea Potgieter & Kagiso Mabe, 2018. "The future of accessing our past: collaboration and digitisation in libraries, archives and museums," Proceedings of Business and Management Conferences 6809039, International Institute of Social and Economic Sciences.
  • Handle: RePEc:sek:ibmpro:6809039
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://iises.net/proceedings/8th-business-management-conference-venice/table-of-content/detail?cid=68&iid=012&rid=9039
    File Function: First version, 2018
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Knowledge management; Knowledge sharing; Libraries; archives & museums; digitisation; collaboration; South Africa;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • L31 - Industrial Organization - - Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise - - - Nonprofit Institutions; NGOs; Social Entrepreneurship
    • D80 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sek:ibmpro:6809039. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Klara Cermakova (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://iises.net/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.