World-renowned singer Miriam Makeba recently donated some of her memorabilia to the South African National Film, Video and Sound Archives (NFVSA). The collection includes photographs, awards, memorabilia, sculptures, clothes, posters, records and videos.

According to the national archive website, ‘The foremost purpose of preserving archives is to ensure that they are made available for use. In terms of South Africa’s archival legislation, any member of the public has a right of access to archives that are older than twenty years, free of charge.’

The NFVSA has a great outreach program, but the records are still only physically accessible by those who live in the area. Wouldn’t it be great if we could access these records on the Internet? Just think about the number of schools that have access to the Internet in South Africa, as opposed to the number that participate in the current campaign.

I called NFVSA and they said that they don’t have any plans to make the archives available on the Internet. ‘We’re merely custodians of the materials,’ said Trevor Moses. ‘98% of the footage is owned by companies such as the SABC and MNet.’

Perhaps the SABC should take a leaf out of the BBC’s book and think about opening up resources that are paid for by public money. More to follow.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 26th, 2004 at 2:37 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.