By Sandi Mackenzie – March 2020[vc_empty_space height=”18px”]<\/p>\n
FAILING TO PLAN IS PLANNING TO FAIL<\/strong><\/p>\n Having been present in many meetings, workshops and presentations of programmes connected with the digitisation of museum heritage objects, I did not consider looking at options for something suitable for DMSA requirements, an onerous task.<\/p>\n However, on starting the research into this area I found that Digitisation has been a thoroughly researched and broadly discussed issue not only amongst South African academics, archivists and library specialists, but it has been debated both technologically and philosophically throughout institutions in Africa, as a continent and internationally.[vc_empty_space height=”18px”]<\/p>\n Techopedia<\/strong> defines digitisation as the following:-<\/p>\n Digitisation<\/strong><\/em> is the process of converting analogue signals or information of any form into a digital format that can be understood by computer systems or electronic devices. The term is used when converting information, like text, images or voices and sounds, into binary code.<\/p>\n The following is the kind of staff structure that will be required to complete this project FOR DMSA with 5 000 000 Objects to digitise as identified at the Smithsonian:-<\/p>\n THIS IS UNLIKELY TO HAPPEN BECAUSE:-<\/p>\n DSAC<\/strong> itself only owns a megaphone for digitisation of audio films, tapes and recordings.[vc_empty_space height=”18px”]<\/p>\n EXTERNAL FUNDERS<\/strong><\/p>\n CHALLENGES ASSOCIATED WITH EXTERNAL FUNDING:-<\/strong><\/p>\n 8.4 Power outages in the country occur frequently and often without warning. Entire sections of digitised material may be lost and will have to be repeated which could cause fruitless expenditure.<\/p>\n 8.5 In the case of digitising large objects power outages could occur halfway through the digitisation and additional costs will be incurred when starting again.<\/p>\n 8.6 The technology and equipment used for digitisation will have to be replaced every five to ten years as these will become obsolete and unusable within that period.[vc_empty_space height=”18px”]<\/p>\n 10.1 One of the main concerns of the democratic government of South Africa is that the history of South Africa changes focuses from colonising history to the recording of the actual indigenous people\u2019s history.<\/p>\n 10.2 If an external foreign funder or supplier of digitising equipment or funds<\/strong> to purchase digitising equipment is involved in this project, South Africa will effectively be digitally colonised<\/strong> by the supplier or funder.<\/p>\n 10.3 Replacement and upgrading<\/strong> of the equipment will have to be done on a five to ten-year basis<\/strong>. Each time to preserve the digitisation already at our institutions we will have to go to the original funder to renew funding or lose access to our records.[vc_empty_space height=”18px”]<\/p>\n Digital camera <\/p><\/div><\/div><\/td> R 5 000<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/td><\/tr> Gaming laptop for processing<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/td> R 30 000<\/p> <\/p><\/div><\/div><\/td><\/tr> Agisoft software<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/td> R 56 000<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/td><\/tr> R 105 000 per digitisor<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table>\n<\/div><\/div>\n[vc_empty_space height=”18px”]<\/p>\n CONCLUSION<\/strong><\/p>\n BIBLIOGRAPHY<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Digitisation has been a thoroughly researched and broadly discussed issue not only amongst South African academics, archivists and library specialists, but it has been debated both technologically and philosophically throughout institutions in Africa, as a continent and internationally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":7187,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[106],"tags":[109,26,108],"table_tags":[],"class_list":["post-4189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-ditsong","tag-history","tag-museum","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-23 10:06:57","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ditsong.org.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ditsong.org.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ditsong.org.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ditsong.org.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ditsong.org.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ditsong.org.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ditsong.org.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ditsong.org.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ditsong.org.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ditsong.org.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4189"},{"taxonomy":"table_tags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ditsong.org.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/table_tags?post=4189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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DSAC has just had to hand out an additional R10 000 000 for the funding of the realignment at DMSA and has made clear no further funding is available for additional staff.<\/li>\n\n
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