02
Dez 2021
#7 Wissensorte
Decolonising African Collections? Academic library legacies and African Studies futures. Conversation with Jakobina Mwiiyale (Windhoek), Nora Schmidt (Vienna)
African Studies libraries have become sites of critical interrogations into knowledge production practices. Digital technological possibilities, on the one hand, and colonial legacies in acquisition, cataloguing and knowledge validation, on the other hand, provide challenges to academic library practices.
The Thesaurus, installation from the current exhibition at Basler Afrika Bibliographien. Photo credit: Basler Afrika Bibliographien
Student demands, in turn, envisage wide-ranging and simple access possibilities. In this Round Table, Jakobina Mwiiyale, Head of the University of Namibia Library User Services, Nora Schmidt from the network for decolonising academic libraries in German-speaking countries reflect on the - often - hidden skills of librarian’s knowledge curation, decolonial policy and student demands.
Jakobina Mwiiyale is Head of the University of Namibia (UNAM) Library User Services, Windhoek.
Nor Schmidt is a library and information studies researcher, decolonisation activist and open access advocate, currently working for the University Press at the University of Music and Performing Arts (UDW), Vienna.
Moderation: Dag Henrichsen, Basler Afrika Bibliographien, and Maria Randy Mwatondange, Centre for African Studies, University of Basel, Switzerland.