Values
Core Values
Hidden Collections Africa partners work together to make knowledge more accessible, inclusive, and equitable for everyone. The following ideas guide this work.
Open Access
Embracing immediate, global online access to information accelerates knowledge dissemination and helps to mitigate against inequities in education and opportunity.
Open access is essential to the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of information to the widest possible audience. It promotes the sharing of ideas and collaboration between researchers, scholars, and practitioners. We will work with partners to develop infrastructure and workflows to not only create deposit and discovery systems for this project, but also encourage faculty and students from across the continent to deposit their work in open access repositories. Grantees will be expected to make digitized content fully available online.
Authentic Partnerships
An inclusive environment relies on sustaining relationships rooted in trust, respect, and shared goals. Healthy partnerships require that each partner's expectations, contributions, and benefits are articulated clearly, acknowledged openly, and revisited regularly.
The Hidden Collections Africa program design and implementation will be led by our African partners and guided by the needs of our African grantees. Applications will be reviewed by a committee comprising a broad range of African scholars and subject experts. Digitized content will be processed locally and be hosted on the African continent.
Sustainable Infrastructures
Sustainable infrastructures require that any approach to the development of technologies or systems be rooted in a responsibility to the environment, society, and the global community. We prioritize strategies that can realistically be maintained over time and that minimize negative impacts on limited natural, economic, or socio-cultural resources.
The program will incorporate training, skill building, and capacity investments at each point in the process. The goal is to leave our grantees equipped to continue the work of making African scholarship preserved, discoverable and accessible to scholars in Africa and around the world. The program's technical needs will be overseen by UbuntuNet, a membership organization of National Research and Education Network (NREN) in Southern and Eastern Africa.
Community-Centered Access
Every individual, regardless of background or circumstance, should have the opportunity to engage with resources that empower, educate, and elevate them specifically. Different cultures, groups, and individuals will naturally have different needs and constraints with respect to gaining and permitting access. Access strategies and solutions must therefore reflect the diverse needs and aspirations of communities, centering digital inclusion and respect for the local contexts of cultural heritage.
Our highest priority is to ensure that this content remains on the African continent and is owned and administered by African institutions. We encourage applicants to create opportunities to share their collections with their communities, particularly the communities represented in the collections, through a virtual or in person event, an ongoing outreach initiative, or a searchable repository.
Forward Thinking
An inclusive environment relies on sustaining relationships rooted in trust, respect, and shared goals. Healthy partnerships require that each partner's expectations, contributions, and benefits are articulated clearly, acknowledged openly, and revisited regularly.
The Hidden Collections Africa program design and implementation will be led by our African partners and guided by the needs of our African grantees. Applications will be reviewed by a committee comprising a broad range of African scholars and subject experts. Digitized content will be processed locally and be hosted on the African continent.