Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Sudan launches OA digital library

Sudan: Open-access digital library launched, Reuters, May 31, 2006. Excerpt:
The Rift Valley Institute (RVI) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) on Tuesday launched the Sudan Open Archive, an open-access digital library for Sudan, containing documents that until now were largely unavailable in digital form. "It is a dynamic, expanding archive," said John Ryle, chair of RVI. "Our aim is to put in historical and contemporary materials of all kinds."

The first phase of the archive involved the digitisation of around 500 documents drawn from the records of Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS), the international relief effort that started in 1989. "A lot of the documents were just stuffed away in containers in Khartoum, Juba, Lokichokio and Nairobi," Ryle said. "The digital archive can bring together material from all over the place, which is exactly the problem in Sudan - documents are all over the place."