Ursula Oberst and Ashleigh Harris attended the African Library and Information Associations and Institutions (AfLIA) summit in Windhoek, Namibia from 19-23 May and presented a paper titled ‘Linking Multilingual Open Data on African Literature and Culture with Wikidata: Experiences, Challenges, and Vision of the ALMEDA Project’. AfLIA works with Libraries and National Library Associations, Governments and Government Agencies responsible for Libraries and African Regional and Economic Bodies.
ALMEDA plans to collaborate further with AfLIA on an initiative that would aim to create Linked Open Data on unique literary materials housed in their member libraries.
Read more about AfLIA at https://web.aflia.net
We have published two new datasets on our Zenodo platform that will interest anyone working on print and online literary magazines. The classic anti-apartheid South African magazine Staffrider includes around 1770 individual texts and was published between 1978 to 1993, while the Ugandan-based Lawino content is much more recent (2014-2015).…
In our new ALMEDA pamphlet, postdoctoral fellow Oulia Makkonen interviews Coffi Abdoul Karim, a producer of the Ivorian cultural programs Théâtre de chez nous and Ce soir au village. The interview is part of a larger exploration in Makkonen’s work of the theatrical scene and its relationship to television history in Côte d’Ivoire from the…
On 10-21 February 2025, postdoctoral fellow Oulia Makkonen visited the Audiovisual Archives of Radio-Télévision Ivoirienne (RTI) in Côte d’Ivoire. Oulia’s ALMEDA case study focusses on remediations of Kotéba theatre performances. The archive includes some of the works of the famous Ivorian playwright, film director and musician, Souleymane Koly and his Ensemble…
A new dataset is the outcome of a collaboration with the Centre for Creative Arts, UKZN. This dataset includes biographical information on all the poets who performed at the Poetry Africa festival from 1997 to 2022. The dataset builds on data compiled by University of Kwa-Zulu Natal’s Centre for Creative Arts,…