Africa sights and sounds preserved on Web

If you still think information technology is just a fast and fancy way to flip through library cards, we have a site – and a sight – for you to see, not to mention several sounds to hear.

The Web site, http://africafocus.library.wisc.edu, is titled “Africa Focus: Sights and Sounds of a Continent.” This new electronic collection at UW–Madison is, in fact, the first of its kind in the world.

“Africa Focus” was a joint project of the African Studies Program and the General Library System, funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services in Washington, D.C. It’s a model for other Web collections of Africana visuals, which tend to focus on art instead of the full spectrum of African life found on the university site.

“Africa Focus” conducted what essentially was a digitize-and-rescue mission. It has electronically captured more than 3,000 slides, 500 photographs and 50 hours of sound from 45 African nations.

All of it came from fieldwork done by UW–Madison researchers beginning in the early 1950s. Many of the items were gathered by distinguished faculty in African studies, including Jan Vansina, Philip Curtin, Herbert Lewis, Henry Drewal, Crawford Young and Harold Scheub.

Before “Africa Focus” came along, these materials were largely unpublished, unknown and a bear to track down, warehoused in an unorganized, climatically uncontrolled storage space. Now they can be accessed almost instantly from around the world.

Let’s say, for instance, that you wanted photos of rice farming in Africa. On the home page click on “multiple fields,” then choose “rice” as the key word and “farming” as the subject. Thirty-six cataloged images of rice farming pop up, including women transplanting rice in Gambia and men harvesting in Côte d’Ivoire.

Or if you’re interested in recordings of singing in any African country, use “songs” as the key word and choose audio. You then can listen to 39 songs, including singing by schoolgirls in Botswana and music performed in a family compound in West Africa’s Mali.

“Lots of these materials were just sitting there, and the slides were deteriorating,” says Bob Newton, project manager for “Africa Focus.” Newton holds a doctorate in African languages and literature from UW–Madison and works as a media specialist for the African Studies Program.

“This site makes exciting and academically credible Africa materials available to teachers, students and other users around the world,” says Jo Ellen Fair, chair of the African Studies Program. “It’s an excellent alternative to popular representations of Africa, especially the stereotyped images presented on television and in the press, which often stress human suffering and born-free wildlife.”

That “Africa Focus” ever saw the light of electronic day is due to teamwork that crossed office borders. Key players were Newton and Jim Delehanty of African Studies, Lucy Mathiak of International Studies and Programs, and Deb Reilly of General Library System.

“Our faculty is going to find ways of using these images and sounds in teaching that we haven’t dreamed of yet,” says Ken Frazier, director of GLS.