Analysis of the Role of Higher Education Libraries on the Collection of Marginalized Communities' Records

Introduction

The chapter analyzed the role of South Africa's higher education libraries in a collection of marginalized communities’ records through information communication technology. Most South African archivists are not trained in digital management. This shows that there is a lack of skills in digital archiving. This incompetence leads to archivists not preserving digital records. There is a lack of infrastructure to ingest digital records. Organizations lack strategy on e-governance for sustainable preservation as alluded to by (Matlala, Ncube, and Parbanath, 2022). The marginalized records are associated with records from a group of people discriminated against by apartheid South Africa. This is because marginalized records were not collected and preserved by the apartheid government.

Eastwood (2017) states that archives preserved by the National archives do not reflect the diversity of the populations in general. In South Africa, most archives preserved reflect white minority groups. Therefore, democratic South African archives redefined archives to collect marginalized records through the enactment of the National Archives and Records Service Act 43 of 1996. Similarly, In the United Kingdom, records that include evidence of ethnically diverse populations and racialized oppression were excluded from the United Kingdom National Archives repositories. The lack of recognition of marginalized records led to community engagement projects on a collection of community archives less funded by the university research departments.

Despite the National Archives of South Africa's enactment of the National Archives Records and Service Act 43 of 1996, archivists are inactive to collect marginalized community archives. Therefore, South African university libraries are committed to collecting and documenting marginalized communities' records. South African higher education institutions preserved records with historical, cultural, and archival values.

South African university libraries are also responsible for collecting community archives. Another aspect of university teaching is engaging with the scholarship of teaching and learning. As part of realizing its vision to collect marginalized records, most South African university libraries embark on a project to collect marginalized communities’ records undermined by the apartheid government. The motivation for most South African university libraries to collect community to rebuild relations with communities and records are significant to research and educational purposes. The outcomes presented in this book are based on a literature review and quantitative content analysis. The literature review explored communities’ archives. Education plays and contributes to building partnerships with the communities to collect marginalized communities’ archives. Therefore, the findings cannot be generalized to other countries' university libraries.

Marginalized groups include non-dominant cultural, gender, religious, linguistic, ethnic, political, and social identity groups as defined by Welland and Cossham (2019). In this study, marginalized communities refer to historically marginalized people as the consequence of the apartheid policy. The marginalized groups lacked a voice or recognition of their culture embedded in records by the apartheid system in South Africa. Marginalized records are significant as a starting point for the role of education to support the development of community archives and generate understanding among the public.

Historical Background Of Education In South Africa

The apartheid education system shapes the South African Higher Education landscape to collect marginalized records. The apartheid legislation such as the Bantu Education Act, 1953 (Act No 47 of 1953) enforced racially separated education facilities. The act aimed to train black students for the annual labor. The Extension of University Education Act, Act 45 of 1959. According to this legislation, it was a criminal offense for a non-white student to register at formerly advantageous universities. During the apartheid period, students were separated according to color and race. For example, Coloured Persons Education Act, 1963, and Indian Education Act, 1965 made provisions for the specific race to attend specific higher education. The race mix in universities was not allowed during the apartheid period.