News & Media
Unisa participates in Africa's biggest conference on archives and records management
The 27th instalment of the Eastern and Southern African Regional Branch of the International Council on Archives (ESARBICA) was the first in-person event since the Covid-19 pandemic. The event saw delegates from 16-member countries of Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Eswatini, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zanzibar and Zimbabwe.
Unisa’s Department of Information Sciences was the sole academic sponsor of the conference and was represented by its leading academics, Professors Mpho Ngoepe, Lorette Jacobs and Ngoako Marutha, as well as Dr Mashilo Modiba, and their support teams.
From left to right: Sekhutlo Dikhoba, Melba Sethosa and Dr Mashilo Modiba
With the theme, Archives, Records and Memory in Digital Spaces and Global Chaos, the conference attracted over 700 people from the professions in the industry who attended the week-long event. To mention a few, some of the industry’s professionals and practitioners attending the conference included archivists, librarians, bibliographers, records managers, cataloguers, indexers and registry clerks.
Attendees in the conference hall
The conference demonstrated the commitment and resilience of the players in archives and records management, and the clear objective of growing and promoting the importance and relevance of the industry and professions within it. Records and the archival thereof are the backbones of every human organisation.
Many presentations throughout the conference also highlighted keeping up with the fast pace of change driven by technology such as digitisation, artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics.
Ngoepe unveiled plans underway in the Department of Information Sciences to incorporate applications of modern technology into the new course curriculum to be introduced shortly. He also revealed that new qualifications in this field are being developed and originated in the indigenous African languages of South Africa.
The Unisa Centre for Lifelong Learning (UCL) marketing team led by Melba Sethosa, Sekhutlo Dikhoba and Mafeno Phora, exhibited and showcased the short learning programmes relevant to the industry of archives, records management and librarianship in support of the conference and the Unisa academic team.
#Unisa 150
* By Melba Sethosa, Sekhutlo Dikhoba and Mafeno Phora, UCL marketing team
Publish date: 2023/08/23
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