Goals of the SAFVP
- Objective #1: Jointly build a content-rich, searchable database accessible to everyone via the Internet that describes all possible films and videos about South Africa, found largely in South Africa and the United States.
- Objective #2: Develop this database utilizing the U.S. Library of Congress Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS) and Open Archive Initiative (OAI) protocol as well as current best practices and conduct additional research on the uses and best practices of such networked databases.
- Objective #3: Expand significantly the cataloging of film and video with detailed and rich metadata, including materials that never have been catalogued at any institution - and work to divide the labor so that all partners can draw on each other’s descriptions of films and videos for all of the institutional databases.
- Objective #4: Establish film and video reading stations in several South African institutions that can be used to digitize selected older materials for preservation in digital tape formats. DVD/CD-ROM copies of these will both preserve these scarce materials and provide copies that can be viewed by teachers, scholars, and the public. Single copies, which will remain owned and copyrighted by the South African owners, will be deposited in the MSU Library for access by scholars and other users either at the library or through interlibrary loan.
- Objective #5: Prioritize and select films and videos to copy for preservation in South Africa and for scholarly use in the U.S. Selection will be made in consultation between the South African archivists and collections managers, US-based Africanist scholars, and technical specialists and systems managers. These materials will be cataloged by the MSU Africana Librarian who is experienced in film cataloguing and has a PhD in South African history.
- Objective #6: The partners will receive various computer hardware through the project and will receive training in maintenance, enhancement, and adding entries to the databases. Software will be provided for coping with the specific needs and exigencies of each of the partners.