Preserving the cultural heritage of Sudan through digitization: Developing Digital Sudan

Cultural heritage is one of the most significant goods that a country and a culture possesses. The Sudan is a country rich in artefacts that go back to the dawn of history: archaeological remains, art, manuscripts that date back to beginning of Islam, books, archival documents, documentary film, hundreds of thousands of hours of video, television and radio, millions of photographs. The National Archives alone hold 76 million photographic negatives. This rich heritage is at risk. At risk from the heat, dust and humidity, from obsolescence of media: the documentary film in the film archive, for instance, can only be accessed on ancient and deteriorating equipment, for which no spare parts for repair can be found. These materials record history and culture of the country that is fast disappearing in the modern world. If these artefacts themselves are lost, so too will be the knowledge of a way of life. Digital Sudan will transform Sudanese intellectual productions to modern electronic and digital media, which will be safer to preserve and easier to retrieve. There are a number of digitization projects being carried out in Sudan, and spurred on to action by the news of the loss of vital parts of the cultural heritage in Timbuktu in Mali with the destruction of libraries, the Ministry of Information, the Sudanese Association for the Archiving of Knowledge (SUDAAK), and museums, libraries, archives throughout the country are collaborating to form the National Cultural Heritage Digitization Team (NCHDT) to raise the level of activity significantly. Working with teams in Durham University and King's College London in the UK, and with other organizations throughout the world, the NCHDT is creating a collaborative infrastructure to integrate resources and facilitate usage. The partners have diverging needs but common purposes in terms of content and technology. This paper outlines these ambitious plans for Digital Sudan, a country-wide project to transform access to cultural heritage.