Challenges

IDEP’s library in Dakar is the sole repository of the Institute’s documents which relate to the 54 member countries. Many are the only paper copies in existence. This naturally poses challenges for using and accessing this unique knowledge on the African continent.

Some 6,000 documents are under threat due to the inevitable effects of time and regular handling. As such, the Institute launched a consultation process to digitise its archives. Arkhênum was chosen to provide this service on the institute’s premises.

A necessary auditing step

IDEP needed to identify the requirements to digitally preserve these unique documents. A preparatory phase enabled the Institute to identify documents to be included in the digitisation campaign, on a quantitative and qualitative level. This phase allowed the grouping of documents according to their source and place of publication. Reviewing the collections also made it easier to prepare the documents for digitisation. This included removing any dust and creating an inventory of the collection in Excel format.

Digitisation in 2 successive stages

The digitisation of the IDEP archives,  which span  520,000 pages of wide-ranging publications, was divided into two stages. This was done to enable productivity benchmarking, given the heterogeneous nature of the documents. The first phase, consisting of 260,000 pages, was completed over six months.  The results were analysed to develop an optimal production model, qualitatively and quantitatively, which was implemented for the second phase.

Optimised archive management

Another aim is to refine the library’s collections and optimise storage space. As part of this project, the library will destroy documents no longer in use or available in multiple copies. This will enable it to optimise its storage space for the physical archiving of IDEP’s future publications.