Press Release

INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORY ADVOCACY SEMINAR

Accra, 16 March, 2009: The Database of African Theses and Dissertations (DATAD) Programme of the Association of African Universities (AAU) is organising an International Institutional Repository Advocacy Seminar in collaboration with the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Ghana (CARLIGH) and Royal Tropical Institute of the Netherlands, from March 16 – 18 2009 at the Airport West Hotel in Accra, Ghana.The three-day International Institutional Repository Advocacy Seminar will be attended by about 80 participants from Africa and Europe, who are heads of tertiary institutions and libraries in tertiary institutions. The participants would be deliberating on policies and issues for the establishment and smooth running of Institutional Repositories (IR). It is expected that by the end of the Seminar, policy guidelines would be clearly spelt out for the operations of IRs in Africa.

The DATAD Project

The DATAD Programme of the AAU is implemented under the theme, ‘Improving Management and Access to African Scholarly Works.’ It seeks to accomplish the AAU strategic objective to collect, classify and disseminate information on higher education and research, particularly in Africa. The DATAD programme seeks to improve on the management and access to African scholarly work. Theses and dissertations represent a significant proportion of Africa’s research activity; however, access to this research output is not easy, even within the institutions where they are submitted. Months, years and in many cases longer periods may elapse before papers or other forms of publications describing aspects of the research in these documents can be published. In Africa particularly, they are an under-utilised information resource. By their very nature, their production is very limited and the only copy available for public access is usually in print and can only be consulted physically in a university library.
Issues of copyright and intellectual ownership have been identified as serious concerns for most universities. Only a few have straight forward and up-to-date copyright policies, a reflection of the general situation in most African countries. One, therefore, cannot consider information dissemination without considering these issues. Therefore, within the project framework, the AAU is working with member institutions to develop guidelines for the purpose.

Objectives of DATAD

The programme’s long term objectives include:

• Working with participating institutions to build a regional database of theses and dissertations.
• Contributing towards the creation of an environment conducive for research and publication in African universities and the region as a whole.
• Creating capacity in African universities for the collection, management and dissemination of theses and dissertations electronically.
• Providing visibility and improving accessibility to the work of African scholars both within and outside of the continent.
• • Facilitating the development of relevant copyright procedures and regulations, which will promote the protection of the intellectual property rights of African University researchers and scholars.
• Providing support for AAU programmes, which aim at capacity building in the area of research, promotion of cooperation among member universities and networking of institutions.

Immediate objectives of the programme

AAU provides leadership and coordination for the accomplishment of three basic tasks:

• Capacity building at institutional level for the establishment of infrastructure and management structures that support DATAD policies, activities and training.
• Establishment and maintenance of an Internet access to DATAD.
• Providing access to the online database and alternative data formats for dissemination e.g. CD-ROM or print.

Taking into consideration the new developments and growing application of ICT in African universities, the new approach for DATAD is to identify and agree on a common platform and appropriate software that can link both the abstracts and full texts of dissertations of African universities, with the aim of making them widely available for consultation by African researchers and other scholars. A new software, EndNote, is currently being used by member universities for entering data, as well as for copying full texts of theses and dissertations.

The Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries

The Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Ghana (CARLIGH) is a group consisting of academic and research libraries in Ghana. It was established on 17th August 2004 with the approval of the Committee of Vice Chancellors and Principal (CVCP). The main focus of CARLIGH is to join efforts of academic and research libraries to have maximum use of information resources and other facilities.The Mission of CARLIGH is to employ collective information resources, available technology, and staff capabilities to improve teaching, learning and research, including life long learning in member institutions and by extension in Ghana.
CARLIGH has 22 members; 6 public universities, 13 private universities, 2 Research Institutes and a Polytechnic. These institutions have the requisite infrastructure and technical support to benefit from the facilities that the group provides.Membership is open to academic tertiary institution and research libraries. Currently CARLIGH membership is mostly university and research libraries. When Polytechnic and College of Education libraries set up their infrastructure and facilities, they are granted membership. Annual membership fee and cost of electronic resources are borne by the institutions. Members as at now do not pay any fees when workshops or seminars are organized by CARLIGH.

The Royal Tropical Institute

The Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) in Amsterdam is an independent centre of knowledge and expertise in the areas of international and intercultural cooperation, operating at the interface between theory and practice and between policy and implementation. The Institute contributes to sustainable development, poverty alleviation and cultural preservation and exchange.KIT operates internationally through development projects, scientific research and training, and also provides consultancy and information services. These activities, along with those of its Tropenmuseum, Tropentheater and publishing house, are the Institute’s means of bringing together people and organizations within the Netherlands and all around the world.The Institute is a not-for-profit organization that works for both the public and the private sector in collaboration with partners in the Netherlands and abroad.

The Association of African Universities

The Association of African Universities (AAU) is an international non governmental organisation set up in November 1967 by universities in Africa to promote cooperation among themselves and between them and the international academic community. With a current membership of 213 higher education and research institutions, drawn from 45 countries in Africa, the AAU aspires to be the voice of the African higher education community.More specifically, the Mission of the AAU is to raise the quality of higher education in Africa and strengthen its contribution to African development by fostering cooperation and collaboration among its member institutions: providing support to their core functions of teaching, learning, research and community engagement; and facilitating critical reflection on, and consensus-building around, issues affecting higher education and the development of Africa.

Association of African Universities
P.O. Box AN 5744
Accra, GHANA
Tel: +233-21-761588/774495
Fax: +233-21-774821
Email: info@aau.org