Setting the Stage: Enabling Spaces for Dialogues with Ibali Digital Collections UCT

Abstract

In 2021, the Digital Scholarship Services (DSS -formerly Digital Library Services) department at University of Cape Town Libraries launched a university-wide showcasing platform for the university’s digital collections: https://ibali.uct.ac.za. The site is called Ibali (Xhosa for ‘story’), and it runs on a set of semantic web technologies called Omeka S and IIIF. Ibali is part of UCT Libraries’ drive to nurture an Open Access space where digital collections can be created, curated, published, and showcased. It is a highly collaborative and flexible, future-thinking online repository space that supports Digital Humanities projects. Since its launch, Ibali has hosted a range of diverse sites, including heritage and community resources on endangered South African languages, a video archive for a theatrical research project, repeat landscape photography database, student-led curations, and selected library collections.

The main architecture of Ibali is the open-source software Omeka S. Omeka S is a web publishing platform for GLAMs (Galleries | Libraries | Archives | Museums), designed to create relationships between objects in collections as well as describe them through linked open data resources on the internet. The ‘S’ in Omeka S stands for ‘semantic’, as in connecting to the semantic web, where data in web pages is structured and tagged. Its primary focus is on organising elements of a collection such that the links in between items and the greater elements of the internet are strengthened, allowing for much more relevant searches and deeper explorations.

However, what Omeka S also allows, through the many modules developed by its growing open-source community, is the building of interactions between its showcase sites, creators and visitors. The incorporation of semantic technologies within metadata allows the conversations and feedback to be incorporated into the actual showcase site itself, enhancing archives and allowing for multiple voices to emerge and the possibility of many different interpretations of collections. The digital showcase space becomes a stage for stories, embracing the transactional, transformative, and migratory nature of images, events, recordings of our archives and our collective memories.

This paper outlines the Ibali approach to building collection showcase sites that aim to foster dialogue and participation. I weave this together with the opportunities that the metadata infrastructure of Omeka S provides for sharing not only stories but diverse perspectives. Marking five years since its launch, I also briefly reflect on challenges and opportunities related to sustainability and touch upon the impact of AI on the platform and workflows.