• Education

UNAM library celebrates International Archives Day

Every year on the 9 June, the International Council on Archives (ICA) encourages archival institutions to celebrate their work by highlighting the importance of keeping archives and making it available to the communities they serve.

The theme for International Archives Day 2018 was ‘Archives: Governance, Memory and Heritage’.

The theme draws a link between the preservation of records underpinning a strong and trustworthy public administration, as well as documentary heritage empowering everyone to draw on the past to create a better future.

The theme highlights the importance of proper recordkeeping, which is the first process of ensuring records are created, filed and preserved in a manner that they can be retrieved within the shortest time possible. The theme encourages organisations to file at the inception of a record, and that the record should be managed and kept systematically to ensure that institutions are accountable to the communities they serve.

The University of Namibia (Unam) library will celebrate International Archives Day today and tomorrow. The days will be celebrated with an exhibition, which will run over two days in the Unam library foyer. The exhibition will showcase collections from the Katjavivi Private Archives, Du Pisani Private Archives, Tjitendero Private Archives and the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Mission (FELM) Private Archives.

Ndahambelela Iipinge, head of the library’s archives and special collections department, said “The private collections have been deposited with Unam library’s archives and special collections department because of the educational relationship that the individual depositors have with the university, as well as the contributions they made towards teaching, learning and research.”

Professor Peter Katjavivi, who is Unam’s founding vice-chancellor and the current speaker of the National Assembly, was instrumental in the university’s establishment and laid the foundation for academic excellence. Professor Andre Du Pisani is Unam’s emeritus professor, having lectured in the department of political science for many years.

The late Dr Mose Tjitendero, the founding speaker of parliament, was instrumental in ensuring the United Nations Institute for Namibia (UNIN) was a success, where together with others he led and taught Namibians in exile. The fourth private collection was deposited at Unam, following a successful partnership between the Unam library and the Helsinki University library. The FELM had in its collection additional published materials by Elcin, which were befitting for the archives as they are beneficial to linguistic students and lecturers at Unam.

“The official opening is planned to have discussions around the importance of recordkeeping and archives, as well as background to selected archives by the depositors,” said Iipinge.

She added the event will also see the official handover of two new publications to the Unam library by Lieutenant-General Epaphras Denga Ndaitwah, author and retired chief of the Namibian Defence Force.

The books are titled ‘A Life and Views of a Soldier: Author’s Perspective’ and ‘Strategic Leadership and Management the Direction Pointers: Effective and Enabling Instruments to overcome Challenges of the 21st Century’.