Digitising Archival Material at ZIMPAPERS Harare: Emerging Challenges and Opportunities in the Covid-19 Era

Abstract

ZIMPAPERS has begun a massive digitisation of newspaper stories and photographs, according to their subject, that it has been storing in the established archival facility. Newspapers from as far back as 1892 have been bound to create volumes of newspaper-bound books. Digitisation not only makes them more widely available, but it also has preservation benefits by eliminating or reducing physical handling of archives and photographs by users. The photographs are kept together with the original picture for every published picture and its story. The archival facility serves as a memory and knowledge hub for the organisation and its sister companies, providing journalists and other interested parties with a rich research base. The story-based filing system ensures that stories about the same subject are collected from the newspapers and filed. This sparked the idea of commercialising the knowledge housed in this special collection facility. This unique collection, which has the potential to account for historical events, has proven invaluable to journalists, students, researchers, and the general public. Aside from providing access, opening the facility to the public was a significant step toward monetising the collections, and the potential of the collections to generate some revenue/income for the organisation cannot be overstated. The organisation realised that by continuing to digitise its archives, it can benefit from infopreneurship, even though it has brought its own set of challenges, opportunities, and lessons.