User:Worlash/sandbox

One year has passed since the new audiovisual preservation and digitization lab was installed on August 2014 at the University of Ghana at Legon in joint efforts by the Institute of African Studies, the NYU MIAP Apex program and AudioVisual Preservation Solutions. In that time, the J.H. Kwabena Nketia Archives has busily become a model institution for audiovisual preservation efforts in Africa. Through the leadership of Judith Opoku Boateng, the cataloging efforts of George Gyesaw, and physical preservation and digitization work by Nat Kpogo, in just one year 245 at risk historic audio recordings are now accessible to researchers and musicians for the first time in decades. The contents of these recordings have already yielded advances in scholarship and musicianship at the University of Ghana and the amount of accessible materials continues to grow every day, despite the unique challenges faced by an institution working in West Africa. During my follow up visit this summer (to bring a new tape player for 3.75ips and 1.875ips tapes, provide additional training and perform quality control checks) I was ecstatic to find that the partnership I helped start over 7 years ago was finally yielding such tangible results.

One day, while I sat updating Workflow Documentation and contemplating how I could express the meaning of the efforts of the past year on our blog an incredible thing happened. Nat was digitizing asset AWG-W-52, a recording of a 1965 concert organized by the Music Department as part of the cultural activities of Convocation Week. The performance was proceeded by two incredible speeches by Prof. Nketia and the Minister of Arts and Culture J. Benibengor Blay. Their words, ringing out to us from 1963, perfectly embody the purpose and value of the work being done today at the archives and the international partnership that enabled its success. So on this, the one year anniversary of the installation of West Africa’s premier audio preservation and digitization laboratory at the JHK Nketia Archives of the Institute of African Studies of the University of Ghana at Legon, we take this opportunity to let archive, quite literally, speak for itself: