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Emerald Article: Digital access to cultural heritage material: case of the Moroccan manuscripts Abdelhamid Boujdad M'kadem, Paul Nieuwenhuysen

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To cite this document: Abdelhamid Boujdad M'kadem, Paul Nieuwenhuysen, (2010),"Digital access to cultural heritage material: case of the Moroccan manuscripts", Collection Building, Vol. 29 Iss: 4 pp. 137 - 141 Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/01604951011088862 Downloaded on: 28-03-2012 References: This document contains references to 13 other documents To copy this document: permissions@emeraldinsight.com This document has been downloaded 699 times.

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Digital access to cultural heritage material: case of the Moroccan manuscripts

Abdelhamid Boujdad Mkadem and Paul Nieuwenhuysen
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium
Abstract Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study the readiness of academic researchers in history in Moroccan universities to change their habits and ways of accessing old manuscript collections from direct access to on/ofine access to digitized versions of the same documents. Design/methodology/approach A survey was conducted with a sample population of about 30 researchers, both students and teachers. This survey used a questionnaire distributed directly. Findings This user study came to the conclusion that though people appreciate the possible existence of a digital library for manuscripts (on- or ofine), they have some hesitation to use it solely because they are afraid of losing a precious and fruitful human interaction with the private holders of manuscript collections. Research limitations/implications The study is considered as a basis for future studies that could enhance the concepts and the methods. The limitations in this research are mainly due to the local scope of the survey. Originality/value The survey is unique in the sense that it is the rst one. The manuscripts have been studied previously at several levels except a user needs perspective. Keywords Document management, Collections, User studies, Communication technologies, Digital libraries Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction
E-research is more and more a daily reality in occidental universities. But this is far from being true for third-world research communities (Genoni et al., 2006). Cultural heritage digitization projects are widely visible around the world. It is no longer the strict area of specialization of government agencies. A number of institutions have set up huge and immense digitization projects for cultural material of diverse nature (UNESCO, 2007). Third-world countries nd themselves faced by the same challenges. However, in their case it is even more difcult to make progress because of national priorities and funding limitations. One of the most interesting areas for digitization in Morocco is their trans-national type of manuscripts. This material offers a window into the society and its intellectual tradition and history from the late seventeenth century onward. For decades these manuscripts have been largely inaccessible and ignored. They are now under big threat from a variety of sources, both natural and human. The idea of this paper is to study the possibility of digitizing a selection of the manuscripts and make them available to a national and international scholarly audience and, at the same time to support critically important conservation and cataloguing efforts. But this raises many questions: . For whom may the project really be interesting? . Are researchers ready for the change?
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Would it be worth the digitization cost? Would it be used? And what to do or think if there is no demand from the research? What is the information and communication technologies level of the potential users?

2. Presentation of the collections

Kept in poor conservation conditions in the private libraries of some individuals, the manuscripts and their covers demonstrate a sophisticated visual and technical artistic quality and reect a rich intellectual and scholarly tradition. They cover a diverse range of topics and genres, including: . old fascicules of the Koran; . the natural and physical sciences (astronomy, mathematics, botany, and medicine); . the literary arts (poetic verse, panegyric texts about holy men, families or caliphs, grammars); . Islamic religious sciences such as theology, jurisprudence and legal opinions; and . historical accounts. Many of the manuscripts are written in Moroccan Arabic script. Charts, diagrams, commentaries, and marginalia are abundant; some describe complex genealogies of local prestigious families and scientic theories, while others record intellectual disagreements among scholars, teachers, and commentators. During the past two centuries, most of the manuscripts have been concealed, often buried or hidden to safeguard them from colonial agents. Partly as a result of the conditions
Received: May 2010 Accepted: June 2010

Collection Building 29/4 (2010) 137 141 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited [ISSN 0160-4953] [DOI 10.1108/01604951011088862]

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Digital access to cultural heritage material Abdelhamid Boujdad Mkadem and Paul Nieuwenhuysen

Collection Building Volume 29 Number 4 2010 137 141

in which the manuscripts were stored, they face an array of conservation challenges, including damage from insects, desiccation, and the fading of certain inks. And what is really sad is that a lot of documents simply disappeared or were torn into shreds. The digitization and preservation of Moroccos fragile manuscripts involves a series of serious challenges: . ubiquitous dust, termites and other insects; . humidity; . variations in temperature; . a lack of technological infrastructure; and . most importantly, the fragile and precarious condition of the manuscripts themselves, simply kept in boxes with no preservation perspectives.

3. An academic issue
Universities and local and international NGOs should be working together to preserve and make these manuscripts available to a broad community of scholars, students, and researchers. Despite the discouraging nature of the challenges involved, meaningful and lasting progress can be made. If some of these manuscripts were to become available in digital form, this would revolutionize how students and scholars in the country and people around the world could access this literature for research and study or simply for appreciating the beauty of cultural items. Furthermore, by offering a selection of the manuscripts through the internet in the framework of a digital library, we can hope to raise awareness among national and international scholarly communities and local political authorities and academics of the immensity of the challenge, but also the rewards to be gained, inherent in preserving and cataloguing these materials. We can nd this type of documents written with the same Moroccan calligraphy all over North Africa and part of Africa (Mali and Niger) as a vestige of Islamic inuence. And a lot of documents written in Tamasheq (the Berber language) and African languages and dialects were also written in Arabic born during propagation of Islam throughout the continent; the Arabic alphabet was indeed adopted by a dozen African languages, including Bambara, Fulfulde, Shrugged, Malinke, Mandingo, Somali, Songay, Swahili, and Wolof. The manuscripts add great depth to our understanding of this part of the worlds history and its civilization. By studying and translating these texts, which would require a huge effort, scholars and students of Islamic studies, Arabic and Berber anthropology, and historiography have an opportunity to play a unique role in discovering new insights about the contribution of the Maghreb to the history of ideas. By working to preserve and make available Arabic manuscripts from Morocco, we show our commitment to building a rich scholarly resource about Morocco by working with a diverse array of partners and organizations. In order to build technical capacity, better infrastructure and institutional involvement is needed. The unique patrimony of Moroccos manuscripts must be safeguarded and preserved for current and future generations to interpret, and understand.

4. Literature review
In our opinion technology should be serving the scientic community needs anywhere and in any research area. Technology developers and managers should do so to 138

enable the extension of the reach of research and education, an improvement in the quality of learning. Digitization is even more urgent in developing countries (see, for example, Rajan, 2008) where everything is lacking: government funding and involvement, civil society action and international cooperation. In most of these kinds of projects, users and potential users are not consulted. Users come from different cultures and have different backgrounds: therefore we cannot generalize user studies in the USA and apply them in third-world countries; the difference is mainly economical. Great effort should be made in order to ensure access to all information for all people through a well-dened policy of preservation and an enhanced access (see, for example, Forde, 2007]. The digitization of cultural heritage material is very special because it is an emerging eld with high relevance to education. Chen et al. (2005) stressed the importance of this idea while analyzing different elements such as cultural understanding; collaboration at different levels was recommended. Collaboration should increase between librarians and researchers in the sense that the huge volume of patrimonial documents to be managed is overwhelming; thus researchers should give them a helping hand. Researchers could contribute by adding their comments and annotations through an automated system (see, for example, Lalou, 2001). But some questions are still to be answered: why digitize, what to digitize, the audience for and packaging and discovery of digitized material, and nally the sustainability of such enterprise. All actors in a digitization project should formulate answers to a number of questions related to this kind of project: planning, cataloguing, handling copyright issues, technology evolution over time (see, for example, Lopatin, 2006). Developing countries are very demanding in the area of technology, while their resources are weak. Some efforts have been made; the Library of Congress has already created and added to its digital collections a series of scanned documents of Arabic manuscripts from Timbuktu. Although it is not what we could call a digital library, at least it shows the increasing interest and the emergency of the situation of these valuable documents. Another interesting project for developing countries is the Aluka project (see, for example, Rajan, 2008). The organization Aluka has created an online platform offering scholarly content to the whole international scientic community (see, for example, Ryan, 2010). Content owners (we focus more on their Timbuktu manuscript digital library, which is similar to Moroccan manuscripts collections) offer their collections to an international audience, but a lot of actions are still needed, mainly at an acquisition level. Here issues related to copyright are still to be cleared, even though the owners are enthusiastic about the idea of a digitization project. Pantalony (2008) noted that IP law developed to regulate the ownership [. . .], and is a system of laws that confers enforceable rights upon the person responsible for the intellectual output, so that the creator or owner of IP can exercise a measure of control over its future use. Moroccan laws on intellectual property seem to be favorable for the digitization of old manuscripts since diffusion is free for anyone (see, for example, Bulletin Ofcial Marocain, 2006). Digitizing must have clear goals. It should lead to the reduction of handling of fragile material, possibility of access to what previously was not accessible, and protection from all kind of risks (Hughes, 2004). Scholarly communities are changing around the world. They are changing their habits

Digital access to cultural heritage material Abdelhamid Boujdad Mkadem and Paul Nieuwenhuysen

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and orientations in documentation are more and more electronic. Librarians now have a more important role than ever in mediation (Genoni et al., 2006).

5 6 7

Preferences in access (direct access is necessary?). Digitizing all the manuscripts collections is a value added project. Actually having all the manuscripts on the internet.

5. Methodology
We chose to employ a survey using a questionnaire in order to assess users potential attitudes towards a digital library containing collections of rare manuscripts. An online questionnaire system (phpsurveyor, now limesurvey) helped with the data collection and analysis. 5.1 Selection of sample We chose our target population taking into account elements such as the research area, and the research environment. The prole of the population surveyed ranges from advanced degree students (Masters, PhD) to more conrmed researchers such as university professors in the area of history. Of course we went to the nearest university to those collections: the University of Abdelmalek Essaadi, located in Tetouan and Tangier cities, in the North of the Moroccan kingdom. We took a sample representing researchers in the eld of the history of Morocco. This sample was not big but was reasonably representative in the sense that it contains all categories of the population itself. The target population being the whole scientic community is working within the framework of history department of the University (about 500 persons). All were chosen randomly by visiting the campus and the Department of History, where we found different categories of teachers (assistants with some years of experience, and one professor). 5.2 Administration of survey Using a laptop, all persons in this sample were shown a sample of a digital library running under Greenstone (2008). The idea was to make them see what advantages that they could draw from digitized versions of manuscripts. The survey is aimed at measuring their interest and willingness in obtaining access, online or ofine, to the digital version of a manuscript through a (value added) digital library. 5.3 The questionnaire At the end of the presentation, they were given a paper copy of the questionnaire and at the same time invited to participate online if they had easy access to the internet. While explaining and giving paper copies, we tried as best we could to discuss with them. We focused only on the main questions because of a lack of time. But it is clear that other questions were asked. The questions were all closed-ended so they had to choose between graduations. The subjects of the questions were as follows: 1 Level of study. 2 Situation of work (for students). 3 Knowledge of information and communication technology: . internet; . desktop tools. 4 Working directly with manuscripts: . access; . frequency; . easiness; . nature of the work (bibliographical, bibliometrics, analytical). 139

6. Results
The results are summarized in Tables I and II and Figure 1. The study showed that even though the researchers realize and appreciate the importance of digitization of the manuscripts for their work (see Table II), they still prefer accessing the collections directly by requesting access to the physical locations from the owners (see Table I). This can be explained partly by the fact that they can benet from rich commentaries and the point of view of the owners of the manuscripts. This study is important in the sense that it forms a unique point of view. It gives shape to an angle in digitization i.e. the user attitude and opinion before the construction of the digital library destined to give users a unique opportunity to access digital versions of the documents they wish to consult. We should not forget that we are in Morocco and that ICT expansion is new and above all the use of the ICT is limited to communication (e-mail chatting, etc.). In that sense users were shown a sample of a digital library to see whether that would inuence their attitude. The opinion of the researchers, i.e. the preference to manage alone the access to the subject of their research, is not enough. This suspicious opinion is certainly due to a lack of condence in local universities and in the Ministry of education Erograms and not to a lack of interest in new information and communication technologies. This may be the rst time that a user survey has analyzed the opinion of researchers in such projects. As we know that digital organizations in universities in Morocco are not well developed and that students still use library card catalogues (there are very few OPACs), then our ndings are not surprising after all; perhaps the response of the researchers can be considered even as a normal, expected reaction. Table I Frequency of physical access to collection
Frequency of access Always Sometimes Hardly ever Use of direct access (percent) 71 29 0

Table II Total number of sample and target population

Total number of population Sample Rate of response (percent) ^500 31 100

Figure 1 Measure of researchers interest in digitization

Digital access to cultural heritage material Abdelhamid Boujdad Mkadem and Paul Nieuwenhuysen

Collection Building Volume 29 Number 4 2010 137 141

The need to digitize old manuscripts is also a cultural heritage issue. Considered from this point of view, this user behavior analysis would represent a modest participation in safeguarding a threatened cultural heritage material. In Moroccan universities the penetration of ICT is now great. More and more access to digital content is guaranteed, but initiatives like digitizing and evaluating user needs in relationship with the manuscripts are needed because they do not form part of the digital scene. Of course the questionnaire has other ndings. We focused on the responses that meet our hypothesis, which was that it is obvious that that they need digital surrogates of the manuscripts (and thus knowing if a digitization project is really necessary for these persons or not). Other interesting ndings that may be exploited in the future are the use of ICT (which is widely common between the community members), the fact that they nd some difculty accessing the collection, mainly because the owners are usually busy, and that the type of work is mainly bibliographical.

The order of these aspects of planning are not always so clear and decisions at a phase may precede the phase that was planned before it. The conditions in reality may not be as good as we may hope. A specic point in the planning of a digital collection is nding sources for funding and developing a budget.

7. Conclusion
In this paper, we focused on the researchers attitudes and expectations of the use of digitized material and especially old manuscripts collections in Morocco. Through a survey, we found that they do not seem to be willing to use a potential digital library that would ease access to these documents. The results show though a tendency to prefer physical access to manuscripts, while questions were centered on willingness and inclination to use the digital library. The present research is limited, partly because there is very little practical research done to explore the users attitudes in special scientic areas. Also, we cannot generalize denitively as ICT grows faster every day in the country. Progress has been made in providing access to electronic information (especially e-journals) in universities. In the beginning of our work, we set up the hypothesis that a digital library issuing from a digitization project would be welcome by researchers in history in Morocco. After a survey of their opinions about this subject we concluded that they are hesitating and are not very enthusiastic about the idea. They still prefer physical access even if it is difcult and at times not possible. A digitization project is necessary anyway to save the documents, which are under real threat of total disappearance. And more comprehensive and more qualitative surveys should complete the work already done to analyze these questions more profoundly. More studies should be conducted to discover what users really regarding the manuscripts.

7. Recommendations
We think that future surveys should also cover other stakeholders at the national and international levels. This would be interesting to understand how viable digitization projects are. Future research should not only be planned but ought to be deepened and varied. It may include university authorities and evaluate their involvement in this kind of digitization project; it should also be investigated whether digitization can be integrated in their digital programs for the universities. We decided for the future digitization project to have a simple plan. We outlined two levels of decision-making. The rst set of decisions is specic to aspects of collection development: . Selecting source material. . Dealing with copyright, as Moroccan law on intellectual property is clear the owner of the manuscript has the right to deliver copies or delegate diffusion to a third but cannot transfer the right of publishing. Also, he can give it as a gift. . Dening the scope of the collection. This collection is one of many similar others in the country. The importance of these collections is that they represent another source of history that is closer to the people and sometimes more accurate than any ofcial history: events from the past that are written by much less known local writers. But some collections contain priceless ofcial documents about the colonial period; others contain epistolary correspondence in Spanish between local authority representatives of the Sultan and the Spanish protectorate administration. The clearance of permission to include material in the collection in national copyright laws is still to be studied more closely. A recently Moroccan law stated that the copyright stays with the owner, this owner cannot interfere if anyone wants to publish the material. The second set of decisions is specic to aspects of project management: . dening project objectives and milestones; . deciding on technical aspects; . workow (or work plan); and . execution and staff decisions. 140

References
Chen, C.-C., Warclar, D.H., Wang, Z.J. and Kiernan, K. (2005), Digital imagery for signicant cultural and historical materials, an emerging research eld bridging people, culture, and technologies, International Journal of Digital Library, Vol. 5, pp. 275-86. Forde, H. (2007), Access and preservation in the 21st century: what has changed?, Journal of the Society of Archivists, Vol. 26 No. 2, pp. 193-200. Genoni, P., Merrick, H. and Willson, M.A. (2006), Scholarly communities, e-research literacy and the academic librarian, The Electronic Library, Vol. 24 No. 6, pp. 734-46. Greenstone (2008), Greenstone digital library system, New Zealand Digital Library Project at the University of Waikato, UNESCO, available at: www.greenstone.org Hughes, L.M. (2004), Digitizing Collections: Strategic Issues for the Information Manager, Facet Publishing, London. Lalou, E. (2001), Une base de donnees sur les manuscrits ` enlumine s des bibliothe ques, collaboration entre ` chercheurs et bibliothecaires, Bulletin des bibliotheques de France, Vol. 46 No. 4, pp. 38-42.

Digital access to cultural heritage material Abdelhamid Boujdad Mkadem and Paul Nieuwenhuysen

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Lopatin, L. (2006), Library digitisation projects, issues and guidelines: a survey of the literature, Library High Tech, Vol. 24 No. 2, pp. 273-89. Pantalony, R.E. (2008), WIPO Guide on Managing Intellectual Property for Museums, World Intellectual Property Organization, Geneva, available at: www.wipo.org Rajan, R. (2008), Building a digital library of scholarly resources from the developing world: an introduction to Aluka, available at: http://ndarticles.com/articles/ mi_m0438/is_2_40/ai_n19313528/ Ryan, D. (2010), Aluka: digitization from Maputo to Timbuktu, OCLC Systems & Services: International Digital Library Perspectives, Vol. 26 No. 1, pp. 29-38. UNESCO (2007), UNESCO/IFLA Directory of digitized collections (UNESCO Memory of the World), available at: www.unesco.org/webworld/digicol/

Bulletin Ofcial Marocain (2006), Loi sur les droits dauteurs et droits voisins, Dahir no. 1.05.192, Bulletin Ofcial Marocain, no. 5397, February 20, 2006, p. 458.

Further reading
Smith, A. (1999), Why digitize?, Council on Library and Information Resources, available at: www.clir.org/pub/ reports/pub80-smith/pub80.html

Corresponding author
Abdelhamid Boujdad Mkadem can be contacted at: aboujdad@vub.ac.be

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