The end of the Cold War is said to have brought an end to the sanctity of national sovereignty in sub-Saharan Africa, by opening up authoritarian regimes to international pressures for economic and political reform (Konings, 2011). Donor conditionalities of good governance coincided with protests from local populations, who increasingly formed part of a global civil society constituted by transnational activist networks (Keck and Sikkink, 1998; Comaroff and Comaroff, 1999). Within these intertwined processes of globalisation and democratisation, Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) were seen to play a crucial role (Wasserman, 2011). In particular, the internet formed the basis for a new “digital public sphere”, which could circumvent the political and territorial restrictions of authoritarian African states (Mudhai, Tettey, & Banda, 2009). Whilst the initial optimism of this “netaphoria” was significantly tempered by the turn of the millennium, it has recently been resurrected with the “social media revolutions” in the Arab world (Khondker, 2011).

This paper addresses the long-term preservation and management of priceless library hardcopy resources, by converting them into a digital resource, using the University of Botswana's Okavango Research Institute (ORI) Library map collection as a case study. As libraries in developing countries increasingly adopt digitisation in order to expand ‘safe’ access to their resources, they are often constrained by lack of funds to acquire the necessary Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure and recruit skilled personnel who can successfully develop, implement, host and manage such projects. Rather than striving to gather all the resources in-house, university libraries may seek external funding through collaboration with other departments or personnel within the same university, external partner organisations that may already have the requisite skills and infrastructure to assist them with bringing their projects to fruition.

This paper is based on a talk given to SCOLMA on the 3 November 2014 by Maureen Roberts, Senior Development Officer and Richard Wiltshire, Senior Archivist Business Archives at London Metropolitan Archives.

This article explores sources on Africa in the collections at London Metropolitan Archives and highlights the strong links London had with the African continent and its people. Particular focus is given to the archives of Standard Chartered Bank, and of Eric and Jessica Huntley, Black publishers and to associated cataloguing and outreach projects the repository has been involved in.

Based in Clerkenwell, London Metropolitan Archives is the largest local authority archive in the United Kingdom and holds over 105 linear shelf kilometres of archives. Managed by the City of London Corporation, London Metropolitan Archives collects records relating to pan-Greater London and the City of London Square mile. London Metropolitan Archives is open to the public as a free service for all including family historians, academics, school children, community and other user groups.