Opening What Can Be Opened, Where It Can Be Opened – Diff

Lessons from Free Knowledge Africa’s Digitisation Projects

Free Knowledge Africa, an organisation with a mission to promote the use of Wikimedia projects by Africans and bridge content gaps in the sphere of travel, geography, places, settlements, landmarks, heritage, historical and tourist sites towards sharing and contributing to global knowledge, recently launched the Access to African Knowledge Hub (AAKH). AAKH is a structured institutional network connecting African libraries, archives, museums, universities and cultural centres with the tools, training and partnerships they need to digitise, open and share their collections. This initiative was born out of the lived experiences and lessons learned from the Digitisation Project. This project was centred on Digitising Nigeria’s Public Domain materials, which has resulted in over 40,000 pages of historical documents uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.

From this Public Domain Digitisation Initiative, we have learned a number of lessons. The dream of universal open access is a dream worth holding onto, but in the day-to-day work of making knowledge free and accessible, perfectionism can become an obstacle of its own. Not every Institution is ready to throw open every door at once, and that’s okay.

Start where the doors are already unlocked. The most practical entry point for any institution is materials that are already in the public domain. There’s no legal risk, no licensing negotiation, no policy overhaul required. A good hosting site like Wikimedia Commons, for instance, allows institutions to participate in open knowledge without committing to anything they are not ready for. A win at this level builds internal credibility and hopefully, an appetite for more.

Speak the language of the Institution’s leadership. The librarians, curators and archivists you are relating with already believe in openness. The harder challenge is convincing the administrators. That is who you want to target: Institutional leadership. Metrics help in this case. Show them page views, citation counts, media reuse, and researchers’ reach. When a photographer contributes an image to Wikimedia Commons, and that image gets used in a Wikipedia article read by 40,000 people in a month, that is a story worth telling. The compelling argument here is that going open gives you the visibility you couldn’t generate on your own. That is a compelling argument.

Make it easy to say yes. One underrated strategy to get institutions on board is making sure that they do not have to start from scratch. Have models that have been drafted, tested, implemented and available for adoption. A lot of Wikimedia affiliates and organisations have pioneered these kinds of infrastructures. They have done the hard work; leverage them. Present these templates to the Institutions, explaining how they can adapt this in weeks rather than years, and watch how easy ‘yes’ becomes.

Let success stories do the persuading. A lot of Institutional leaders are cautious, for the right reasons. They respond more to evidence than argument, so give them that. A peer institution that contributed its digitised map collection and saw an unexpected research partnership emerge tells a stronger story than any pitch or presentation you might give. Building and sharing a living record of what has worked, for whom and how creates an undeniable proof that unlocks the door to the next conversation.

There is power in numbers. An institution that opens its collections alone takes on the perceived risk alone. But when you are part of a community, a coalition of institutions moving together, you can share challenges, experiences, pool resources together, learn from what others have tried and celebrate wins together. Lessons do not have to be learned from scratch, and momentum builds in a way that no single institution could generate on its own.

This is exactly what Free Knowledge Africa is working to create with the Access to African Knowledge Hub (AAKH). The principle behind this initiative is: what one institution struggles with alone becomes manageable when shared across a network.

A small university library doesn’t have to figure out copyright clearance, metadata standards, or Wikimedia Commons upload workflows from scratch because another institution within the network has already done that. A community archive with valuable but invisible collections does not have to apply for that grant alone, because AAKH supports consortium applications. A passionate librarian advocating for open access at their institution isn’t speaking alone, but is backed by a continental community facing similar issues.

The goal is not to abandon the vision of full openness, but to build towards it from wherever you are. Not every door will open today, but more will open tomorrow if we are thoughtful about which ones we try first.