Every year on the 9th June, the International Council on Archives (ICA) encourages archival institutions to celebrate their work by highlighting the importance of keeping archives and making it available to the communities they serve.
The International Archives Day for 2018 is highlighted with the theme: “Archives: Governance, Memory and Heritage”. The theme draws a link between the preservation of records both as an underpinning of strong and trustworthy public administration, but also as documentary heritage, empowering everyone to draw upon the past to create a better future. The theme highlights the importance of proper recordkeeping, which is the first process of ensuring records are created, filed and preserved in a manner that they can be retrieved within a shortest time possible. The theme encourages organizations to file at the inception of a record, and the record to be managed and kept systematically to ensure that institutions are accountable to the communities in which they serve.
UNAM Library will celebrate the day on the 17th and 18th July 2018. The days will be celebrated with an exhibition, which will run over two days in the ILRC (Library) Foyer. The exhibition will showcase collections from the Katjavivi Private Archives, Du Pisani Private Archives, Tjitendero Private Archives and the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Mission (FELM) Private Archives.
Ms Ndahambelela H. Iipinge, Head of the Archives & Special Collections Department in the Library, commented: “The private collections have been deposited with UNAM Library, Archives & Special Collections Department because of the educational relationship that the individual depositors have with the University, as well as the contributions they made towards teaching, learning and research.”
Professor Peter Katjavivi, who is UNAM’s founding Vice Chancellor and the current Speaker of Parliament, was instrumental in the University’s establishment and laid the foundation for academic excellence at UNAM. Professor Andre Du Pisani is UNAM’s Emeritus Professor, having lectured in the Department of Political Science for many years and have contributed immensely. The late Dr Mose Tjitendero, the founding Speaker of Parliament was instrumental in ensuring the United Nations Institute for Namibia (UNIN) was a success, where together with others he led and taught Namibians in exile. The fourth private collection was deposited to UNAM, following a successful partnership between UNAM Library and Helsinki University Library. FELM had in their collection, additional published materials by ELCIN, which were befitting to be at the Archives as they are beneficial to linguistic students and lecturers at UNAM.
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The exhibition will kick off with an Official Opening from 10:00 until 11:00, in front of the ILRC (Library), Main Campus, on Tuesday 17 July.
“The official opening is planned to have discussions around the importance of recordkeeping and archives, as well as background to selected archives by the depositors,” said Ms Iipinge.
She added that the event will also see the official Handover of two new publications to UNAM Library by Lieutenant General Epaphras Denga Ndaitwah, Author and Retired Chief of the Namibian Defence Force. The books are titled: A Life and Views of a Soldier: Author’s Perspective and Strategic Leadership and Management the Direction Pointers: Effective and Enabling Instruments to overcome Challenges of the 21st Century.