Karen von Veh (Open Section / South Africa)
Dear AICA Members,
I am sure most of you heard about the devastating fires in Cape Town on Sunday 18th April 2021. The fires were started by vagrants on the lower slopes of Devil’s Peak (part of the Table Mountain range) and, fanned by strong winds, quickly spread across the landscape and destroyed the Jagger Library at the University of Cape Town. The fire is a disaster for the University and for scholarship in general as the Jagger library houses the University of Cape Town Libraries Special Collections in African Studies (including important materials relating to the history of African art) and has been noted by The Mail & Guardian newspaper (21 April 2021) as the most extensive collection of African studies material in the world. The website description of the library holdings includes: printed and audio-visual materials on African studies and a wide array of other specialised subjects, as well as over 1,300 sub-collections of unique manuscripts and personal papers. The collection of books and pamphlets exceeds 85,000 items on African studies alone. The collection of African film is among the most extensive in the world, with over 3,000 films available for viewing and research. Special Collections actively makes digital materials curated by the University – including many of its important photographic collections.
In email correspondence from special collections archivist at UCT, Clive Kirkwood (10 May 2021), I was informed that Michal Singer, Principal Archivist of the Special Collections, is managing a “full scale disaster recovery project to remove all holdings, triage and treat vulnerable materials by international conservators on site, and relocate material to safe locations away from the risk of water damage. The recovery project has been running 7 days a week for more than three weeks and is nearing completion.”
In the aftermath of the fire there were reports of complete devastation and total loss of irreplaceable manuscripts. With the reclamation project underway, however, there is some better news. Much of the holdings were housed in secure basements which were not damaged by the fire although some lower lying areas were badly affected by flooding and water damage resulting from the fire-fighting measures. The water damage was limited to a relatively small percentage of holdings and conservators are in the process of attempting to reverse some of this damage by using measures such as deep freezing. Kirkwood estimates that about one fifth of the archival film holdings sustained water damage.
The upper levels were more directly affected by the fire so material in the reading room of the Jagger Library, and staff offices, processing and storage areas at the levels above it were largely destroyed. Kirkwood explains that this “comprised part of the holdings of the African Studies Library book stock; the African Studies Film Collection of published films (not archival films), part of the Government Publications holdings, and a fairly small number of manuscript archival collections.” He goes on to explain that material that was not burnt but sustained limited water damage includes “the holdings of the African Studies Library in the Dewey sequence 700s to 900s (this includes much related to art, architecture, literature and history) and a collection of publication series including the oldest Cape Almanacs and directories; the Rare and Special Book Collection; the manuscript archival collections kept in the Jagger Library (some 40 percent of the total, 60 percent being housed off-site); and the visual archives comprising archival film and contemporary photograph collections.”
Material in the library that was not damaged includes an extensive African Studies journal collection. Kirkwood also explains that the African Studies Library houses significant sought after research material off-site. This includes the collection of archival publications and periodicals, the entire hardcopy holdings of UCT theses (some reports said the latter had been destroyed); and newspapers that are preserved in the medium and long term.
Kirkwood acknowledges the destruction of archives and infrastructure will leave a considerable gap but his evaluation of lost knowledge concludes in fairly positive terms. He explains that most of the lost material is not unique and is held in other collections. In addition, through the reclamation efforts, it appears that more material has survived than was apparent in the immediate aftermath of the fire.
For those wishing to find out more details about the fire and the ongoing recovery efforts I am including some web page links below:
The public Jagger Library Support page at http://www.lib.uct.ac.za/jagger-recovery which now also has a link on the page to a blog Memory@UCT in which updates are posted: http://blogs.uct.ac.za/memory/jagger-library-recovery/ ).
Some information similar to the contents of this report is in the blog at http://blogs.uct.ac.za/memory/2021/04/mourning-session-report/
Other updates and pictures appear on the Twitter accounts of @UCTLibrary and @UCTLibrary_SC as well as the Facebook account of UCT Libraries.
The Special Collections website at www.specialcollections.uct.ac.za