Bridging the Digital Divide: Developing Local Digital Heritage Content and Investigating Localized Digital Solutions

Abstract The digital divide, in my view, is not only created due to the lack of local contents but also due to the fact that few digital contents from local sources are found in the digital libraries of higher education in Ethiopia. Likewise, the creation and dissemination of local contents could be facilitated not only by the presence of local digital contents but also by the presence of usable digital technology at a local level. This article aims to give a practical solution to bridging the digital divide by unlocking local heritage knowledge through creating digital contents from locally grown literary heritage as well as by developing a localised digital library system. Therefore, this article presents the research processes and results that were undertaken to unlock local heritage knowledge and developed the localised digital library system: customising a free and open-source software; digitising and translating the local literary heritage contents; and building the digitised and translated literary heritage contents into the localised digital libraries, which Greenstone digital library software was used to customise into local use. The English version of the Greenstone user interface (macro files) was translated into the Tigrinya language, one of the locally spoken languages in Ethiopia. For translation purposes, a list of suitable and compatible Tigrinya words and phrases that basically fit with the meaning of the English version of the Greenstone spreadsheet was developed. As a result of this translation work, the Tigrinya language interface has become one of the languages that are included in Greenstone digital library software version 2.83 for the first time (Language short name=ti “long name=ትግርኛ (Tigrinya)” default encoding=utf-8). To unlock the heritage knowledge and build the localised digital library with local digital collections, a sample of Ethiopia’s ancient Ge’ez parchment manuscripts were digitised and translated into Tigrinya and English languages. To facilitate the retrieval of information and to be easily recognised by internet search engines in the Tigrinya language, a local specific metadata standard for Ethiopia’s ancient Ge’ez parchment manuscripts was developed at three hierarchical levels, at manuscript level, at chapter level and at page level, with each translated page tagged using HTML. To facilitate the link between the translated text and the corresponding digital image, an “item” file was created using a WordPad. As a result, three collections were built into the customised digital library: the digitised image of the Abushakir manuscript as well as the Tigrinya and English translated texts of the same manuscripts. The functionality and usability of the localised digital system was tested by searching keywords and browsing titles from the built collection of the Tigrinya text and the original digital image of the manuscript. The result of this test shows that the localised digital library system is capable of allowing end-users to discover the information they want at the granular level from digital content of the local literary heritage. Therefore, further manuscript collection through digitisation, translating into local language and building the digitised collection into this localised digital library system is necessary for wider access to the local literary heritage digital content and for bridging the digital divide in the long-term.