University of Cape Town Libraries

Last updated
UCT Libraries
The Hub, Chancellor Oppenheimer Library, University of Cape Town.jpg
The Hub in Chancellor Oppenheimer Library
University of Cape Town Libraries
33°57′27″S18°27′37″E / 33.957571°S 18.460347°E / -33.957571; 18.460347
Location Rondebosch, Cape Town, South Africa
Type Academic library
Established1905
Branches7
Collection
Size1,2 million volumes, over 72,000 e-journals, over 28,500 print journals [1]
Other information
DirectorUjala Satgoor
Website UCT Libraries

University of Cape Town Libraries (UCT Libraries) is the library system of the University of Cape Town in Cape Town, South Africa.

Contents

The library system holds roughly 1.2 million print volumes and over 100,500 print and online journal subscriptions. An Africana research collection can be found in the Special Collections Division and consists of numerous monographs, periodicals, ephemera and multimedia sources. [2]

UCT Libraries are specialists in subject areas including African Studies, Commerce, Centre for Higher Education Development, Engineering and the Built Environment, Government Publications, Health Sciences, Humanities, Law and Science. [3]

Libraries

An aerial view of the Bolus Herbarium library in the Botany Building, Upper Campus, University of Cape Town Bolus Herbarium Library top view.JPG
An aerial view of the Bolus Herbarium library in the Botany Building, Upper Campus, University of Cape Town

UCT Libraries comprises eight libraries located across various campuses of UCT. Chancellor Oppenheimer Library, also known as the "Main Library", is located in the centre of UCT's upper campus, serving the Science, Engineering, Commerce and Humanities faculties and the Centre for Higher Education Development. Branch libraries are found near to the faculties which they service.

History

The founders of the South African College expressed the need for a college library for their students in 1829. [4] The establishment of the college library was made possible through donations from residents of Cape Town and prominent figures in the society of the time.

Professor W.S. Logeman,a multilingual philologist at the then South African College (SAC) was the founder of what became the University Library. [5] From 1905 to 1920, Logeman was appointed Honorary Librarian and became the first chairman of the University Library. [5] [6] To commemorate his contribution in the founding of the university's library system, the Logeman Reading Room within the Hiddingh Hall Library was established in 1967. [5]

When Hiddingh Memorial Hall opened in 1911, the ground floor became the home of the College Library, the first purpose-built library of the South African College. [7] [4] The Logeman Reading Room opened inside Hiddingh Hall Library in 1967 to commemorate Logeman's contribution to the founding of the university library. [4]

In April 2021 the Special Collections Library was destroyed by a wildfire [8] resulting in the loss of many of the 1,300 collections and over 85,000 books and other items held there. [8]

Repositories

Manuscript Collections

The Manuscripts and Archives Department collects primary source material of historical value for use by the academic community and other researchers. It was housed in the Jagger Reading Room of UCT Libraries which was destroyed by a wildfire on Sunday 18 April 2021. Since the Libraries are still assessing the damage and loss, the library holdings for Special Collections (African Studies Library, Government Publications, Rare Books and Manuscripts) may no longer be accurate.

Political Collections

Literary Collections

Architectural Collections

UCT History Collections

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">University of Cape Town</span> Public university in Cape Town, South Africa

The University of Cape Town (UCT) is a public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university status in 1918, making it the oldest university in South Africa and the oldest university in Sub-Saharan Africa in continuous operation.

An institutional repository is an archive for collecting, preserving, and disseminating digital copies of the intellectual output of an institution, particularly a research institution. Academics also utilize their IRs for archiving published works to increase their visibility and collaboration with other academics However, most of these outputs produced by universities are not effectively accessed and shared by researchers and other stakeholders As a result Academics should be involved in the implementation and development of an IR project so that they can learn the benefits and purpose of building an IR.

The South African College was an educational institution in Cape Town, South Africa, which developed into the University of Cape Town (UCT) and the South African College Schools (SACS).

Scholarly communication involves the creation, publication, dissemination and discovery of academic research, primarily in peer-reviewed journals and books. It is “the system through which research and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to the scholarly community, and preserved for future use." This primarily involves the publication of peer-reviewed academic journals, books and conference papers.

Max Price is a former vice-chancellor and principal of the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa. He succeeded Njabulo Ndebele and held this position for 10 years from 19 August 2008 until 30 June 2018.

The Centre for Curating the Archive (CCA), at the University of Cape Town, began life as LLAREC in 1996 as a space in which material, both original and reproduced, created and found, was collected from a variety of archives, museums, collections, storerooms, offices and junk heaps and used creatively to curate exhibitions by artist-staff at The Michaelis School of Fine Art. In 2008 it expanded its activities to include a photographic unit, and it is now a centre which actively works with many different kinds of collections, developing curatorship as a creative site of knowledge. Projects, publications and courses aim, through practice, to open up novel combinations of the historically separated domains of the creative arts and the truth-claiming discourses of history and the social and natural sciences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dryad (repository)</span>

Dryad is an international open-access repository of research data, especially data underlying scientific and medical publications. Dryad is a curated general-purpose repository that makes data discoverable, freely reusable, and citable. The scientific, educational, and charitable mission of Dryad is to provide the infrastructure for and promote the re-use of scholarly research data.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Makerere University Library</span>

Makerere University Library, established in 1949, is the oldest academic library in Uganda. In addition to its primary role as an academic library, it also serves as the national reference library and the legal depository of all works published in Uganda. It has been a depository for the United Nations since 1956.

The Registry of Research Data Repositories (re3data.org) is an open science tool that offers researchers, funding organizations, libraries and publishers an overview of existing international repositories for research data.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rondebosch Library</span> Public library in Cape Town

Rondebosch Library is a public library in Rondebosch, Cape Town, South Africa. It was ranked 18th in the City of Cape Town's top circulating libraries in 2013. The library's holdings can be searched online via the City of Cape Town's Open Public Access Catalogue (OPAC).

The Rhodes University Library is a library located in Makhanda, under the Makana municipality. It was initially established in 1937 in the Clock Tower building of Rhodes University College.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Muriel Jones</span> South African dancer and philanthropist

Muriel Jones was a South African dancer and philanthropist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shodhganga</span> Indian digital repository of theses and dissertations

Shodhganga: a reservoir of Indian theses is a digital repository of theses and dissertations submitted to universities in India.

Open access to scholarly communication in South Africa occurs online via journals, repositories, and a variety of other tools and platforms. Compared to other African nations, open access in South Africa has grown quickly in recent years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open access in Greece</span> Overview of the culture and regulation of open access in Greece

Open access scholarly communication of Greece is preserved in repositories maintained by several academic institutions.

Open access to scholarly communication in Hungary has developed in recent years through digital repositories and academic publishers, among other means. In 2008 several academic libraries founded the Hungarian Open Access Repositories (HUNOR) consortium.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open access in India</span> Overview of the culture and regulation of open access in India

In India, Open Access movement started in May 2004, when two workshops were organized by the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai. In 2006, the National Knowledge Commission in its recommendations proposed that "access to knowledge is the most fundamental way of increasing the opportunities and reach of individuals and groups". In 2009, the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) began requiring that its grantees provide open access to funded research. In 2011, the Open Access India forum formulated a draft policy on Open Access for India. Shodhganga, a digital repository for theses, was established in 2011 with the aim of promoting and preserving academic research. The University Grants Commission (UGC) made it mandatory for scholars to deposit their theses in Shodhganga, as per the Minimum Standards and Procedure for Award of M. Phil./Ph.D. Degrees Regulations, 2016.Currently, the Directory of Open Access Journals lists 326 open access journals published in India, of which 233 have no fees.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2021 Table Mountain fire</span> Cape Town fire that destroyed historic mill and library collections

The 2021 Table Mountain fire is a major fire that started on 18 April 2021 in and around Table Mountain National Park and the neighbourhoods of Newlands, Rosebank, Mowbray and Rondebosch in Cape Town, South Africa. The damage to sites in the Table Mountain area included the Rhodes Memorial, where a restaurant burned down; the upper campus of the University of Cape Town (UCT), where the Special Collections library was gutted; and Mostert's Mill, a historic windmill that burned down. In addition, five firefighters were hospitalised.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open thesis</span>

An open thesis, also known as an open dissertation, is a thesis that is freely available for members of the public to access upon publication, and often also during the planning and writing process. The decision to write an open thesis is made by the author, who will usually explain their rationale for creating an open thesis as part of the final published work or while developing it. Writing an open thesis is a process with many decision points regarding where and when to share information openly - from the planning stage, through research and writing, the defense/ voce viva and ultimate publication. Open theses are usually created and located in digital and multimodal formats.

References

  1. "About UCT Libraries". UCT Libraries. Retrieved 26 July 2014.
  2. "About the Libraries | Libraries". www.lib.uct.ac.za. Retrieved 2018-10-12.
  3. "UCT Fact sheets UCT Libraries" (PDF). Retrieved 2019-01-16.
  4. 1 2 3 "The History of UCT Libraries · Our Story · Ibali". ibali.uct.ac.za. Retrieved 2022-02-18.
  5. 1 2 3 Phillips, Howard (1993). University of Cape Town 1918-1949: The Formative Years. Cape Town: UCT in association with the UCT Press. ISBN   9780799214994.
  6. "History of UCT Libraries". University of Cape Town. Retrieved 19 July 2014.
  7. "Centenary celebration of Hiddingh Hall library | Centre for Curating the Archive". www.cca.uct.ac.za. Retrieved 2022-02-18.
  8. 1 2 Naidoo, Yasantha; Hyman, Aron (18 April 2021). "Two firefighters hospitalised as Cape Town heritage gems including Mostert Mill and UCT library gutted". TimesLIVE. Retrieved 2021-04-18.
  9. 1 2 "OpenUCT Initiative (2011 – 2014) | University of Cape Town". Centre for Higher Education Development. Retrieved 2023-07-05.
  10. "Research Data Management policy" . Retrieved 2023-07-05.
  11. "Digital Library Services" . Retrieved 2020-06-24.
  12. "Data Stewards". Digital Library Services. Retrieved 2023-07-05.
  13. "ZivaHub | re3data.org". www.re3data.org. Retrieved 2018-10-12.