Conceptualization and implementation of an integrated Indigenous Knowledge holders’ tool set to preserve their own cultural heritage.

Description

A lot of effort has been dedicated to the design and development of distinct technologies to support IK preservation in Namibia. However, at this point none of the tools has been deployed, scaled or integrated within a countrywide system. Moreover, with new opportunities of collaborations worldwide through crowdsourcing technologies local systems need to be designed and developed to facilitate such interactions thereby enhancing the overall cultural heritage process. The government is currently funding the development of a national database system to collect, store and process IK across all the regions. However, existing tools will have to be adjusted to enable integration into the national system or interfacing with the crowd before a final release is possible. These processes will have to be driven by leveraging existing research and technologies to conceptualize and implement an efficient and sustainable system of digital IK preservation.