Kenya

Karega-Munene. “Museums in Kenya: Spaces for Selecting, Ordering and Erasing Memories of Identity and Nationhood.” African Studies 70, no. 2 (August 1, 2011): 224–45.

SM: This article by Karega Munene sets a background for why the National Museums of Kenya has the collection it owns and the reasons for why some items (books and other artifacts) are excluded or included within the collection.Read more

AO. Libraries key in making the intellectual formation of a people an urgent matter.

AO: This quote by one of the co-founders of Book Bunk highlights the important role that libraries (should) play in consciousness raising and intellectual formation of Kenyans.

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AO. Questioning common narrative of Kenya as "not a reading nation"

AO: This is a rich paragraph from Wanjiru's blog post that raises several issues. First, she identifies a common public narrative about how Kenyans do not read. I have also often heard some...Read more

Fedha, N.W. 1972. "The Role of the Archives in Research." Conference Paper. Nairobi, Kenya.

AO: In February 2019, I came across this document written in 1972 by one of the early chief archivists of the Kenya National Archives (N.W. Fedha). The document outlines the early history of the Kenya National Archives as well as the rationale and motivation for its creation...Read more

Google Market Research: "Understanding barriers to mobile Internet adoption in Kenya and Ghana"

AO: This project is an example of the type of market research work we conducted with technology companies such as Google, Philips, and IBM. Given our position "on the ground" in Nairobi, we had a strategic advantage over any Silicon Valley-based research companies who had their own learning...Read more

AO. Project-based approach to Progressive Librarianship

AO: This excerpt describes some of the projects (more detailed in the full interview) that give a sense of what Progressive Librarianship might look like.

A project-

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AO. NMK full-time librarian in 1976.

AO: This small paragraph in the overall document is one of the few mentions of the library. It seems to suggest that despite being transferred to the Museum in 1918, it was not until almost 60...Read more

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