On April 18th, the University of Cape Town Library suffered a devastating fire. While much was saved by quick activation of the fire protection system, significant portions of their special collections were lost, and the Jagger Library itself was destroyed.
The team at UCT led the creation of SPARC Africa, and SPARC and UCT have collaborated for many years. As close colleagues and friends, we seek to support those at UCT in the months to come as they work to recover from this tragedy.
We’re aware of two ways to assist in the recovery effort at this time:
- Submitting Digitized Images of UCT Special Collections: If you or someone in your network has pictures or scanned copies of materials from UCT’s special collections, you can submit these to volunteers who are collecting them to preserve digital copies of lost records. Please submit the form here for each document you have. This effort is being led by Dr. Maha Rafi Atal at the Copenhagen Business School, who will collate the submissions and provide them to UCT.
- Contributing Financially to the UCT Library: Financial contributions to help the UCT Library as they work to recover from the fire can be made via the UCT website here.
NOTE: After selecting your preferred payment method, you’ll be taken to another page to complete the donation. In the “project” dropdown menu on this page, you will need to select “Jagger Library” to direct the funds to the library specifically.
Thank you for helping to support our colleagues at UCT. SPARC will keep this page updated as we learn more about how best to provide assistance to the UCT team during this incredibly difficult time.
