ESAT Archives

The term ESAT archives refers to a transient facility for storing materials donated to the ESAT team for processing. Once processed and the data uploaded, the material is then donated to one of the existing cultural archives and libraries, wherever seems appropriate.

The term "temporary" is significant here, since ESAT is an encyclopaedia, i.e. a database of processed information, not an archive of written and/or published material - digital or otherwise.

However, given the concerns and actual problems faced by collectors and researcher with valuable materials on the arts in South Africa, the ESAT the project leader and the team members have been in consultation with various projects seeking to set up archival facilities (physical and/or digital). Prominent in seeking our such facilities have been former senior librarian Miriam Terblanche and researcher and film-maker Amber Scott-Martin, who - along with the rest of the team - have been commissioned to put together a comprehensive set of entries on such facilities over the course of 2023-4, as a separate section of the encyclopaedia.