Document Type

Article

Author ORCID Identifier

Chris Conte https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9720-7440

Journal/Book Title/Conference

History in Africa

Volume

48

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Publication Date

2-11-2022

First Page

83

Last Page

102

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Abstract

The essay chronicles the early phases of a digital history project on landscape change in the mountains of eastern Tanzania. In collecting sources for a land and culture narrative, the project aims ultimately to create an archive that is locally produced in Tanzania and maintained by Utah State University Library's Special Collections and Archives division. The project draws on more than thirty early twentieth-century landscape photographs from the Usambara Mountains in northeastern Tanzania by Walther Dobbertin, a professional photographer living in German East Africa. In the fall of 2015, team members scouted the sites for repeat photographs. The following summer, the project team began repeat photography and expanded the range of local collaborators to develop an oral history collection tied to the region's landscape history. The essay lays out the problems, pitfalls, and successes of the preliminary collaborative work among academics, university students, archival specialists, and elders' groups intent on collecting and preserving knowledge.

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