Kilimanjaro database to be established - possibly…

Friday 2nd November 2007

A graduate student from New York’s Syracuse University is looking to compile a digital ‘library’ of Kilimanjaro. The student, who for the moment wishes to remain anonymous until he is certain that the project is feasible, is a graduate library and information science student who climbed Kilimanjaro in 2005 - though he failed to reach the summit.

Despite this disappointment, the student says he is obsessed about Kilimanjaro to the extent that he now wants to initiate this project, which he describes as a ‘memory network’.

Essentially, as I understand it, the student is looking to collect photos, videos, and other memorabilia from trekkers and mould this into a seachable database. As he describes it, the idea is that this database will ‘serve as a cultural record of Kilimanjaro and a resource for people interested in Kili or the region and its people’. In this respect, it will be similar to projects like the Maine Memory Network or the Library of Congress’s American Memory Project.

In the long-term, the student is also looking to preserve the ‘long-term knowledge and memories of the local people who live in and around the mountain, including the porters who climb it regularly.

Whilst I have no idea about the feasibility of this project – it is, after all, an ambitious proposal. Nevertheless, as anybody who has tried to research various aspects of the mountain will know, whilst there is a vast amount of information available, the main problem is organizing this data. Which is why this scheme is to be applauded.

I’ll keep you informed as to whether the project gets off the ground, and — if it does — on its progress. Having in the past received so many accounts of people’s experiences on the mountain, I also know that readers of this site and the book will be able to help the student in compiling this database by sending in their own recollections. If and when it’s right to do so, I’ll put out a bulletin asking for your memories/photos/videos etc.

It will be interesting to see what he turns up with his research.

Fire on the Rongai Route >>