Imbiza 1.0: A Digital Repository of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa is an audiovisual digital repository of the 2010 Soccer World Cup which was held in South Africa from June-July 2010.
The repository aims to engage football scholars and fans in both reminiscing about the 2010 tournament as well as engaging critically with the historical record of the tournament. Utilizing over 300 photos and videos from scholars and fans based in the United States, the United Kingdom, and South Africa, the development of this site was highly collaborative, being built mainly on the submissions of contributors who willingly submitted their photos and videos from the tournament.
While some of these materials have been seen before on blogs (like the Other Football, One Man and His Football, and Football Is Coming Home), some of this content has never been made publicly available before (for example, many of Chris Bolsmann’s photos had not been published before). These materials were solicited, mainly, through social networking. The process of compiling this repository was highly collaborative; in short, Imbiza is “digital, from top to bottom.” From its conceptualization during a Football Scholars Forum session to the solicitation of materials through Twitter, listservs, and blog posts, Imbiza is a representation of how much potential digital networks hold for collaborative knowledge production, not only in terms of this tournament, but for a variety of academic endeavors.
Created by Liz Timbs, Imbiza 1.0 was created using a highly modified theme on a WordPress framework. The objects contained in Imbiza were catalogued using KORA, the digital repository software developed by MATRIX, building on the frameworks used in other MATRIX projects, including David Robinson’s Failed Islamic States and Alex Galarza’s Constructing the Cuidad Deportiva. In addition to cataloging these objects, KORA was also used to preserve the born digital content created in this site, helping to develop best practice for preserving and archiving these types of sources.
Imbiza 1.0 is just the first element of a much larger archive of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. This site only contains photos and videos not due to lack of content, but rather because of an overwhelming amount of content which will require much more consideration before it is presented to the public. In the future, Imbiza 2.0 will include these textual sources, as well as new sources, including oral histories of fans and locals who experienced the tournament in different ways.
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