Small-scale digitisation of endangered Nairobi City Council minutes and gazette archive collection from 1920-1950 at the McMillan Memorial Library, Nairobi (Kenya) (EAP1357)

Aims and objectives

This project aims to digitise, preserve and protect 20 bound volumes of McMillan Memorial Library’s endangered City Council of Nairobi Minutes collection, consisting of approximately 100 bound volumes in total (approx. 1000 pages each) from the 1930s - 1950s. The endangered collection provides unique visual documentation of Kenya’s politics, history and culture during the colonial era, by capturing the City Council’s meeting notes concerning parliamentary matters,  historical events and daily life in this significant period. There is evidence of extensive damage and neglect to these records through decades of exposure to dust, dampness, moulding, vermin and handling.  
 

Outcomes

  • Completed listing of the 1,343 volumes of City Council of Nairobi Minutes held at the McMillan Memorial Library from 1920s to 2000s.
  • Digitisation of 5,770 City Council of Nairobi Minutes records from 1930s to 1950s capturing colonial rule in Nairobi, discrimination against Africans, segregation of the city of Nairobi, public spending and town planning that continues to shape the landscape of Nairobi at present.
  • Preservation of the City Council of Nairobi Minutes by removing them from the library shelves and storing them in acid-free archive storage boxes placed on high shelves in the basement of the McMillan Memorial Library. 
  • Reducing physical contact with the materials by uploading the digitised records on the Nairobi Libraries Archive website.

The records copied by this project have been catalogued as: