Access & contact

AMIRA is a catalogue. It describes material that the research projects of the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence work with: recordings, photographs, documents, artworks, interviews and more. Each record tells you what the material is, where it comes from and who worked on it. The material itself is almost always kept somewhere else.

What a record shows

• A description of the material, written by the research project.
• Sometimes images or files. These are copies for reference and may show only part of the material.
• Sometimes a link to an online copy, for example in Collections@UBT or RDSpace at the University of Bayreuth, or on a publisher’s website. Access there is decided by that repository and may be restricted.

How to request the material

1. Open the record and find Access to this material. It sits beside the record, or below it on a phone.
2. Contact the person named under Who to ask. This is usually the project’s principal investigator. The project’s page lists the rest of its research team.
3. If no one is named, or no one replies, click the DRE’s email address in Access to this material. Your message will already contain the link to the record; we will try to put you in touch with the right person.

The researchers decide whether and how material can be shared. Some of it cannot be shared at all, because of copyright, privacy, or the wishes of the people and communities it concerns.

Please do not write to the institution that keeps the material

A record may name the archive, museum, library or family that keeps the material, under Current location or Repository. They look after the material, but they did not write the AMIRA record and usually cannot answer requests that start from it. Please contact the research team first. The only exception is when a record names the institution itself under Who to ask.

Who is responsible for the descriptions

The research projects describe their own material, following the DRE’s curation guidelines and working with the Africa Multiple Research Centres. The researchers are responsible for the accuracy of their descriptions. The DRE runs the platform and supports the projects in describing their data.

Found a mistake?

Use Report an error in this record on any record. Typos, wrong names, dates or places, and suggested improvements are all welcome. Messages go to the DRE, not to the researchers or the institutions, and we pass them on to the project team when needed.

Using AMIRA’s descriptions

You are welcome to search, cite and link to AMIRA records. Each record has Cite this record, with a ready-made citation and a permanent link. If you reuse the descriptions, for example in a database, an exhibition or a digital collection, please:

• cite AMIRA and the research project;
• make clear that the description comes from AMIRA, not from the institution that keeps the material;
• ask the research team before presenting or requesting the material itself.

AMIRA’s descriptions are free to reuse. The metadata (titles, descriptions, names, dates, places, subjects and the links between records) is dedicated to the public domain under CC0 1.0. You may copy, adapt and republish it for any purpose without asking. The requests above are good scholarly practice, not conditions of the licence.

CC0 covers the descriptions only. It does not cover the material they describe, or the images, files, full texts and transcripts shown with a record. Where a record gives a Licence or Access rights, that applies to the material itself. Where it gives none, assume the material is protected and ask the research team.

If your institution received a request that mentions AMIRA

You can forward it to africamultiple-digital@uni-bayreuth.de, or reply with a link to this page. We will make sure it reaches the research project concerned.

Contact

Digital Research Environment (DRE)
Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence, University of Bayreuth
africamultiple-digital@uni-bayreuth.de