Hello Omeka S community,
University Cape Town Libraries will present its annual Ibali Iindaba webinar series between September and December 2026, exploring some of the work taking place around UCT Libraries’ Digital Collections Platform, Ibali which is powered by Omeka S. Ibali, the isiXhosa word for ‘story’, is UCT’s university-wide showcase platform for digital collections. Through Ibali, DSS works with Libraries staff, researchers, students and other members of the UCT community to develop sustainable digital collections and explore new approaches to digital curation.
This year’s sessions will explore the use of AI in digital curation workflows, the challenges of structuring music performance data, the migration of legacy digital collections, and the new developments and lessons that have shaped Ibali during 2026. All sessions are open and free to attend for all. Please see the details below and If you’re interested in joining all four, you can also download the full series as an ICS or HTML .
From Prompt to Practice: AI in Digital Curation on Ibali
Thursday, 17 September 2026 | 12:00 SAST
AI is increasingly finding its way into the everyday work of building digital collections, but where is it actually useful? In this session, we’ll look at some of the ways AI has been used alongside Ibali, from cleaning and restructuring metadata to generating code, enriching descriptions and supporting multilingual collections. We’ll share practical examples, lessons learned, and the ongoing importance of human judgement over machine efficiency. Register for From Prompt to Practice
Beyond the Programme: Organising Concerts, Works and Performers in Ibali
Thursday, 8 October 2026 | 14:00 SAST
A concert programme may look straightforward, until you have to turn it into structured data. Using the South African College of Music collection as a case study, this session looks at the decisions involved in turning spreadsheets of concerts, works, performers and recordings into a structured digital collection. We’ll explore how we identified different types of resources, created relationships between them, and why getting the data model right can make a big difference to how a collection can be described, connected and explored. Register for Beyond the Programme
The Show Must Go On: Sustaining Legacy Digital Collections
Thursday, 5 November 2026 | 12:00 SAST
Older digital projects often outlive the systems they were built on. This session looks at some of the legacy websites, databases and digital collections that began their migration journey to Ibali during 2026. We’ll explore how we unpack old data structures, decide what needs to be preserved or transformed, and rebuild collections for Omeka S while retaining the relationships and context that made the original projects meaningful. We’ll also consider the broader question of how universities can ensure the long-term sustainability and accessibility of their digital collections. Register for The Show Must Go On
Ibali 2026: All the Things We Did
Wednesday, 2 December 2026 | 14:00 SAST
To wrap up the 2026 Ibali Iindaba series, we’ll take a look back at what has changed on Ibali over the past year. From newly launched and migrated sites to platform updates, new workflows and experiments with tools such as AI, this session is a chance to see what the Ibali community has been building, revisit some of the lessons from the year, and get a glimpse of what may be coming next. Register for Ibali 2026: All the Things We Did
And for the first time, our previous Ibali Iindaba webinars are now publicly available online. If you want to check them out you can browse and watch the recordings here.
We look forward to seeing you at one (or two or three or four) of the upcoming sessions.
Sanjin from UCT Libraries