Our Special Collections Divisions acquires, preserves and provides access to a substantial collection of rare and valuable books, primary documents and manuscripts that have been accumulated over many decades. Most of these collections are unique to Stellenbosch University’s Special Collections and are not available anywhere else in the world. They serve as valuable resources for documenting the cultural heritage of local, national, and international significance. These collections play a vital role in enhancing the University’s research impact, often being consulted by researchers when producing books, book chapters, journal articles, conference papers, and other scholarly outputs. Every year, the Library compiles a list of research outputs that were informed by Special Collections, including Manuscripts, Rare Books, Africana, and collections in the Documentation Centre for Music (DOMUS) in the Music Library.

The publications and the collections consulted in 2024 are listed below:

Articles

Bangani, S.  2024. Leveraging community engagement to contribute to Sustainable Development Goals 8 and 11. IFLA Journal, 50(3), 451-462. https://doi.org/10.1177/03400352241263533

(Africana, Manuscripts: various collections)

Lambrechts, L, Lindström, K, Hansen Van der Watt, L-M, Pitta, F, Deane, N, Moreschi, B & Petersen, L. 2024. Decay without mourning: Future-thinking heritage practices. International Journal of Heritage Studies:1-18. https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2024.2417062

(DOMUS: Hidden Years Music Archive Project [HYMAP])

Ncume, PS. 2024. Stellenbosch University Library exhibition celebrates 30 years of democracy. Liasa-In-Touch, 25(3):25.

(Manuscripts: various SA political collections)

Book

Cleophas, F. 2024. Physical education and physical culture in South Africa, 1837-1966. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

(Africana)

Conference presentations

Gollom, Ingrid. 2024. An overview of the life and career of South African concert pianist Lionel Charles Bowman (1919-2006) as compiled from the primary source material in the Lionel Bowman collection. Annual Congress, International Association of Music Libraries Archives and Documentation Centres (IAML), Department of Music, Stellenbosch University, 23-28 June.

(DOMUS: Lionel Bowman Collection)

Khati, Patricia. 2024. Preservation of Special Collections material at Stellenbosch University Library and Information Service. Bi-Centenary Conference on Preservation of Knowledge and Documentary Heritage, Thaba Bosiu Cultural Village, Maseru, Lesotho, 22-24 August.

(Manuscripts: various collections)

Lambrechts, L & Van der Want, S. 2024. Life in the archive: Investigating growth and decay in the Hidden Years Music Archive. 18th annual SASRIM Conference, Department of Music, University of the Witwatersrand, 26-28 July.

(DOMUS: HYMAP Collection)

Lambrechts, L & Van der Want, S. 2024. Making the invisible visible: Investigating the hidden life of fungi in the archive. Annual Congress, International Association of Music Libraries Archives and Documentation Centres (IAML), Department of Music, Stellenbosch University, 23-28 June.

(DOMUS: HYMAP Collection)

Röntsch, M. 2024. Persona and the archive: Reconsidering the Christopher James Biography Project. 18th annual SASRIM Conference, Department of Music, University of the Witwatersrand, 26-28 July.

(DOMUS: Christopher James Collection)

Ncume, PS. 2024. Bringing the ‘hidden’ to the ‘public’: The case of Hidden Years Music Archive. Annual Congress, International Association of Music Libraries Archives and Documentation Centres (IAML), Department of Music, Stellenbosch University, 23-28 June.

(DOMUS: HYMAP Collection)

Theses and dissertations

Bergemann, Karl Jason. 2024. The Runaways: A study of enslaved, apprenticed and indentured labour flight at the Cape in the emancipation era, 1830-42. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. Stellenbosch: Stellenbosch University. [Online] Available https://scholar.sun.ac.za/server/api/core/bitstreams/10eddb3c-72ad-431b-b737-6defe0e179ed/content

(Africana, Rare Books)

Malan, Eon. 2024. Vir die Musiekleier / To the Director of Music: Bydraes tot navorsing van orrel- en kerkmusiek (1980-2020). Unpublished Masters thesis. Stellenbosch: Stellenbosch University [Online]. Available: https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/130257

(DOMUS: SAKOV Collection)

Struwig, Mieke. 2024. An intellectual history of institutionalised music studies in South Africa. Unpublished Doctoral dissertation. Stellenbosch: Stellenbosch University [Online]. Available: https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/130248

(DOMUS: Bernard van der Linde, SASRIM)

(Africana, Manuscripts: various collections – GG Cillié Jr, WJ du P Erlank, HB Thom)

Authors: Marieta Buys, Mimi Seyffert-Wirth

Stellenbosch University’s Library and Information Service is a natural partner to the scientific research process. As such, we launched our own data management plan (DMP) tool, SunDMP, in 2024. This tool allows researchers to generate DMPs seamlessly online. Its comprehensiveness means it can be adapted for any purpose, internally to apply for ethical clearance, or externally to apply for funding. Researchers who require assistance with creating DMPs using SunDMP can contact Sizwe Ngcobo.  The information below is required when you create a DMP using the SU’s template (on SunDMP).

Researcher information

This section of the tool is meant for researchers to populate their demographic data such as their name, surname and other personal details, ORCID Identifier, university affiliation and the research data management roles they would perform when conducting a project.

Project information

As per international standard requirements, this section requires SU researchers to add basic information such as the project name, abstract, funder information (including the status), anticipated start and finish dates, and the ethics body in which they belong such as Health Research Ethics Committee; Research Ethics Committee: Animal Care and Use (REC: ACU); Research Ethics Committee: Biological and Environmental Safety (REC: BES); or Research Ethics Committee: Social, Behavioural and Education Research (REC: SBE)

Data description and collection or re-use of existing data

It is a commonly shared perspective that research projects extensively engage with data through activities such as reuse, collection, transformation, and analysis. The SunDMP template enables SU researchers to include comprehensive details of data collection in their DMPs. This ensures research data reusability and facilitates effective management throughout the research data lifecycle.

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Documentation and data quality

SU researchers are required to document their data to ensure that other researchers can understand and interpret the data generated from the project. This section aims to ensure that SU researchers describe all the sources of data, this includes data generated through various instruments or from questionnaires; data to be newly collected as part of the current project, but it can also be pre-existing data that may need proper contracts with the maintainer, some pre-processing, and quality checks. It can also be reference data that is part of curated resources and (public) databases.

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Legal and ethical requirements, codes of conduct

Research data collected or reused within a research project is subject to SU’s research data management regulations to govern permissible uses. Therefore, all SU researchers need to address various ethical, legal, and security issues within their DMPs. This ensures that all research data available for reuse undergo proper anonymisation, de-identification, and licensing procedures, thereby promoting compliance and safeguarding research data integrity.

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Data sharing and long-term preservation

In addition to ensuring comprehensive metadata and accessibility, SU researchers need to ensure that data that is intended for reuse must be securely stored (see SUNScholarData libguide for reference) and preserved. This entails that the DMP needs to address strategies for data storage and preservation to support future reuse, whether for rerunning experiments, usage as reference data, or facilitating use by other SU researchers or the general public for different purposes.

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Author: Sizwe Ngcobo

Music is more than sounds or entertainment – it has the power to heal, inspire, uplift, and connect us. But beyond the emotional and artistic impacts, music can also play a significant role in health and well-being. What if we could promote the sustainability and value of the performing and creative arts in society by uniting the concept of arts for health and well-being, with the concept of health and well-being in the arts, for mutual growth and reciprocity? Transdisciplinarity is a way of thinking that can accomplish this bridging of worlds. Importantly, music libraries are vital in facilitating innovation in this space.

Transdisciplinary research brings together experts from different fields to tackle ‘wicked problems’ with combined knowledge and methods, innovative perspectives, social engagement, and systemic thinking. Aiming for practical and sustainable solutions, transdisciplinarity has an overarching ethos towards the common good, bridging the gap between theory and practice, and driving social impact. The Health, Arts, and Performance Initiative (HAPI) at SU, led by Dr Bridget Rennie-Salonen, is a transdisciplinary research collaboration bringing experts together from multiple disciplines, such as music, health, medicine, and social science, to explore the relationship between music, health, well-being, and human performance.

Musicians and other artists face unique health challenges that often go unrecognized. From the outside, being a musician might seem like a dream job. But the reality is that many performers struggle with physical and mental health issues. Research has shown that musicians are at high risk for musculoskeletal disorders such as repetitive strain injuries, hearing and vocal health problems, and performance anxiety and mental health challenges. HAPI is working on topics such as developing health education for music students so they can learn how to prevent injuries, manage stress, and perform and teach better; addressing the mental health and well-being of performing artists; exploring social justice topics such as how music can promote positive social change; and developing support networks and resources for performing artists to seek help without stigma. Importantly, exploring these issues in the South African and African context is pivotal in order to address our unique socioeconomic challenges and diverse cultural needs, which require locally relevant research and solutions, and which will contribute valuable perspectives to the global discourse on health and well-being in and through the performing arts.

Yet one of the most overlooked enablers for this research is the music library and the librarian. Music libraries don’t just store sheet music and books; they are hubs of knowledge access, transfer, and sharing, to help transdisciplinary researchers push the boundaries of what’s possible. Music libraries are evolving too, becoming active and innovative partners, such as by providing access to essential research on musicians’ health, music psychology, and performance science; by facilitating knowledge transfer between disciplines; by helping to connect academic research and practical application; and by partnering with researchers to develop resources such as online platforms that integrate health and performance studies into music education.

Music is a universal force for well-being for all – the makers and the consumers. Music libraries are key players for shaping the future of transdisciplinary research innovation, linking music in health, and health in music.

Author: Bridget Rennie-Salonen | brsalonen@sun.ac.za | +27 72 479 9684

We are pleased to announce that EndNote 2025 will soon be made available to all SU staff and students. It will be released on 22 April and we will make it available soon after that. WWIS will provide training on all the new features and the date for this training will be announced once it has been confirmed. You can read more about those features: EndNote 2025

NB: Please ignore the offer to upgrade to EndNote 2025 that now appears when you launch EndNote 21!

Since its inception in 2013, Library and Information Service’s annual Library Research Week has become a highly anticipated event that offers valuable sessions on a variety of research-related topics. The aim of Library Research Week is to develop the skills and knowledge of emerging researchers and postgraduate students and to equip them with practical knowledge related to aspects of the research process. We draw from a vast source of expertise at Stellenbosch University to present the webinars and we also launch each week with a prestigious launch event where past guest speakers have included Professor Jonathan Jansen, Distinguished Professor, Education Policy Studies, Dr Balindiwi Sishi, Senior Lecturer in Physiological Sciences and Professor Jimmy Volmink, Former Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at SU.

In line with the above, we are delighted to invite you to join us for the 2025 Library Research Week, which will take place from 12–16 May, under the theme ‘Let’s Partner for Research Impact.’ The week will feature a variety of activities designed to enrich the research process and boost research impact through collaboration and partnerships. The event will kick off on 12 May 2025 from 15:30–16:30, with our distinguished guest speaker, Professor Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela. Professor Gobodo-Madikizela is a Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Stellenbosch University, where she also holds the South African National Research Foundation Chair in Violent Histories and Transgenerational Trauma and also the Research Chair in Historical Trauma and Transformation. She is the 2020-2021 Walter Jackson Bate Fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute. In 2024 she was awarded the prestigious Templeton prize for her remarkable work.  In addition, Professor Gobodo-Madikizela is a celebrated author of works that include A Human Being died that night: A South African story of Forgiveness and Memory, Narrative, and Forgiveness: Perspectives on the Unfinished Journeys of the Past (co-authored with Chris van der Merwe), among others.

As with our previous Research Weeks, every day will have a sub-theme that is connected to the overall theme ‘Let’s Partner for Research Impact:’

• Monday, 12 May: Launch of Library Research Week (In-person and Online)
• Tuesday, 13 May: Let’s Work Together Throughout the Research Process (Online)
• Wednesday, 14 May: Let’s Collaborate to Find the Best Research Tools (Online)
• Thursday, 15 May: Let’s Strengthen your Research Impact (Online)
• Friday, 16 May: Let’s Support Researcher Well-being (Online)

Keep an eye out for the full programme and we look forward to seeing you there!

Following recent maintenance in the strongroom in Special Collections, an old newspaper, De Paarl, was identified to be digitised for preservation. The physical copy had become fragile and difficult to handle. The 1892 run of the newspaper was recently digitised in the Library and is hosted on SUNDigital Collections, the Library’s digital heritage repository.

Published by well-known Afrikaans family concern D.F. du Toit & Co. between 1883 and 1898, De Paarl is a very scarce resource and as far as can be ascertained, only available in the South African National Library in part. The publication also appeared infrequently, especially during the initial years of publication.

The resource offers a fascinating look at everyday life in a small town in the Western Cape before the 20th century and covers national and even international news of the time. Regular columns report on agricultural auctions, legal matters, the arrival of mail and even reports lost livestock.

Digitising the fragile newspaper has been a challenge and care has been taken to digitally enhance the PDF files and improve readability. The collection can be accessed at https://digital.lib.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.2/21351.

Author: Mimi Seyffert-Wirth

Stellenbosch University has a Read & Publish agreement with IWA Publishing. Unlimited free Open Access publications for corresponding authors affiliated with the institution are available with this uncapped agreement.  There is no limit to the number of articles that can be published with open access. To qualify for the waiver during the submission process, please ensure that you are listed in your article as the corresponding author and include your full institutional affiliation and associated e-mail address. Articles from authors at Stellenbosch University may be published under the Creative Commons licenses (CC BY), authors retain all rights as per the CC license.

For guidelines on how to publish here, please visit https://iwaponline.com/pages/rp_guidelines.

Enquiries: Sakhile Mngomezelu

Whether you are an up and coming researcher or experienced, whether you are new to Stellenbosch University or an old hand, you may all find that we offer research support services that you were not aware of!

A great place to see all our research support services is our Research Services webpage:

You will find a range of available services here, including links to our #SmartResearcher workshop series, publishing support and open access, managing research data, managing references, measuring research impact, analysing data and our unique research collections. Another great source for information is our Research Process library guide:

The research process is a structured approach to conducting research, with several key phases that can help guide the researcher through their research journey. The guide is designed to revolve around steps of Plan & Design, Collect & Capture, Analyse, collaborate & create, Manage, store & preserve, Share & publish and Monitor & evaluate. This is also where you will find some recommended apps and software that could aid your research journey. These can be found under Useful tools for research.

With AI transforming our academic environment, it is also worth considering how it may impact or benefit the research process. AI can be considered an enabler of new methods, processes, management and evaluation in research (Chubb et al., 2022). However, any tools that can aid you must always be approached with a pinch of salt and ethical considerations and reliability must be taken into account. If you are unsure, just ask your librarian!

If any of these services piqued your interest, do not hesitate to contact us. Your faculty librarian and we at Research Support Services are just a click away!

Sources:

Chubb, J., Cowling, P. & Reed, D. 2022. Speeding up to keep up: exploring the use of AI in the research process, AI & Society, 37:1439-1457. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-021-01259-0

Stewart, L. 2025. The research process: Steps, how to start & tips. ATLAS.ti. Available: https://atlasti.com/research-hub/research-process [2025, 27 Feb].

Taherdoost, H. 2024. The research process: From question to conclusion. LinkedIn, 2 Nov. Available: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/research-process-from-question-conclusion-hamed-taherdoost-n9ajc/ [2025, 27 Feb.].

Author: Kirchner van Deventer

The academic research landscape is evolving rapidly, especially with the advent of generative AI tools developed on large language machine learning models emerging as game-changers for scholars. In research environments, AI tools can mostly be used as general-purpose tools (e.g. Microsoft Copilot) or as task-specific tools (e.g. to deduplicate papers in literature reviews).

General-purpose tools such as large language model (LLM) chatbots can best be applied as research assistants (e.g. to do prompting for ideation or data analysis), or as a model to do data analysis on (such as sentiment-analysis on datasets added to a language model). The latter is accomplished computationally using LLM application programming interfaces (APIs), or by creating Custom GPTs (generative pretrained transformers) with domain-specific datasets. Both of these methods require a paid subscription to an LLM chatbot service.

In this blog entry we focus our attention on task-specific AI tools within the context of research tasks in search and discovery, topic comparison, text summation and writing. This is discussed by way of focusing on the three main application areas of AI tools in research environments, namely in:

• Reviewing prior studies
• Identifying gaps in knowledge
• Generating new research hypotheses for testing

Let’s briefly discuss each of these separately by reference of two tools within each application area that are available to SU researchers:

1.      Reviewing prior studies

AI tools can help automate systematic reviews by scanning the abstracts and full texts of documents to extract key terms and then use clustering algorithms to group similar studies to identify trends. The benefits of using AI to review prior studies include the speed of processing thousands of papers in hours, finding hidden patterns across studies and handling growing volumes of research, although some niche domains still lack sufficient training data.

By example, the EPPI-Reviewer systematic review software package uses machine learning to screen and categorize research papers for systematic reviews. Developed by the EPPI-Centre at University College London, the EPPI-Reviewer is a recommender web-based tool originally developed for Cochrane authors to support the development of systematic reviews from study screening through to data collection, analysis and synthesis. It manages references, stores PDF files, and facilitates qualitative and quantitative analyses such as meta-analysis and thematic synthesis. It also contains some new ‘text mining’ technology which is promising to make systematic reviewing more efficient. It works with modern browsers and web-enabled devices, and one can sign up for a free one-month trial before considering the paid version (https://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/eppireviewer-web).

AI tools can also enhance ones understanding of the semantics of scientific literature and recommend relevant papers and highlight key findings in research by mapping relationships between studies using word embeddings and graph-based algorithms. This is typically accomplished on the back of large language models to summarize findings across papers. Semantic Scholar (https://www.semanticscholar.org) is a free AI-powered search and discovery tool that is an evidence synthesis platform that uses a combination of machine learning, natural language processing and machine vision to add a layer of semantic analysis to the traditional methods of citation analysis to extract relevant figures, tables, and entities from papers. It allows you to search across approximately 200 000 000 papers from all fields of science, for free.

2.      Identifying gaps in knowledge

AI can also assist in identifying gaps in human knowledge across different domains of study, from niche fields to broad interdisciplinary research. In doing so it allows researchers to process large amounts of data, detect patterns, and highlight what’s missing.

Various GPTs that are accessible through a paid LLM chatbot service – such as ChatGPT – are useful in accomplishing this. Notably, the Wolfram Alpha GPT allows a researcher to uncover connections between disparate fields by analysing structured data to highlight unexplored correlations.  The VOSviewer is a software tool for constructing and visualizing bibliometric networks and can visualize citation networks to show declining interest in older theories versus emerging clusters. Although not an AI tool per se, the VOSviewer offers text mining functionality like that deployed in AI models that can be used to construct and visualize co-occurrence networks of important terms extracted from a body of scientific literature. The software can be used freely for any purpose (https://www.vosviewer.com/).

Although SU does not have a subscription to it, Scopus AI combines generative artificial intelligence with Scopus’ trusted content and data to help researchers accelerate their research. It also assists in mapping new research areas and finding opportunities for interdisciplinary cooperation. Built in close collaboration with the academic community, it provides a unique window into humanity’s accumulated knowledge through Scopus, the world’s largest multidisciplinary and trusted abstract and citation database.

The key benefit in using these tools is to analyse millions of papers/patents in hours, and to link gaps in one field to solutions in another.

3.      Generating new research hypotheses for testing

Hypothesis generation involves analysing existing data, finding patterns, and suggesting new areas to explore. AI tools work by finding statistical anomalies, under-explored correlations or conflicting results in data and literature. They also merge ideas from disparate fields using embeddings or graph networks and, in the process, they can generate 100+ hypotheses in minutes.

A practical AI tool to assist in such literature-driven hypothesis generation is Elicit (https://elicit.com/), which uses language models to help researchers quickly find relevant papers and summarize critical findings. Instead of sifting through hundreds of articles manually, researchers can rely on Elicit to scan abstracts, identify noteworthy points, and even suggest potential methods for study. Another valuable platform is Scite.ai (https://scite.ai/) which helps users see how an article has been cited – whether supportively, neutrally, or even in contradiction.

Cross-disciplinary tools designed on LLMs such as GPT-4 or Claude can also be prompted to brainstorm hypotheses by combining fields of study by using prompt engineering to merge concepts from unrelated fields.

Summary

While AI isn’t a replacement for human expertise, it’s a powerful ally. By integrating tools like Elicit or Scite into workflows, researchers can tackle complex projects with greater speed and confidence. As these technologies advance, they’ll continue to democratize access to knowledge and push the boundaries of academic inquiry.

AI tools such as Grammarly can also assist in the writing process but that applies to academic work beyond only research environments and is not discussed here separately.

Author: Wouter Klapwijk