← Umlando South Africa

Editorial Method

How Umlando selects, catalogues, and contextualises digitised primary sources on South African history — our approach to bibliographic records, period classification, and perspective labelling.

Five Content Layers

Every source in Umlando is documented across five content layers:

1. Bibliographic Record — complete citation with author, title, year, language, and HathiTrust link
2. Historical Period — classification into one of fourteen defined periods spanning pre-colonial times to Union
3. Perspective Label — whose viewpoint the source primarily represents
4. Topical Tags — thematic keywords enabling cross-period discovery
5. Contextual Summary — a scholarly synopsis situating the source within the historiography