How to donate
The EWA Reading Room collects photographic, artistic, and cultural documentation of East African women — from books and exhibition ephemera to oral-poetry transcripts and photographic reproductions. If you hold material that belongs in this collection, here's how to donate.
Once your material is entered into the register, it stays in the collection permanently, unless you personally request its removal.
Important
We can't accept material that hasn't been discussed with us first. Please complete the form below and get in touch before sending anything.
We can only take physical items that arrive in good condition.
Format
Books, exhibition catalogs, monographs, periodicals, zines, broadsheets, letters, field notebooks, promotional material, and photographic prints. Where we can, we keep duplicate reference copies on open access, so two copies are welcome if you have them.
Large-format items or anything needing significant conservation work — tell us in advance so we can talk through the options.
Our preferred long-term formats are TIFF or JPEG for images, PDF/A for documents, WAV or AAC for oral testimony and recorded sound, and MPEG-4 for video. Send by email where size allows, or via WeTransfer, Dropbox, or Google Drive — just make sure any shared link is downloadable on our end.
Process
Complete our contact form below.
We will provide feedback and a provisional division and tier. Together we'll work out which of the four divisions (A–D) fits your material and its access tier — open, appointment, or digital-first.
Complete our Rights & Reproduction Agreement, which records the rights status of your material and the permissions you grant EWA for its care, digitization, and use.
We will share our Item & Cataloging Description Record, which captures the descriptive fields your material is catalogued under.
At the final stage, we will be in touch to confirm the transfer details, including the collection or shipment plan with you.