African Studies: Selected Web Resources

Penn Library resources

African Studies at Penn

News sites

Comprehensive

Government

What's Happening at the Penn Library

• Penn Library - Hot News (general)
• New Books Plus at the Penn Library - African Studies (current month's additions)
• Contacts at the Penn Library
  • Purchase recommendations and collection information
  • Research and instructional services
• Penn Library Web Databases - African Studies (many require Penn Library patron ID and barcode number for access)
  • African Studies Abstracts (aka African Studies Centre Catalogue (Leiden) - shortcut
  • eHRAF Collection of Ethnography - shortcut
  • Bibliography of Africana Periodical Literature Database (aka Bullwinkle) - shortcut
• Penn Library Web E-Journals - African Studies (many require Penn Library patron ID and barcode number for access)
  • African Affairs / Royal African Society - recent issues only
  • Africa Today - recent issues only
  • Journal of Modern African Studies - recent issues - backfile
  • Research in African Literatures - recent issues only
  • Review of African Political Economy - recent issues only
• Digital history books: Africa (Penn Library eBooks Project)
• Penn Library - Africa videos (brief list)
• Penn Library Microforms Collections - African Studies
• CAMP Resources
  As a member of CAMP (Cooperative Africana Microform Project), the Penn Library has access to CRL's CAMP-acquired or -authorized "microform copies of unique, scarce, rare and/or unusually bulky and expensive research material" and of "deteriorating printed and mansucript materials of scholarly value".
  • CRL Catalog, Center for Research Libraries
    CAMP items are identified in the CRL Catalog by the location "CAMP". Request these items through a Penn Library Interlibrary Loan Office
  • CRL Foreign Newspapers
    Identify microfilm holdings of CRL's 850-plus CAMP-acquired African newspapers by specifying "CAMP" as Project search criteria. The Penn Library can borrow CAMP-acquired titles through interlibrary loan.
• Pennsylvania African Studies Consortium Bibliographic Resources
• Penn Library - Library of Congress Office, Nairobi Cooperative Acquisitions Program

African Studies at Penn

• African Studies Center - University of Pennsylvania
  • Penn dissertations on Africa, 1990 through present
• Pennsylvania African Studies Consortium - Penn, Bryn Mawr College, Haverford College, Swarthmore College
• Consortium faculty
• Penn Language Center - University of Pennsylvania
• African Languages at Penn - African Studies Center, University of Pennsylvania

News Resources (Some restricted to Penn Students, Faculty, and Staff)

Use these specialized resources for African news in addition to more general e-news resources. For library holdings of African newspapers, see CAMP resources.

• Africa Confidential (biweekly)
• Africa Research Bulletin: Economic, Financial and Technical Series (monthly)
• Africa Research Bulletin: Political, Social and Cultural Series (monthly)

These periodicals provide brief summaries with analysis of current affairs in Africa. Van Pelt Library holds print-format backfiles.

• ClariNet e.News
  Usenet news services whose sources include Agence France Presse, Associated Press, and UPI newswires. Penn provides for a two week archive of news items.
  • clari.world.africa.eastern: Sudan through Tanzania
  • clari.world.africa.northwestern: Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and the Saharan countries
  • clari.world.africa.south_africa: South Africa
  • clari.world.africa.southern: Angola, Zambia, and nations southward
  • clari.world.africa.western: Gulf of Guinea states, Congo (Kinshasa), Congo (Brazzaville)
• allAfrica.com
  Searchable access to bulletins from PANA, the Panafrican News Agency, formerly overseen by the OAU, and Africa-based news services.
• AfricaOnline.com
  News gathered through regional affiliates as well as major newswires.
• ANB-BIA: African News Bulletin - Bulletin d'Information Africaine
  Weekly news summaries. Greatest strength is its online backfile from January 1996, alas, not searchable.
• World News Connection
  Fulltext translations and English-language open-source news and information gathered from 1995 to the present by FBIS, the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, from newspapers, radio and television broadcasts, and internet sites. Documents are generally available within 48-72 hours from time of original publication or broadcast. Search on "Sub-Saharan Africa" as a "Region" to retrieve documents transcribed or translated from African news sources; search on a city name as "Source" words to retrieve documents from that city's media. Searching on a country name as "Title" words retrieves documents about that country. WNC's predecessor, FBIS (1974-1996), is held on microfiche at Van Pelt Library's Microtext Center.

Comprehensive Web sites in African Studies

These sites provide excellent and up-to-date access to internet resources, conveniently arranged by subject.

• African Studies WWW (U. Penn)
  "A Million in a Month", now up to a million and a half hits. The largest collection of web sites on Africa. Host of the web sites for many organizations located in Africa.
• Africa South of the Sahara: Selected Internet Resources
  Produced by Karen Fung, at Stanford University's Hoover Library, initially for the Electronic Technology Group, African Studies Association.
• African Studies Internet Resources
  The World-Wide Web Virtual Library's African Studies page, produced by Joe Caruso, Columbia University.
• Afrique francophone
  Produced by Thomas Spear, Lehman College, CUNY.
• Online African Language Dictionaries, from A Web of On-line Dictionaries III, produced by Robert Beard, Bucknell University.
  This site collects links to dictionaries worldwide, including many African languages (under "Niger-Congo Languages" and other headings). Includes three Penn-related resources for Mawu and Yemba (Dschang).
• The Electronic African Bookworm: a Web Navigator. Hans Zell Publishing Consultants.
  "Some of the best Internet sites on Africa, African and development studies, and on African publishing and the book trade", including libraries in Africa and libraries specializing in Africa.

Government Resources

• United Nations
  • Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), United Nations
    
  • AccessUN, 1966-present. Readex/NewsBank.
    Identifies UN documents and publications. Documents held by the Penn Library as part of Van Pelt Reference's UN Documents microform collection are filed by UN Document Number for the indicated Readex Year; the Penn Library is also a selective UN depository and acquires some other UN publications. Search for ECA documents and publications using this UN Document Number: e/eca* Note, however, that much ECA information is provided through attachments to other, more general documents.
  • International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (Arusha, Tanzania)
• African Union = Union Africaine
• Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA)
• Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)
• World Bank: Sub-Saharan Africa
  • Country data: African Development Indicators
• African Development Bank
• U.S. Government Resources
  • Bureau of African Affairs, U.S. Department of State
    Core documents, current policy statements. Background information includes commercial guides to individual countries.
  • Africa Data Dissemination Service. U.S. Geological Survey
    Satellite imagery data and digital mapping data (in ArcINFO export, *.e00, format) for regions and countries.
  • USAID in Africa
    In addition to providing information on US development activities in Africa, the "Publications" page provides web bibliographies for development issues.

• Library Strengths in Official [British] Documents: selected sources for Africa. Green Library Reference Department, Stanford University Library.
  A truly wonderful piece of work describing an hideously complicated documents system. The Penn Library owns much of the material described: for more information, see British Government Publications, a Van Pelt Library special bibliography.

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