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Africana Librarianship, Book Dealers, Projects & Publishers

Awards, Exhibitions, and News
Bibliographies and Resource Guides
Book Dealers and Publishers
Films and Videos
How to Cite Internet Resources
Library Catalogs and Archives
Online Publications from Research Centers & Universities
Organizations and Conferences
Projects -- Indexes and Digital Archives
Teaching Resources

Awards, Exhibitions, and News



Book Dealers and Publishers
  • NOTE: The American Library Association ran a survey in 2002 of major academic and research libraries to compile a list of     Book and Serial Vendors for Africa and the Middle East. In addition to this list, see the links below. For French language publications on Africa, see especially the following major Paris-based publishers of Africana: L'Harmattan and Karthala below, as well as Maison d'édition africaines. See also, the "cyber-catalogue" of a Paris-based association of francophone African pubishers called Afrilivres and the online boutique of Soumbala.Com.

  • Africa Book Centre (Brighton, UK)
    A major international bookseller for books from and about Africa, as well as an important co-sponsor of African literary events in the UK.

  • Africa South of the Sahara -- Book Dealers and Publishers (Karen Fung, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, California)
    Two very useful lists of web sites & contact information for booksellers and publishers who carry Africana titles.

  • Africa World Press and Red Sea Press (Lawrenceville and Trenton, New Jersey)
    An African-run, multinational publishing house: academic and trade books published in the USA on Africa and the African diaspora.

  • African Books Collective Ltd. (Oxford, UK; GreenNet Design)
    'ABC is a unique organization. It is not a conventional commercial distributor. It was founded in 1989 by 17 African publishers who established and own the company. The publishers established ABC's offices and warehouse in the UK as their exclusive overseas distributor; and the location of the operation reflects the fact that the markets we are accessing are the English-language markets in the UK, Europe, the US and elsewhere. Further publishers have joined since the start of trading in 1990, and the total membership is now 42 publishers from 12 African countries.'
    -- See also: Michigan State University Press--US Distributor for ABC

  • African Publishers Network (APNET) (Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire)
    "The African Publishers Network, established in 1992, brings together national publishers associations and publishing communities to strengthen indigenous publishing throughout Africa. APNET is a pan-African, non-profit making network with a Secretariat in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. APNET now has membership of 47 countries."

  • Afrilivres -- livres d'Afrique et des diasporas (Africultures, Paris, France)
    << ...depuis le 12 novembre 2002, Afrilivres présente tous les titres non-scolaires publiés par les éditeurs d'Afrique francophone regroupés en association >>.

  • Clarke's Bookshop -- Cape Town, South Africa

  • L'Harmattan (Paris)
    L'Harmattan est une majeure maison d'édition dans le domaine des études africaines.

  • Indian Ocean Books (Larry W. Bowman, Storrs, Connecticut)
    A bookseller specializing in books, maps, and prints -- used and antiquarian -- from and about the Indian Ocean region.

  • Karthala (Paris)
    "Les éditions Karthala publient des ouvrages sur l'Afrique et l'ocean Indien, le Monde arabe et l'Islam, la Caraïbe, l'Amérique latine et l'Asie et, plus largement, sur les questions Nord-Sud."

  • Map Sellers on the Internet
  • Maisons D'Edition Africaines (via Lire les femmes ecrivains et les littératures africaines, Dr. Jean-Marie Volet, University of Western Australia)
    A listing of and very brief information about publishing houses in French-speaking West Africa (plus Baobab Books in Zimbabwe) which specialize in publishing African women writers -- fiction and nonfiction.

  • MEABOOKS.COM (Oleg Semikhnenko, Canada)
    A major North American distributor for books from Africa (also, Russia and Poland).

  • Mkuki na Nyota Publishers (Dar es Salaam, Tanzania)
    "Mkuki na Nyota Publishers is an indigenous Book Publishing Company established in 1991, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. With a background of 18 years as the General Manager of the Tanzania Publishing House, Walter Bgoya established Mkuki na Nyota Publishers in response to the general absence of independent scholarly publishing in Tanzania. Concentrating initially on scholarly books and general titles, MnNP have since then developed a diverse list of scholarly titles in the social sciences, fiction, children's books and have recently branched out to publish high quality art books."

  • Mother Tongue Editions (Prof. John Hutchison of Boston University, Prof. Kassim Kone of SUNY--Cortland, New York; via Newbury, Massachusetts)
    • The website features a short list of African language publications---except for one Shona title, all are from West Africa. "MTE is a non-profit publishing organization whose purpose is to facilitate and encourage African language literacy both in Africa and abroad."
    • List of publications (for sale)

  • National Information Services Corporation--NISC (Baltimore, Maryland):
    • Note: This is a commercial site promoting several Africa-related indexes and other databases on CD-ROM discs, some with Web access on a free trial.
    • NISC Home Page
    • Africa-Wide NiPAD

  • New Africa Books (Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa)
    "New Africa Books (Pty) Limited is a new company formed as a result of the merger of David Philip Publishers, Spearhead Press and New Africa Educational Publishing. Prior to this merger, David Philip Publishers and New Africa Education Publishing were separate companies owned by New Africa Media, a subsidiary of New Africa Investments Limited, which owns several radio, newspaper, magazine and television production companies. Spearhead was operating as an imprint of David Philip Publishers."

  • Présence Africaine -- Catalogue, Liens, et Evénements Spéciaux (Paris, France)
    Depuis 1949, cette maison d'édition offrait "un espace dans lequel, romanciers, nouvellistes, conteurs, essayistes, poètes et penseurs du Monde Noir peuvent enfin s'exprimer et voir circuler leurs oeuvres."

  • Nigerian Government Publications, Journals, and Newspapers: Sesan Dipeolu Library & Information Consultants (Lagos, Nigeria)

  • Nouvelles Editions Ivoiriennes--NEI: Catalogue de la Maison d'Edition (Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire)

  • Publishers' Association of South Africa: Writings in Nine Tongues -- Catalogue of Publications: Ndebele, Xhosa, Zulu, Sesotho/Sesotho sa laboa, Setswana, Siswati, Venda, Tsonga. (Green Point, South Africa)
    Zip files/PDF format

  • Red Sea Press (See above: "Africa World Press and Red Sea Press")

  • Soumbala.Com (Paris, France)
    Un boutique en ligne pour les livres rares et les nouveaux titres sur l'Afrique.

  • Spectrum Books, Ltd. (Ibadan, Nigeria)
    Note: many Spectrum titles are sold outside Nigeria by Africa Book Centre and African Books Collective...see above.

  • Tsehai Publishers & Distributors (Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, California)
    Tsehai specializes in publications about Ethiopia and by Ethiopian authors...including reprints of classic works of Ethiopian history.


Organizations and Conferences



Projects -- Indexes and Digital Archives

  • African Activist Archive Project (African Studies Center, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan)
    This website includes a "directory of African activist archives" in the U.S. "[The project] seeks to preserve for history the record of activities of U.S. organizations and individuals that supported African struggles for freedom and had a significant collective impact on U.S. policy during the period 1950-1994."

  • ABBOL--AEquatoria Book Bank On-Line = AEquatoria Bibliothèque de Base On-Line In association with the Centre Aequatoria, Mbandaka, République démocratique du Congo. (Lovenjoel, Belgium)
    'The e-books offered on this site are mainly drawn from other e-book projects, such as the Gutenberg Project.' The editors claim that ABBOL is digitalising and editing its own materials for the Book Bank.
    In late April 2006, the e-library consisted of a short selection of European travellers accounts from the 19th century and older works on the historiography of central Africa, including those on the "Lyanja" epic....in French!! See also, the much longer list of links to other Africa-related electronic texts on the Web.

  • African Online Digital Library: West African Digital Resources Project (Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan)
    A website about a new digital library project (begun in 2000/2001) at Michigan State University, l'Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire, and the West African Research Center in Dakar, Senegal. The site includes thus far: materials relating to West African history and cultures mostly from the private archives of individual scholars: selected photographs, unpublished research papers and conference proceedings, field notes, and short audio files of informants and interviews with scholars.

  • African e-Journals Project (Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan)
    The website offers general information about the on-going project, access to full text archive of 11 African journals, and a searchable directory of African e-journals--with links to websites. "An initiative co-sponsored by the Association of African Universities (AAU), the African Studies Association in the USA, and Michigan State University."
    -- Full text archive: African Journal of Political Science, Glendora, Journal of Social Development in Africa, Transformation, Zambezia, and others
    -- E-Journal Directory

  • ALMA: African Language Materials Archive: A joint project of the West African Research Center (Dakar, Senegal), Columbia University, CAORC--Council of American Overseas Research Centers, and UNESCO. (via AODL--American Overseas Digital Library, a project of the CAORC, Washington, DC)
    • A collection of 33 electronic books in three major languages of West Africa: Wolof, Mandinka, and Pular. The archive was produced as part of a pilot project launched by the West African Research Center in Dakar.
    • See other resources for Wolof, Mandinka, and Pular under "African Language Resources on the Internet" (Compiled by Columbia University Libraries).

  • ALRP: African Language Research Project (Department of English and Modern Languages, University of Maryland-Eastern Shore, Princess Anne, Maryland)
    The site includes information on the project history, African language publications, conference/workshop proceedings, and current progress; plus a project newsletter. "From 1994 to the present the project has published level two and three readers in Yoruba, Hausa, Lingala, Sudanese Arabic, and a forthcoming reader in Igbo. Currently [in 2004], a manuscript is being developed in the Wolof language (Senegal). For the next two years funds are available for readers in Akan and Luganda. These readers are professionally published by Dunwoody Press, a division of McNeil Technologies."

  • Africana Digitization Project: Electronic Facsimile, University of Wisconsin--Madison Libraries
    A pilot project offering free access to searchable online copies of published sources for West African history with a focus on the Atlantic Slave Trade era. The titles include:
    -- Almada, Andre Alvares de, Brief Treatise on the Rivers of Guinea, c. 1594.
    -- Alvares, Manuel, Ethiopia Minor and a Geographical Account of the Province of Sierra Leone.
    -- Barbot's West African Vocabularies of c. 1680.
    -- Fage, J. D., A Guide to Original Sources for Precolonial Western Africa Published in European Languages.
    -- Jesuit Documents on the Guinea of Cape Verde and the Cape Verde Islands, 1585-1617.
    -- Jones, Adam. Raw, medium, well done: a critical review of editorial and quasi-editorial work on pre-1885 European sources for Sub-Saharan Africa, 1960-1986 (1987)
    -- Lovejoy, Paul E. (ed.), Africans in bondage: studies in slavery and the slave trade: essays in honor of Philip D. Curtin ...(1986)

    -- See also: South African Voices below.

  • Afro-Louisiana History and Genealogy 1719-1820 (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and the Center for the Public Domain, Durham, North Carolina)
    An online database--downloadable--to search for African heritage in Louisiana. "The Afro-Louisiana History and Genealogy online search engine was designed to provide the general public free access to valuable historic records. Users can locate individual slaves who lived in Louisiana between the years of 1718 and 1820 through this easy-to-use, free, public database. Find valuable historical data from over 100,000 descriptions of slaves found in documents in Louisiana between 1718 and 1821 by searching identifiers such as gender, racial designation, or plantation location. Users can even search the origin of the slaves brought to Louisiana in the 18th and 19th centuries to work the New World."

  • Aluka -- The Struggle for Freedom in Southern Africa ; African Cultural Sites and Landscapes ; and African Plants (Ithaka, New York, New York and Princeton, New Jersey)
    A website about the project: "Aluka’s principal audience is the higher education and research community, both in Africa and around the world, including colleges, universities, research and policy centres, and cultural institutions. The materials are selected primarily with undergraduate students and their instructors in mind, but the content is also valuable to graduate students and upper-level secondary students." Funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and Stavros S. Niarchos Foundation.

  • Bibliothèque Nationale de France: Gallica Voyages en Afrique (Paris)
  • Die Bildbestand der Deutschen Kolonialgesellschaft in der Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main: Colonial Picture Archive (Frankfurt, Germany)
    • "The project...encompasses safety filming of 50,000-70,000 historical photographs from German colonial history."
    • Suchen = Search

  • Bioline Publications Abstracts, Full Text, and Document Service (Centro Referência Informação Ambiental, Brazil ; Electronic Publishing Trust for Development, UK)
    A selection of African studies journals in the medical, food, and biological sciences from Nigeria, Senegal, Kenya, Uganda, and South Africa. View the abstracts without charge; view online full texts from selected journals; and receive full texts for others with paid registration.

  • Center for Research Libraries -- Cooperative Africana Microform Project: CAMP Guides to Collections (Chicago, Illinois)
    A selection of online guides to collections held by CAMP.

  • Center for Research Libraries--Cooperative Africana Microform Project: Slavery and Manumission Manuscripts of Timbuktu (Chicago, Illinois)
    "The Center for Research Libraries and the Cooperative Africana Microform Project (CAMP) present a collection of 19th century manuscripts relating to slavery and manumission in Timbuktu. The collection of 206 manuscripts from the Bibliothèque Commémorative Mama Haidara in Timbuktu, Mali, were loaned to John Hunwick, Professor of History and Religion, Northwestern University, with the hope that the manuscripts would receive conservation treatment and be digitized in order to make them accessible via the Web. The materials, in Arabic, provide documentation on Africans in slavery in Muslim societies."

  • Cyberthèses: publication et diffusion en ligne des thèses (Lyons, France ; Montréal, Canada) -- Le site miroir
  • DATAD: Database of African Theses and Dissertations = La base de donnée sur les thèses et mémoires africaines. (Association of African Universities, Accra, Ghana)
  • DISA: Digital Innovation South Africa (University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa)
    • Originally called "Digital Imaging Project of South Africa": The site includes general information about the project and a searchable archive of publications. "The aim of the DISA project ["DISA 1"]...is to make accessible to scholars and researchers world-wide, South African material of high socio-political interest which would otherwise be difficult to locate and use."
      NOTE: More recently, DISA changed its name [under "DISA 2"] and is now a partner of Aluka, a project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. As a result, registration and login is required to access the archive and searching by publication title can be accomplished --with a slow connection-- under the "Advanced Search" mode. Until June 30, 2008, US residents can also view much of the same content through "Aluka" via JSTOR on a trial basis and with future institutional subscriptions.
    • "DISA: insights of an African model for digital library development" by Dale Peters and Michele Pickover (2001) D-Lib magazine. (Online) ; Vol. 7, no. 11 (November 2001).

  • Réseau Sénégalais "Droit, Ethique, Santé" (via Refer; Dakar, Sénégal)
  • e-Granary Digital Library (WiderNet Project, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa)
    "Through a process of garnering permissions, copying Web sites, and delivering them to intranet Web servers INSIDE our partner institutions in developing countries, we deliver millions of multimedia documents that can be instantly accessed by patrons over their local area networks at no cost."

  • ELDIS: Electronic Development and Environment Information System (Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK)
    • An indexing service provided by IDS. Papers are selected from all over the Internet based on topics in African, Asian, and Latin American studies. Documents are produced by research institutes or international organizations. Some documents are electronic versions of printed works, while others are full online documents--with citations and bibliographies. The Africa country guides provide links to Web sites, as well. Note: Some documents listed in the search are only accessible at the IDS library, University of Sussex.
    • ELDIS Home Page -- USE "Pick a topic" ; "search page" ; or, "issues page".
    • Africa country guides to Internet resources

  • Electronic journal of Africana bibliography. (Online). -- Iowa City, Iowa: University of Iowa Libraries, 1996-.
    "EJAB is a refereed online journal of bibliographies on any aspect of Africa, its peoples, their homes, cities, towns, districts, states, countries, regions, including social, economic sustainable development, creative literature, the arts, and the Diaspora."

  • Eritrean Print and Oral Culture (Lwam Ghebrehariat & Joyce Tam, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada)
    A digital archive of book covers and selected excerpts from publications in the field of the Eritrean literature, culture, and history, with some online folktales in English and Tigrinya, as well as sound recordings of tales and proverbs.

  • H-Africa Reviews (H-Net, Humanities & Social Sciences OnLine, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan)
    An archive of reviews of Africana books, electronic resources, exhibitions, and films since March 1995.

  • Home Pages and/or Tables of Contents of Selected African Studies Journals (H-Africa, Humanities-Net, Michigan State University, East Lansing)

  • Indiana University Libraries -- Projects (Bloomington, Indiana)
    • Liberian Collections Project (Archives of Traditional Music, IUL)
      This website provides information about the project, searchable inventory lists for several collections, and related information. 'The collections include historical and ethnographic documents, newspapers, government publications, books, journals, dissertations, maps, slides, negatives, photographs, audio & video tapes, etc.'
    • Nuer Field Notes -- Eleanor Vandevort (Marion Francis-Wilson et al., Digital Library Program, IUL)
      The digitized book, A leopard tamed (1968), field notes, grammar, and word lists of a woman missionary in southern Sudan.

  • Indexkenya.org: Kenya Indexing Project (Nairobi, Kenya)
    This free database provides only an index to topics covered in newspapers published in the period 1994 to 2001. There are no links to online archives, but there is a document delivery option. "Indexkenya.org is an online index of articles published in Nairobi newspapers. The focus of the articles indexed includes culture, law/governance, reproductive health, and other topics about which information is difficult to obtain."

  • International Documentation Network on the Great African Lakes Region = Réseau documentaire international sur la région des Grands Lacs africains (Geneva, Switzerland)
    Information about research and ordering information for documents on CD-ROM. "In the past few years, the region of the Great African Lakes has regulary appeared in the front line of current events. In spite of substantial literature dealing with the subject, a vast number of documents which are necessary for a thorough understanding of the developments in that particular region have not been made public. Since January 1996 the Network has undertaken the challenge of ensuring a wider dissemination of this so-called "grey literature". A scientific committee (fifteen scholars specialized in that area) has been gathering relevant and reliable documentation concerning the Great Lakes area. Being a non-partisan network, we attempt to ensure a fair reflection of diverse points of view. This information is compiled on a CD-ROM, and is revised several times a year."

  • International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications: African Journals On-Line (Oxford, UK)
    A tables-of-contents service, with an option for full text services through paid subscription. There is also a photocopy or document delivery service for individual journal articles of some titles. The following journals are covered: Afrique et développement=Africa Development; African Crop Science Journal; African Journal of Political Science; Bulletin of the Chemical Society of Ethiopia; CODESRIA Bulletin, Discovery and Innovation; Ghana Journal of Agricultural Sciences; Insect Science and its Applications; SINET:Ethiopian Journal of Science; and, Zimbabwe Veterinary Journal; and others.

  • Medina Baay Historical and Social Research Committee Archive Project (Dr. Joseph Hill, University of Rochester, New York)
    Click on "Search and Browse Archive" for directions on required log-in. The website includes excerpts from the working catalog, photographs, and other background information about Medina Baay and the committee's work. "This is a database of interviews, meeting transcripts, photos, recordings, and other information collected by members of the Medina Baay Historical and Social Research Committee in Kawlax (Kaolack), Senegal. The organization was founded and led by Joseph Hill who created this site. Medina Baay...is the headquarters of the "Ibrahimiyyah" branch of the Tijaniyyah Sufi order and was founded by Ibrahim Ñas, usually called Baay Ñas in Wolof." ***Note: Netscape or Firefox are the best browsers to access this site.

  • National Universities Commission of Nigeria: Nigerian Virtual Library (Abuja, Nigeria)
    The website includes selected Nigerian publications in wide variety of disciplines, links to Nigerian newspapers, and information on Nigerian universities. "The National Universities Commission is a parastatal of the Federal Ministry of Education charged with the responsibilities of orderly development of universities in Nigeria."

  • Nordic Documentation on the Liberation Struggle in Southern Africa (Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, Uppsala, Sweden)
    The web site features general information about various projects, conference reports, and a searchable catalog of the archives on southern Africa held in Scandinavia.

  • Northwestern University, Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies -- Special Collections and Digital Projects (Evanston, Illinois)
  • oozebap: África and Islam -- Biblioteca Virtual (oozebap.org, Barcelona, Spain)
    This "virtual library" offers a selection of online books and book excerpts available on the Internet
    -- in English, French, Arabic, Spanish, or Catalan, and links to online journals and websites related to African and Islamic societies. "oozebap ...aims to study in depth and to promote contemporary african and islamic societies. Among our activities since 2005: edition and publication of books; an online public library (with papers, books and journals in english, french, arab, spanish, portuguese and catalan); monthly articles and interviews about geopolitics and contemporary culture in Africa (in english, spanish, french and catalan)..."

  • The Project for Information Access and Connectivity (Nairobi, Kenya)
    "The Project for Information Access and Connectivity (PIAC), which is sponsored by the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, was established in 1998." The project, which included a pilot of the DATAD program and several surveys, was completed in 2002.

  • SAHO: South African History Online (Pretoria, South Africa)
    This site offers online publications, photo and image exhibitions, brief historical summaries and biographies, and classroom suggestions (under construction). "SAHO is a peoples' history and internet-based project that consists of an open, non-partisan website linked to a schools' and community based outreach programme, which sets to build a comprehensive database on South African history and arts."

  • South African Voices University of Wisconsin Digital Collections. (Madison, Wisconsin)
    "South African Voices is a three-volume work that includes: A Long Time Passed, Created in Olden Times, and The Way We Travelled: Oral History and Poetry. This work consists of electronic audio files and transcribed written texts of oral traditions and histories, poetry, folktales, and stories in Xhosa, Zulu, and Siswati collected, transcribed, and edited by Professor Harold Scheub.

  • Stanford University Libraries: Maps of Africa Online Humanities Digital Information Service Luna Insight Service (Stanford, California)
    "The maps --578 images-- from the Norwich Collection of Maps of Africa and Its Islands as well as the maps from the Antiquarian Maps Collection relating to Africa can be viewed online."

  • Sudan Open Archive (Rift Valley Institute, London, UK & Nairobi, Kenya)
    "The first phase of the Archive involved the digitisation of technical reports on aid and development from Operation Lifeline Sudan (1989-2005). A library of contemporary and historical li