Highlights

1.) Cultural Bridge

In Edéa, Cameroon, the mutual history of Cameroon and Germany was commemorated at a massive, 100-year-old steel structured bridge that the German colonial rulers once had built. The artist Pascale Marthine Tayou together with his team draped huge wooden figures standing on steles about it, did an intercultural production of Goethe’s Faust – another perennial favourite – and set up an installation based on the indigenous Cameroon writing system, finishing “Les flâneurs d’Edéa” (The Ramblers of Edéa).

2.) Literature Forum

The Literature Forum in Kenya brings together upcoming women writers and literary critics to share and discuss stories, poems and current literary trends with the aim of enhancing their creativity. The forum provides a space to listen to the voices of established and budding female writers – voices of women with a passion for literary adventure. “AMKA – Space for Women’s Creativity” and the Goethe-Institut organise monthly readings in the library of the Goethe-Institut every last Saturday of the month. Participation in the forum is open to both men and women.

3.) Writing about Africa

This brilliant internet feature allows the discovery of new German literature representing diverse images of Africa and is hosted by the Goethe-Institut South Africa. Selected books by German speaking authors who deal with Africa in all its many facets are reviewed and biographical information on the authors are given. The selection of books covers the following genres: Novels and stories, travel journals, journalistic reports and critical essays about Africa, biographies and autobiographies, youth literature and stories for children. The website also gives an overview on the most actively German publishing housed engaged with Africa.

4.) Funding of Translations

In a recent blog article translations as examples of German-African cultural cooperation to preserve the cultural heritage of the Ewe people in present-day Togo and Ghana was portrayed. E.g., The Goethe Institut in Accra, Ghana, provided organisational support and contacts to Germany’s Federal Foreign Office which contributed a substantial amount of money to the translation of Jakob Spieth: The Ewe people : a study of the Ewe people in German Togo. – Accra : Sub-Saharan Publishers, 2011.

• Photographs by Goethe-Institut Kamerun

cover detail of Michael Poliza (& friends): South Africa, Kempen: teNeues 2010, F 89.262.82

I have chosen some examples from our Africa collection at Frankfurt University Library to demonstrate that

• to handle a book is more than just grabbing and open it,
• experiencing the surface feel can be joyful and fulfilling,
• books are physical objects with much more quality characteristics than one would expect,
• books can be art.

The following amateurish pictures were done by myself and are biased – they only should make you curious. Haptics cannot be captured in a photograph at all. So do come and enjoy our physical books.

1. Animal skins

Tania Blixen: Jenseits von Afrika, Zürich: Manesse 2010, 89.081.39

The grey embossed paper cover, the large size and the heavy weight of the pictorial book by the well known photographer Michael Poliza (and others like Chris Fallows, Thomas P. Peschak, Mandla Mnyakama) on South Africa fit very well to the cover picture of the book jacket. However, this special paper has also been used in other colours, evoking perhaps the skin of an antelope or more generally the wild life of Africa.

The Swiss edition of Tania/Karen Blixen’s “Out of Africa” by Manesse in 2010 was printed and bound by „GCP Media GmbH, Pößneck”. In the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung a reviewer statet:

„Manchen Büchern sollte man unter den Rock gucken, um sie als Gesamtkunstwerk würdigen zu können. Die neue deutsche Ausgabe des Klassikers ‘Jenseits von Afrika’, dessen Autorin bei uns als Tania Blixen bekannt ist, trägt unter dem Schutzumschlag einen Einband mit edler, kakaofarbener Antilopenfell-Anmutung. Und auf dem Deckel steht, in Versalien, nichts als das Wort „Afrika“ – der Name des Kontinents, den just im Erscheinungsjahr ein sportliches Großereignis ins Zentrum der medialen Aufmerksamkeit rückt.“
Kristina Maidt-Zinke: Der ganze Erdteil war ihr Handspiegel. Tania Blixens Hauptwerk „Jenseits von Afrika“ in einer nuancierteren Neuübersetzung aus dem Dänischen, in: Süddeutsche Zeitung 12.07.2010, Literatur, Seite 14.

In short she suggests “to gaze under the skirt” of this book to value end experience the book as a masterpiece of art.

The animals and the nature of Africa are the most prominent in public interest and contribute to the romantic stereotype attached to the continent. Another example is the cover of Michael Poliza: Classic Africa, Kempen: teNeues 2010, F 89 346 85, showing a collection of artistic duotone prints.

“Simply holding this book, lifting it, looking at it, feeling the cover; it is clear this book is special. It is the rare book that begs to be opened. [...] The cover is something very special. The material is some kind of synthetic material with an animal fur texture.”

Daniel G. Lebryk: Gorgeous, Amazon review on Classic Africa (Hardcover), 17.12.2010.

2. Things fall apart

Chinua Achebe: Things fall apart: illustrated, A Special 50th Anniversary Edition, Ibadan: Bookcraft 2008, F 88.860.82

A beautiful example from Nigeria is a special illustrated edition of the groundbreaking novel “Things fall apart” by Chinua Achebe – in German known under the title “Okonkwo oder Das Alte stürzt”. The buckram cover with blind embossings of the title and the author’s name contrasts to the glued in boards illustration with glossy foil embossing. The cover design was done by Bola Kujore and Bankole Olayebi. While the thread sewing of the binding is of low quality the printing of the illustrations and colours inside the book are of impressive high quality.

3. Three-dimensional book jackets

Embossing and especially foil embossing makes also the touching of dust jackets an experience. While the main purpose might be to support marketing they transport also messages from the book content.

Book jacket details of Louise Dean: The idea of love, London: Fig Tree 2008, 88.578.92.

The romantic and the dangerous aspects of love are expressed visually in an impressive style. The publisher advertises the novel as follows:

“When foreign families converge on Provence for a better life, it seems as if sunshine, drinking and partying will create an idyllic little community of like-minded sorts. But compelled to venture far from this Eden to Africa, the lives of two of the couples are changed irrevocably when each begins to doubt themselves, who they are and why they’re there.“

Another brilliant example is the dust jacket of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie novel “Half of a yellow sun” (London: Fourth Estate 2006, 13.443.25), where the embossing and colouring fits very well to the fence in the background.

 4. “Crumpled” paper

Somehow contrasting the content (“Kenya. Portrait of a Country – Heritage and Diversity”) and the editors (“The Central Bank of Kenya”) the binding and cover design fits at least to the quality of this coffee-table book. It was published in 2008 by Transafrica Press, Nairobi, HB 25 CGb 6/45, and printed in The Netherlands. The visual impression of the plain cover is that of crumpled paper. This clever design is also worth of fingering.

5. Modernistic metal clip binding

Hauke Olaf Nagel: Trommler in der Nacht. Reportagen aus Mali, Kiel: Ed. Satimbe 2005, F88.149.81

This hard folder seems to come from an archive, decorated with police seals and visa stamps.

The content is a travel account to Mali – with wonderful coloured pictures inside. The binding with the metal clips (“Metallspangenbindung”) works only with thin books.

The limited edition (500) with a ribbon was made by “Schmidt und Weber Konzept-Design”, Kiel, and was printed by A. C. Ehlers, Kiel.

At least 20 EUR per sold book go to a charity working with school children in Dogonland. („Dank auch im Namen der Schulkinder im Dogonland/Mali, denen der Erlös aus dem Verkauf dieses Bildbandes zugute kommt.“, S.59,).

6. Straw huts, straw mats and bast books

Bermann: Zarzura, 1938, S 17/2991.

Another travel account from the Austrian Richard A. Bermann alias Arnold Höllriegel is equally worth to be holded in the hand:

Richard A. Bermann: Zarzura, die Oase der kleinen Vögel. Die Geschichte einer Expedition in die Libysche Wüste, Zürich: Füssli 1938, S 17/2991.

The bast binding was made by local people in Madagascar (not in the region of the travel route):

„Der Bast für den Einband wurde durch Eingeborene Madagaskars eigens für dieses Buch mit der Hand gewoben.“

The cover was made by Ernst Buß, the book printed „in Switzerland by Art. Institute Orell Füßli, Zurich” with 77 photographs of Hans Casparius.

7. Suede binding

This full leather binding roughened over time but still gives a cosy feeling. The red type font in art nouveau style on the cover does not fit to the fonts used inside the book, so it seems to be a later binding. The inside cover is made of oiled paper. Finally, the all edges gilt make this book very special:

Max Schoeller: Mitteilungen über meine Reise nach Äquatorial-Ost-Afrika und Uganda 1896 – 1897, Vol. 1, Berlin: Reimer 1901, Sq 17/531.

It was printed by Otto Elsner, Berlin, and the dedication reads:

„Seiner Durchlaucht dem Fürsten Christian Kraft zu Hohenlohe-Oehringen Herzog von Ujest in dankbarster Verehrung gewidmet.“

The travel account contains also the hunting diary of Schoeller with “Gehörntafeln” (drawings of antlers), e.g. on p. 23:

„Februar 8. Erlegt: 1 Zebra, 1 Hyäne. Gefangen: 1 Schakal im Eisen. Angeschossen: 1 Hyäne. Ein krankes Zebra von 2 Hyänen verfolgt und niedergerissen. Schoss Zebra und eine Hyäne. Zweite Hyäne angeschossen.“

8. Cotton wool

Kolonial-Wirtschaftliches Komitee, Berlin, Unter den Linden 43

The African colonies were exposed to European economic exploitation. One important commodity  was cotton cultivated on plantations. An interesting account with photographs of the plantations in Togo is

Karl Supf: Deutsche Kolonial-Baumwolle : Berichte über die Entwicklung der Baumwollkultur 1900 – 1908, Berlin: Mittler 1908, S 17/8405 .

The full cloth binding by „W. Kämmerer Buchbinderei Berlin“ might also be cotton. The embossing makes the plant touchable.

The appendix presents real cotton pads and swatches:

“Tafel I. Deutsch-koloniale Rohbaumwolle zum Vergleich mit z.B. Amerkanischer und Ägyptischer
Tafel II. Baumwoll-Gespinste aus Togo-Baumwolle
Tafel III-IV. Baumwoll-Gewebe aus Togo-Baumwolle
Tafel V. Baumwoll-Wirkwaren aus Togo-Baumwolle“

Conclusion

Now it is up to you to make your own discoveries of soft, thick, sticky, cold, icy, smooth, elegant or astonishing book covers. Books are more than containers of information, books are art objects of beauty and books are sometimes objects of performance art, like carrying an elephant folio or if your partner throws the book in a marital conflict. Many books together, e.g. on a shelf, make you feel good, cosy and perhaps intellectual. The coffee-table books are not only good for entertainment but also as a status symbol. Finally, one can hide a pocket bottle behind a rack full of books or inside specially prepared books.

Now compare all this to an Ebook-reader. Do you pet a Kindle? Do you put many Kindles on a shelf? Do you press tree leaves with your kids by piling all your electronic devices?

Experience the book, tell us of your touchy touching experiences, comment and give us hints on your favorite sensual event in a library.

If you are interested in the book as physical object do read

David Pearson: Books as history. The importance of books beyond their texts, London: The British Library 2011.

It is also a nice christmas present.

South Africa's human spirit : an oral memoir / of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Corporate, S.l.: SABC 2000, 5 CDs, AVM 12/439

By the way all the pictures of this blog post and some more can be found on flickr. And sometimes not only books have interesting “covers”.

I wish you all a merry christmas and a happy new year

Dr. Hartmut Bergenthum

Credits

• Anne-Marie Kasper for discovering Zarzura and bringing Achebes “Things fall apart” from good old Lagos Island to Germany
• Hans Eckert for his expertise and some technical terms and the hint to Pearson
• the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft), who allows us to buy all this impressive printed books

Johannesburg: 061-0712-18, 018-0120-30, PA10_061

The integration of the Colonial Picture Archive into the cross search of ilissAfrica makes available much more visual material. While this source material is mainly of interest for academic historians and social anthropologists, all other specialists might profit at least in the way, that searching with ilissAfrica gets more entertaining. Laborious bibliographic research is made a bit more appealing and the visual presentation of the pictures fits very well to the new world of social media, where sharing photographs is crucial.

Image Collection of the “German Colonial Society”

Photographer E. Hecker in Ovamboland, A_0ii_6874

The “German Colonial Society” was founded in 1887. For their propaganda activities members collected photographs, which were used to illustrate public lectures in Germany. Already, in the 1880s lectures were sometimes accompanied by privately owned glass slides belonging to the guest speaker. In 1891, this induced the Society to form their own image collection – beginning with about 100 large format black and white slides. Bequests from members and friends of the society as well as the transfer of originals or duplicates from the, now largely destroyed, official, commercial, and private collections rapidly increased the stock. Due to National Socialist enforcement, the society was integrated, together with its collections, organs, and members, with the German “Reichskolonialbund” (dissolved in 1943).

Characteristics

Sammlung Julius Hermann Schott (1888-1956) von Lieselotte Gräfin Bülow von Dennewitz, Tanzania, 1910-1912

There are pictures of landscapes, plants, agriculture, chase, animals, houses, cities, streets, schools, missions, trade, transport, police, administration, culture and people. Some seem to have a documentary character, some explicit the curiosity and fascination of the exotic. Appropriation, mastery, and self-reassurement of the claimed superior European culture is visible in many pictures (like the one on the left). While the Europeans often are known by name, the local people remain nameless. In spite of all this, the collection of images offers invaluable visual source material from African countries, even if the pictures were taken and used in a prejudiced colonial context.

Search examples

With the combined search in ilissAfrica it is possible to look for literature (books, articles, electronic dissertations and other online documents), for websites and for historical images on a given subject. If one wants to know more on a certain ethnic group, one will find not only the academic literature and websites on the group but also images of the people. The following searches give examples of the potential of this cross search:

• “Johannesburg” or “Lome“, with views of streets and buildings
• African “railways” and the connected process of track construction, the workers, etc.
• “Music OR Musik“, with pictures of the instruments
• “Herero” as an ethnic group
• “Lettow-Vorbeck” for additional portraits of to this person
• “Trade“
• “Police“
• “Kilimanjaro“

Usage

With the “All”-search field also specialities like comments on the material (“Schichtfehler”) are searchable. In the “Advanced search” it is possible to look for “Persons” only, that are the photographers, e.g. Jaeger, and the historical persons shown on the pictures, like Hermann von Wissmann in Tanzania.  Photo-Number and CD-Code are the connections to the archival copies and can be searched via the “Number”-field. “Title” searches in “text on the photograph” and “text on the cover” of the picture. The title shown in the list of results is not the usual “title”-field: it is an artificial combination of the region and subject indexation. The “Keyword”-index comprises three thesauruses (subject, region and ethnic group) and the free keywords. Right and left truncation works with “*”.

Mombasa

The terms of use, e.g. to print pictures in publications, can be found in here.

If you recognise names of people shown on the pictures, who are not given in the detailed description or if you can identify objects or places, please click on the “Report an Error”-link and send us an e-mail.

With the help of the German Research Foundation (DFG) the image archive was microfilmed for long-term preservation and digitized for comfortable use. The image archive is freely available via ilissAfrica or via the somehow outdated German interface. The English thesaurus has been realised by means of a GNARP Project. The integration in ilissAfrica with its English and French user interfaces increases the worldwide accessibility of the picture archive and makes the search much more comfortable. This is mainly due to the applied search engine technology and the expertise of our computer specialist, Jashar Rexhepi.

The African Writers Series (AWS) of Heinemann Educational Books was founded in 1962 with the publication of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (originally published in 1958) as AWS No. 1, and with Achebe himself as Founding Editor. Achebe remained Series Editor until 1972, by which time the series included 100 titles. “The list of names of editorial board members drawn from different academic disciplines reads like a ‘who’s who’ in African literary studies.” (Clarke 2003, 165) The initial aim was to produce a paperback series featuring writing by African authors (initially, this was limited to black African authors) that would be affordable for a general African readership. Most of the works in the Series come from English-speaking countries in Western, Southern and Eastern Africa, but there are also a number of volumes translated from French, Portuguese, Zulu, Swahili, Acoli, Sesotho, Afrikaans, Luganda and Arabic (compare the About section of the database).

Africa Writes Back

As African nations won independence, writers like Achebe began to forge distinctive national literatures throughout the continent. Contrary to the colonialist perceptions they want to demonstrate that Africa had a history and a culture in its own right (Okyerefo 2001). „The series gives agency to the African because the novels, short stories, plays, poetry, and autobiographies are written by Africans about Africans, telling their own stories in their own voices for both Africans and non-Africans.“ (Clarke 2003, 168) The series not only launched the national but also triggered a pan-african literature discourse. Programmatically, one of the series’ editor, James Currey, called his memoir “Africa Writes Back. The African Writers Series & the launch of African literature” (Currey 2008).  Authors from East Africa now could be read in West Africa, and works by Chinua Achebe and Ngugi wa Thiong’o entered the world market. The English translations of Mongo Beti’s „Le Pauvre Christ de Bomba“ or Sembène Ousmane’s „Le Docker Noir“ were sold much more often than the French editions.

The series editor James Currey reported extensively about the history of the AWS and his personal achievements:

“My connections with South African writers in exile as well as with writers surviving in that country made books available internationally that could not have appeared in South Africa. Later, David Philip, the Cape Town publisher, found a legal loophole which with Heinemann’s co-operation enabled writers such as Alex la Guma to be reprinted in South Africa; this evaded the banned list operated by South African customs at the ports of entry.” (Curry 2003, 580; see also Curry 2008, 183)

However, in the beginnings it was a male Africa. In the first 100 titles only one female author features: Nigeria’s Flora Nwapa (Fraser/Bejjit 2005).

Online advantages & peculiarities

The full-text format allows new approaches to the old literature:

“Researchers can run searches across the whole corpus of texts to find instances of specific words or phrases: one can search for key terms of African nationalist discourse such as ‘Azania’ or ‘black consciousness’, for terms associated with politics and class distinctions such as ‘socialism’, ‘democracy’, ‘middle class’, ‘accent’ or ‘elite’, or simply for references to specific tribes or languages, such as ‘Yoruba’, ‘Xhosa’ or ‘Tswana’.” (Kibble 2005, 66)

The AWS online edition may be useful for studies

• on the self-conception of an African writer and intellectual
• on English language and literature and the establishment of a canon of great literature
• on gender and on cultural contacts, e.g. in the work of Amma Darko (Beyond the Horizon, 1995) with Germany
• on postcolonialism, e.g. with the question on how colonial structures survived after independence
• on Romance literature due to the translations from the Portuguese and French (the search can be restricted to translations or the original language of origin)
• on history, e.g. with the autobiographies of Kenneth Kaundas and Olusegun Obasanjo
• on the construction of ethnicity, e.g. of the Ibo and
• on the history of publishing in Africa.

Useful links for users of the Chadwyck-Healey Literature Collections like Case Studies, Sample Searches, or How to Cite Texts from the Chadwyck-Healey Literature Collections.

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Editorial Policy

Each volume is reproduced in full, including accompanying text by the author, introductions, notes, glossaries and other editorial matter, and illustrations. Each volume, including anthologies and collections, can be browsed in its entirety via a Table of Contents. All authors are indexed by gender, nationality and dates of birth/death, and all texts by details of first publication (date, place, publisher and language) and details of first publication in the AWS (date and AWS series number). These index fields are all searchable from the Search page, and are displayed in the bibliographic details for each volume. The names of translators and anthology editors, and alternate name forms of authors, are also searchable via the Author field. Original pagination is preserved, and the page layout of poems is reproduced as accurately as possible. Scanned images are used as a supplement to the keyed text for illustrations, figures and unusual page layouts. Typographic characters that cannot be displayed using a web-safe extended Latin character set have been mapped to standard-character equivalents, and scanned images have been provided for cross-referencing (see Editorial Policy).

The Librarians view

Since 2005 the first three attempts to get the National License funding for the African Writers Series were unsuccessful, luckily in 2011 things changed. It took seven years to make this important corpus available to all researchers in Germany.

This corpus is one of the seldom undertakings where literature which is still under copyright protection is digitized:

“The digitisation of the AWS is a substantial undertaking [...]. Almost all of the texts included in the AWS are in copyright, which means that the first task has been to identify a rights holder for each title and negotiate a license for electronic reproduction of the text.” (Kibble 2005, 66)

An overview about the printed books gives Frankfurt University’s library catalogue; further studies on the African Writers Series can be accessed via ilissAfrica.

AWS supplements the German National License „Corpus de la littérature francophone de l’Afrique noire“.

Now, please do explore the wealth of the online edition of the African Writers Series!

References:

• Clarke, Becky: The African Writers Series: celebrating forty years of publishing distinction, in: Research in African Literatures 34 (2003), 2, pp. 163-174, online.
  
• Currey, James: Africa writes back : the African writers series & the launch of African Literature, Oxford : Currey, 2008.
• Currey, James: Chinua Achebe, the African Writers Series and the Establishment of African Literature, in: African Affairs 102 (2003), 409, pp. 575-587, online.
• Fraser, Robert / Nourdin Bejjit: THE TIGER THAT POUNCED: THE AFRICAN WRITERS SERIES (1962–2003) AND THE ONLINE READER, 2005, Introductory Essay, http://collections.chadwyck.co.uk/infoCentre/products/aws_hist.jsp.
• Information Centre : About African Writers Series: http://collections.chadwyck.co.uk/infoCentre/products/about_ilc.jsp
• Kaiza, David: But Why, Father? looking back on the legacy of the African Writers Series, fifty years on, in: Transition 106 (2011), pp. B88-B105.
• Kibble, Matt: The African Writers Series reborn: an electronic edition, in: Wasafiri 46 (2005), pp. 66-68.
• Okyerefo, Michael Perry Kweku: The Cultural Crisis of Sub-Saharan Africa as Depicted in the African Writers’ Series. A Sociological Perspective, Frankfurt am Main: Lang 2001.

Note to our German users:

Der Zugang ist bisher nur für alle Nationallizenz-Teilnehmer im CMS freigeschaltet, die sich schon irgenwann einmal für irgendeine ProQuest Nationallizenz angemeldet haben. Alle übrigen werden noch vor Weihnachten freigeschaltet. Dann erfolgt auch eine Bekanntmachung auf www.nationallizenzen.de.

Highlights of the Africa section of BASE:

1. African Journals Online (AJOL) to promote access to African research. It is the largest and pre-eminent collection of peer-reviewed, African-published scholarly journals, some Open Access.
2. 30 institutional repositories from African universities, like WIReDSpace, UWC Research Repository, UNISA Institutional Repository, UPSpace, UJ DigiSpace, SUNScholar Research Repository, Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar: Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire Culturels Africains (Senegal), Covenant University Repository (Ota, Nigeria) or Addis Ababa University Electronic Thesis and Dissertations
3. Major French resources like
   • Gallica – bibliothèque numérique de la Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) – with access e.g. to the accounts, photographs, maps etc. of explorers of Africa
   • Cairn – more than 150 journals in the Humanities and Social Sciences, e.g. Afrique contemporaine, Cahiers d’études africaines, Outre-Terre
   • Revues.org – Revues.org is the oldest collection of France’s open access online journals for social sciences (over 60).
   • Persée: Portail de revues scientifiques en sciences humaines et sociales. Free access to bibliographical data and to some extent to full text articles from scientific journals in the social and human sciences in France
   • HAL – Hyper Article en Ligne and Ressources documentaires. multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research papers, whether they are published or not, and for PhD dissertation
   • Inst. de recherche pour le développement (IRD). – Publications of the scientists of the IRD (former Orstom).
4. More institutional repositories and digitization databases of LSE, SOAS, Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Michigan, Indiana, Harvard and Brigham Young universities
5. Finally the RePEc:Research Papers in Economics and the Directory of Open Access Journals:Articles bring in many more results from very diverse journals also on Africa

Why BASE?

Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE) is one of the world’s most voluminous search engines especially for academic open access web resources. BASE is operated by Bielefeld University Library. As the open access movement grows and prospers, more and more repository servers come into being which use the “Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting” (OAI-PMH) for providing their contents. BASE collects, normalizes, and indexes these data. One can access the full texts of about 75% of the indexed documents. The Index is continuously enhanced by integrating further OAI sources as well as local sources. BASE is a registered OAI service provider and contributed to the European project “Digital Repository Infrastructure Vision for European Research” (DRIVER).

Some remarks on selection and usage:

• The selection was done by choosing specific data provider. There is no further sub-selection like a subject specification on African Studies. So on the one hand one might find results on the natural sciences which you would not expect in ilissAfrica. On the other hand you will find many documents on Africa e.g. in journals which would not be indexed in libraries specializing on African Studies normally.
• While many repositories deliver keywords and abstracts, only some do support the keyword search.
• The advanced search for the date range does not work with BASE
• OR and NOT in the advanced search do work with BASE.
• Some provider like Persee and Revues.org do not deliver the source information (name of the journal, volume etc.).

Search examples

• Dogon
• Khoisan
• Youth in Sierra Leone – only full text, all document types
• Mission Congo – AJOl articles, UNISA thesis, Persee, CAIRN articles, HAL documents, digital missionary accounts, pictures and maps e.g. via Gallica
• Material on the “Kingdom of Kongo” – if one includes the French search term (royaume congo) the results of a title search  lead to journal articles and books in the different library catalogues and databases and via BASE there are found an ORSTOM (IRD) paper, some articles in Persee and some maps digitized by the Bibliotheque Nationale de France and the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. See further Gallica-Maps of the Kingdom of Kongo.
• dakar photo*
• South African postcards, e.g. historic postcards digitized by the University of Pretoria
• online chapters of one book available in the libraries
• Bambara (not groundnut)

Conclusion

The integration of BASE into ilissAfrica’s cross search is a big step forward: one search index provides access to a multitude of institutional repositories and Open Access databases. BASE is a brilliant example of the potential of the linked web via standardized interfaces. And it helps to increase the visibility of academic knowledge produced and stored in the South.

______________________________________________________________________

List of the OAI-repositories included:

Database of Articles from African academic journals

• AJOL – African Journals Online

Institutional Repositories in Africa

• University of Zimbabwe Institutional Repository
• University of Zululand: Manakin Repository
• University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg: WITS Institutional Repository on DSpace (WIReDSpace)
• University of the Western Cap: UWC Research Repository
• University of South Africa: UNISA Institutional Repository
• University of Pretoria Electronic Theses and Dissertations (UPeTD)
• University of KwaZulu-Natal: ResearchSpace at UKZN
• Univ. of the Western Cape: Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Library
• Univ. of Pretoria: UPSpace
• The Univ. of Johannesburg: UJ DigiSpace
• Stellenbosch University: SUNScholar Research Repository
• Stellenbosch University: SUNeTD (Electronic Theses and Dissertations)
• Rhodes Univ., South Africa: Rhodes eResearch Repository
• North-West Univ., South Africa
• Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar, Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire Culturels Africains, Senegal
• Covenant University Repository (Ota, Nigeria)
• Polytechnic of Namibia: Ounongo Repository
• Addis Ababa University Electronic Thesis and Dissertations: AAU-ETD

French repositories

• Revues.org: Centre pour l’édition électronique ouverte
• Persée: Portail de revues scientifiques en sciences humaines et sociales
• Inst. de recherche pour le développement (IRD): Ressources documentaires
• Gallica – bibliothèque numérique de la Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF)
• Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe: HAL – Hyper Article en Ligne
• Cairn

Further institutional repositories

The London School of Economics and Political Science: LSE Research Online; Univ. College London: UCL Eprints; School of Oriental and African Studies, Univ. of London: SOAS Research Online;
International Development Research Centre: IDRC Digital Library; International Development Research Centre (IDRC): Publication Archive; Univ. of Michigan: Hathi Trust Digital Library (Michigan Digitization Project); Univ. of Michigan Library: Digital Library Production Service; University of Texas at Austin: Digital Repository; Brigham Young Univ. (BYU): Digital ; Collections; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: UIUC Digitized Books; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Digital Services and Development Unit (DSD); University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Univ. of Illinois Archives ; Indiana Univ.: Digital Library of the Commons (DLC); Harvard; RePEc: Research Papers in Economics ; Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles ; Search4Dev – Digital Publications by Dutch development organizations

Virtual Kenya

Virtual Kenya is designed to provide improved access to spatial data and mapping technology to allow more Kenyans to use and interact with spatial data in their educational and professional pursuits. This will be accomplished by providing online access to publicly available spatial data sets and by offering users a number of interactive tools and learning resources for exploring these data. Users will be able to view, download, publish, share, and comment on various map-based products. The ultimate goal of Virtual Kenya is to promote increased data sharing and spatial analysis for better decision-making, development planning and education in Kenya, while at the same time demonstrating the potential and use of web-based spatial planning tools.

Initially, the platform will feature maps and information based on Nature’s Benefits in Kenya: An Atlas of Ecosystems and Human Well-Being (“the Atlas”), originally published jointly in 2007 by the World Resources Institute together with the Department of Resource Surveys and Remote Sensing, the Central Bureau of Statistics, and the International Livestock Research Institute. The Atlas overlays geo-referenced statistical information on human well-being with spatial data on ecosystems and their services to yield a picture of how land, people, and prosperity are related in Kenya. Since its publication, data and charts from the Atlas have been downloaded regularly from the WRI website, and its online Geographic Information System (GIS) data sets are being used to produce new maps.

• interactive maps with multiple layers (e.g. Tourism, Biodiversiy, Water Points)
• Virtual Kenya Tours are interactive Google Earth tours , e.g. on The Geography of Kenya or Wildlife and Tourism Tour.

Virtual Kenya was implemented by Upande Ltd. Upande focuses on providing services which address problems related to location, direction and destination, with a strong focus on online mapping and Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Upande is also involved in developing the ALRMP baseline prototype application for the Ministry of Northern Kenya and Arid Lands. The company also worked for the African Union Inter African Bureau for Animal Resources (AU-IBAR) to create a single-stop bank of information on animal resources in Africa with a web map for the dissemination of knowledge on animal health, animal production and livestock marketing and trade. Also not online is the E-commerce web map page for SORALO (South Rift Land Owners Association) and ATAGRA (Amboseli Tsavo Group Ranch Association), Group Ranch Associations based in the Maasai Mara and Amboseli ecosystems to boost tourism outside of the conventional parks by making information on hotspots searchable to the world. Upande also offers consultancy in Google Map, OpenStreetMap (OSM), OpenLayers, Mapserver, Geoserver and Geonetworks.

Map Kibera

Map Kibera has produced the first complete free and open map of Kibera. In November 2009, local young people used OpenStreetMap techniques. This included surveying with GPS, and digitization of satellite imagery and paper based annotation with Walking Papers. In April 2010, Map Kibera started two media and local news reporting groups formed to elaborate on information in Kibera. Kibera News Network uses handheld Flip video cameras to record local news and stories and edit videos to post on Youtube and share in the community. To support Map Kibera Erica Hagen and Mikel Maron founded the GroundTruth Initiaive. They aim on using digital story-telling, open data and geographic information for greater influence and representation for marginalized communities.

Voice of Kibera

Voice of Kibera uses Ushahidi software to map local stories and reports onto the Kibera map, and serve as a local information hub. This citizen reporting project is an initiative of Map Kibera. Voice of Kibera aims to give collective global voice to Kibera residents by aggregating local citizen reports, Kibera community media and other relevant news and information.

Kenya Open Data

The goal of opendata.go.ke is to make core government development, demographic, statistical and expenditure data available in a useful digital format for researchers, policymakers, ICT developers and the general public. Includes e.g. high quality national census data, government expenditure, parliamentary proceedings and public service locations. There are maps to start exploring, interactive charts and tables for a deeper understanding, and raw data for technical users to build their own apps and analyses.

RCMRD

The Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD) was established in Nairobi, Kenya, under the auspices of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and the African Union. It is an inter-governmental organization and currently has 18 contracting Member States in the Eastern and Southern Africa Regions. Its vision is to be a centre of excellence in the provision of Geo-Information and Information Technology applications in Africa and beyond.

Further virtual maps

• AfricaMap is housed at the Center for Geographic Analysis at Harvard University
• websites with individual maps or with collections of maps in ilissAfrica

Ushahidi-Updates

Many new Ushahidi-sites have been started since my first Blog post from March 2011 “On Display: Crowdsourcing with Ushahidi – the social and political relevance of the interactive web“:

Liberia:

• Peace Building Office of the Republic of Liberia.
• Liberia’s Early-Warning and Response Network (LERN)
• Liberia Elections 2011 – live Ushahidi election monitoring website
• compare also Ushahidi Liberia as a non-profit tech company that customise free and open source software for information collection, visualization and interactive mapping in Liberia.

Benin:

• Violence Against Children project – Plan Benin uses Ushahidi to map reports of violence against children in Benin. Children, youth and even adults can use SMS to send in reports on violence against children. The goal is to both collect information about the forms and occurrences of violence as well as to strengthen local and national capacity in participating countries to respond to violence against children. It is hoped that the information collected can also serve to shape programs and budgets dedicated to ending this harmful practice.

Nigeria:

• Lagos Traffic - Monitoring Traffic in Lagos, Nigeria
• 2011 election incident report system

Zimbabwe:

• The National Association of NGOs in Zimbabwe (NANGO) has launched a social service delivery campaign in Harare for residents to speak on problems they are facing in their neighborhood.

Zambia:

• BantuWatch – platform that allows citizens and civil society to monitor and report incidences around the electoral process in 2011.

South Africa:

• Petrol reports in South Africa

Egypt:

• HARASSmap – a system in Egypt for reporting incidences of sexual harassment via SMS messaging.

Morocco:

• Moroccans are participating in election monitoring on Marsad.ma (Marsad, in Arabic, means Observatory).

Please add more innovative sites with spatial data as comments on this article!

• PART 5: Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe
• PART 4: Sudan, South Africa
• PART 3: Mozambique, Senegal
• PART 2: Kenya, Malawi
• PART 1: Botswana, Ethiopia and Ghana

The series is co-authored by Iryna Kuchma, Open Access Programme manager, EIFL and EIFL-OA country coordinators. In 2004 there were 9 DSpace instances in Africa,  in 2011 already 46.

Some results in short:

• Botswana: University of Botswana Research, Innovation and Scholarship Archive (UBRISA, http://ubrisa.ub.bw/)
• Ethiopia: Addis Ababa University (http://etd.aau.edu.et/dspace/), International Livestock Research Institute (http://www.ilri.org/), and the Economic Commission for Africa (http://www.uneca.org/).
• Ghana: Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) institutional repository http://dspace.knust.edu.gh:8080/jspui/
• Mozambique: SABER (http://www.saber.ac.mz/)
• Senegal:  Biens Culturels Africains (http://bca.ucad.sn/jspui/) of the Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire Cheikh Anta Diop de l’Université.
• Uganda: Makerere University Library institutional repository called Uganda Scholarly Digital Library (USDL, http://dspace.mak.ac.ug/).
• Zimbabwe: University of Zimbabwe institutional repository (http://ir.uz.ac.zw/jspui/).
• Sudan: The first Sudanese Institutional Repository was released on October 10, 2011 and is now available at http://oascir.uofk.edu/.
• South Africa: University of Pretoria (http://repository.up.ac.za/, http://upetd.up.ac.za/UPeTD.htm) and Stellenbosch University (SUNScholar Repository, http://scholar.sun.ac.za/).

See also Kenya Open Data (http://opendata.go.ke/) for greater government transparency, however, still not open access in Kenya:

Institutions that have implemented IRs but are still on Local Area Network are as follows: University of Nairobi (108 items); Kenyatta University (Past Papers); College of Insurance, KMFRI (Advanced stage – 400 items), Kabarak (Advanced stage – 3000 items), Agha Khan University (80 Items), Marist International (55 items), Moi University (Advanced stage), KCA (103 items), ICIPE (21 Items), Inoorero, KEMRI and KEMU.

Thanks to all authors and to EIFL for their updates!

BULAC houses collections covering all the non-occidental languages and civilizations. It is a collaboration of eight partners, which have consigned their document collections to the library. Concerning Africa the

• La Bibliothèque interuniversitaire des langues orientales (BIULO)
• Le Centre d’études africaines (CEAF)

have to be mentioned (see their catalogue, e.g. their Swahili texts). BULAC strives to be a vital resource for researchers for the African studies. We wish our colleagues good luck in integrating the different collections and making the new premises an inspiring place.

• The study online (French and Spanish versions are also available)

Here is my personal summary of pp. 40-56 covering sub-Saharan Africa:

• Kulesz is very critical on projects like Worldreader or One Laptop Per Child because they do not take into account the particular conditions of the local context. Among others they do not offer content in local languages and a business model designed for local creators is missing (pp.43-45).
• The POD option is discussed with two examples of South Africa: Paperight (Electric Book Works) is a platform that promises to transform any computer with a printer and internet connection – e.g. in the local photocopying centre – into an on-demand store. Another independent South African publisher, Jacana Media, thinks about the Espresso Book Machine, to allow them to reduce distribution costs and replace the prevailing business model (p. 46).
  In the Book Fair discussion Bridget Impey from Jacana was present and elaborated on this idea – she also reported of the big companies of the North trying to get the African content, but she stresses that the delay in digital publishing in Africa has the advantage of having the possibility to think very carefully about how and to whom the content should be given.
• The study introduces the leading online stores in Afric like Kalahari or Exclus1ve Books (p.47).
• AJOL and Human Sciences Research Council Press (HSRC) are presented as noteworthy cases under the headline “digital repositories” (p.48,49).
• Finally, another actor “that is perhaps the real protagonist of future electronic publishing in Africa: the mobile phone” is tackled (together with M-Pesa). The study then describes activities to use the existing cellular network to distribute works of fiction. (p.49-52).
• Let us see if print on demand will represent a key step forward in the future (p. 53).
• One of the mentioned problems is the conversion of backlists to digital format, which meens a hugh investment (p.54).
• Concerning expensive software – like Adobes InDesign – open source solutions might offer a way, however: “It must be stated that only two of the publishers interviewed from sub-Saharan Africa declared themselves familiar with open source solutions.” (p. 55)

The result of the study in short:

“Based on the cases studied we can outline a number of
future trends:
1.    The mobile phone network will continue to be fertile terrain for new
experiments in book publishing or promotion, given that Internet
penetration will certainly take many years to reach the levels of other
regions; in the field of cell phones we will probably witness the exploration
of business models that do not even exist in the US or Europe.
2.    Print on demand will have a greater presence.
3.    The training of traditional publishers will be a decisive factor that
might accelerate change. The key will lie in the ability of African professionals
to exploit the potential of digital technology without falling
into formulas for “implanting” technologies inconsistent with the local
reality which – like a deus ex machina –, not only do not help but
may be a considerable waste of time and resources.” (p.56)

Another recommendation on the subject is the blog post “Les téléphones mobiles et l’édition au Burkina Faso – Entretien avec Jean-Claude Naba Par Octavio Kulesz” , 04 October 2011.

Notable people who have worked in libraries or as librarians (p.121):

“Christopher Okigbo, the Nigerian poet, was acting librarian at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka, where he helped to found the African Authors Association. He was killed while fighting as a soldier during the Biafran war.”

Unusual things that happened at libraries (p.111):

“The National Institute of Studies and Research Library in the capital of Guinea-Bissau was turned into a military garrison by soldiers in 1998. But first they had to destroy several thousand books to make way for military equipment and sleeping quarters.”

Libraries that have suffered devastating fires or natural disasters (pp.107):

“Fourah Bay College Library in Free Town, Sierra Leone, [...] was obliterated during the civil war of the early 1990s. It has since been rebuilt.”

And there is a list on the oldest university libraries in Africa (p. 83) – third is Monrovia University Library, Liberia, 1851. And the oldest public library in Africa (p.34.) was Luanda Municipal Library in Angola, founded in 1873 by the Portuguese colonial government. The two oldest national libraries in Africa “are the National Library of South Africa, Cape Town branch, founded 1818, and the National Library of Tunisia, Tunis, founded 1845.” (p.13).

And finally, what do you think: Which is the oldest existing bookstore in Africa (p.195)? Its Juta Bookshop, Cape Town, South Africa, founded in 1923.

Source: Godfrey Oswald: Library World Records, 2nd ed., Jefferson, NC, 2009.