Specialised Information Service for the African Studies in Germany granted

Frankfurt University Library is most happy to continue its special collection on Africa in the new era of the “Specialised Information Services” funding programme.

In 2014 we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Special Subject Collection “Africa South of the Sahara” funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG). In the last three years the nationwide co-operative acquisition scheme in Germany has been restructered. This december the DFG accepted the proposal to set up a Specialised Information Service for the African Studies from 2016 onwards.

The Specialised Information Service (SIS) will support a broad range of academic disciplines in the humanities, social sciences and cultural studies. Academics working in this field are represented by the German African Studies Association (Vereinigung für Afrikawissenschaften in Deutschland e.V.).

The first main task is to co-ordinate the relevant institutions providing information on African studies in Germany (libraries, archives, research collections, …) in order to develop a sustainable information infrastructure adhering to international professional standards. In close cooperation with the German ASA the project will give an overview about the expertise scattered amongst a multitude of institutions and bring these different knowledge centers together in workshops. The SIS will advise especially smaller departmental libraries e.g. in the fields of Open Access, scientific data and information literacy.

The second main purpose is to acquire research literature published in Africa. Local academic debates and lots of empirical data are published by local publishers in printed books or in academic journals edited by small university departments. The academic community in Germany aims to undertake research on an equal footing with African scholars. Therefore it is necessary to get access to local academic publications published in Africa. Due to the difficult acquisition this literature is not available at every institution in the same scope and in the same quantity. Finally, the SIS helps to balance the unequal presence of African research output in the sciences dominated by the Anglo-American research community.

More information by the DFG:

• Press release (German)
• Funding Programme
• Transfer