African History: Primary Sources

Africa Focus brings together, in digital form, two categories of primary and secondary resources: research and teaching materials collected by University of Wisconsin faculty and staff; and unique or valuable items related to these fields held by the University of Wisconsin Libraries. This collection contains more than 3000 slides, 500 photographs, and 50 hours of sounds from forty-five different countries. It is hoped that the search features of the collection will be a convenient aid to scholarship, study, and teaching of these disciplines. (from the website)

The African Studies Collection brings together primary and secondary resources; research and teaching materials created by University of Wisconsin faculty and staff; and unique or valuable items related to this field held by the University of Wisconsin Libraries. Selected by librarians, scholars, and other subject specialists along a wide range of criteria, this collection includes published materials as well as archival documents. The items were digitized from a variety of formats including books, manuscripts, sound recordings, photographs, maps, and other resources. (from the website)

The African Online Digital Library (AODL) is a portal to multimedia collections about Africa. MATRIX, working in cooperation with the African Studies Center at Michigan State University, is partnering with universities and cultural heritage organizations in Africa to build this resource. Plans are underway to add digital tools in order to enable scholars to work with and add to these materials. (from the website)

A living database with new materials added every day, featuring prints, photographs, maps, manuscripts, streaming video, and more, drawn from the NYPL's extensive digital collections. (from the website)

The Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division of the Schomburg Center collects, preserves, and makes available for research purposes rare, unique, and primary materials that document the history and culture of people of African descent throughout the world, with a concentration on the Americas and the Caribbean. (from the website)

During the second half of the 19th century numerous societies arose concerned with caring for German emigrants, and the dissemination of colonial ideas. The Colonial Library consists of the libraries of several such colonial societies, the most important of which was the "German Colonial Society" (Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft, DKG). For their propaganda activities its members collected not only books and journals, but also more than 50,000 photographs, which were used to illustrate their publicity lectures in Germany. (from the website)

The International Mission Photography Archive offers historical images from Protestant and Catholic missionary collections in Britain, Norway, Germany, France, Switzerland, and the United States. The photographs, which range in time from the middle of the nineteenth to the middle of the twentieth century, offer a visual record of missionary activities and experiences in Africa, China, Madagascar, India, Papua-New Guinea, and the Caribbean. (from the website)

Livingstone Online is a digital museum and library that allows users to encounter the written and visual legacy of the famous Victorian explorer David Livingstone (1813-73). The site draws on recent scholarship and international collaboration to restore one of the British Empire's most iconic figures to the many global contexts in which he worked, traveled, and is remembered. (from the website)

The Programme's aim is to contribute to the preservation of archival material that is in danger of destruction, neglect or physical deterioration world-wide. The program provides grants to enable successful applicants to locate relevant endangered archival collections, to arrange their transfer to a suitable local archival home where possible, to create digital copies of the material and to deposit the copies with local institutions and the British Library. (from the website)

Explore incredible photographs spanning over 100 years of African history, from the 1860s onwards, taken from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office photographic collection (CO 1069). The full collection can be seen on Flickr, where you can add comments and tags. (from the website)

AGSL Digital Photo Archive - Africa presents a selection of images from the extensive photographic holdings of the American Geographical Society (AGS) Library. The negatives, and accompanying photos and photography logs, are housed at the American Geographical Society Library. The coverage of this digital collection will expand as more photos are added to the site. (from the website)

The Cooperative Africana Materials Project (CAMP) was founded in 1963 as a joint effort by research libraries throughout the world and the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) to promote the preservation of publications and archives concerning the nearly fifty nations of Sub-Saharan Africa. CAMP acquires and preserves materials in microform and digital formats. CAMP collects newspapers, journals, government publications, personal and corporate archives, and the personal papers of scholars and government leaders. CAMP's materials are in many African and European languages, including Swahili, Portuguese, French, Zulu, Xhosa, English, and German. (from the website)

Part of the World Newspaper Archive, more than 70 newspapers published between 1800 and 1922 in Sub-Saharan Africa offer an unrivaled viewpoint into a time of drastic change. A wide range of colonial era viewpoints is chronicled in titles from Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, Zimbabwe and other locales. (from the website)

The African and Middle Eastern Division (AMED) was created in 1978 as part of a general Library of Congress reorganization. For AMED it combined three sections -- African, Hebraic, and Near East, which cover 77 countries and regions from Southern Africa to the Maghreb and from the Middle East to Central Asia. (from the website)

For Africa south of the Sahara, the focal point of the Library's reference and bibliographic service is the African Section, one of three units of the African and Middle Eastern Division. For both historical and contemporary research studies, the Library's collection of Africana (material published in or relating to Africa) are substantial, including sources in every major field of study in the social sciences and in the humanities. Holdings include invaluable primary source documents, facsimiles, and secondary sources, in diverse formats. (from the website)

Features 32 manuscripts from the Mamma Haidara Commemorative Library and the Library of Cheick Zayni Baye of Boujbeha, both in Timbuktu, Mali. The manuscripts presented online are displayed in their entirety and are an exemplary grouping that showcase the wide variety of subjects covered by the written traditions of Timbuktu, Mali, and West Africa. There are special presentations of maps, photographs, and other information about the Mamma Haidara Commemorative Library. (from the website)

The African Section of the Library of Congress’ African and Middle Eastern Division has amassed a unique collection of more than 2000 historical photographic postcards documenting an important visual record of Africa and its people during the historically intensive years of European colonialism, from 1895 to 1960. (from the website)

The web archive of the Crisis in Darfur, Sudan, preserves documentation of the early phase of this humanitarian crisis (2003- ) for future historians with web sites of key organizations, a sampling of news reports, and the responses of government, international organizations and the general public in the U.S. and worldwide. (from the website)

This collection of websites represents emerging expressionism by Egyptian political parties and movements, along with blogs and news media sites of the time. These sites may be considered a form of virtual ephemera, appearing prior to the advent of popular social media channels. (from the website)

Timbuktu, Mali, is the legendary city founded as a commercial center in West Africa nine hundred years ago. Dating from the 16th to the 18th centuries, the ancient manuscripts presented in this exhibition cover every aspect of human endeavor and are indicative of the high level of civilization attained by West Africans during the Middle Ages.