12 June 2023

African archives and their collections are hard to find and hard to access. Finding aids are scarce, and few items are digitized. That puts the materials at risk. Outside of Africa, such materials are scattered across thousands of collections with different indexing and user interfaces. They’re hard to find and difficult to search; they can’t easily be deployed for learning and research. Africa Commons is a project to digitize, disseminate, and discover African cultural materials. Aim is to enable Africa easily to control, digitize, and disseminate its archival riches—those within Africa and items residing internationally.

The library of the African Studies Centre has trial access to the Africa Commons database from 5 June to 17 July. The trial contains access to 3 databases:

• History and Culture: government documents, newspapers, letters, photographs, books and more
• Black South African Magazines: digitalised archives of magazines created for Black audiences in Africa from 1937-1973
• Southern African Films and Documentaries: streaming access to hundreds of South-African documentaires, newsreels, interviews and propaganda movies

Ga naar Africa Commons (access only within the university campus)