Cambridge University Libraries is pleased to announce a new trial for Africa Commons, a project to digitize, disseminate, and discover African cultural materials. Its aim is to enable Africa easily to control, digitize, and disseminate its archival riches—those within Africa and items residing internationally. Africa Commons helps preserve African content and enable African scholars to easily find and access expressions of their heritage in Western collections.
This digital archive boasts three notable modules you can peruse:
- Black South African Magazines: The first and only digital collection of magazines created for Black audiences in Africa from 1937-1973.
- History and Culture: An index, search engine and preservation tool for more than 500,000 openly available books, magazines and other primary sources.
- Southern African Films & Documentaries: Hundreds of African documentaries, oral histories and other films for study and learning.
A fourth module is forthcoming:
- The Hilary Ng’weno Archive; An exclusive collection of full-run magazines, newspapers, and films from the legendary Kenyan journalist.
It also notably has 277 digitised issues of Drum, once the most widely read magazine in Africa, over 100 Villon-produced films, and thousands of images from South Africa.
With nearly 500,000 documents already digitised, this is an unmissable hub of knowledge for any researcher or student with an interest in the continent. Africa Commons has collaborated with over 600 organisations (Universities, Museums, Libraries, and others) to make this possible.
This trial ends on 31 October 2023. Let us know if this has been a relevant tool for your research on this feedback form.
Guest post by Ben Carson, African Studies Library
Electronic Collection Management 