David Michalski
Research Support Services
Social and Cultural Studies Librarian
530-752-2086
African and African American Studies
Subject Specific Databases
Black Studies Center brings together historical and current material for research projects on African-Americans, the wider African Diaspora, and Africa. It is comprised of several cross-searchable component databases including the Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, The International Index to Black Periodicals, and Newspapers, including the full text backfile of the Afro-American newspaper, The Chicago Defender from 1910-1975.
Africa-Wide Information (formerly Africa Wide NiPAD) combines databases to form a multidisciplinary aggregation of sources offering unique and extensive coverage of all facets of Africa and African studies. Includes over 2.4 million citations and abstracts dating back to the 16th century.The advanced search allows the research to search all the collected datasets or focus on particular sets.
CODESRIA, in Dakar Senegal, is an independent Pan-African research organization with a primary focus on the social sciences, broadly defined. It is the pioneer African social research organization and an important non-governmental research center for the production of social knowledge. This site provides indexes and some access to the groups publications: including journals (Such as [t]The African Sociological Review[/t], [t]African Zamani[/t], [t]African Media Review[/t] and others, and single author and edited monographs.) Some full text.
ASA (African Studies Abstracts) Online succeeds the printed abstracts journal of the African Studies Centre Leiden, published since 1968, first as Documentatieblad, then as African Studies Abstracts (1994-2002). It provides a quarterly overview of journal articles and edited works on Africa in the field of the social sciences and the humanities available in the African Studies Centre library in Leiden, NL.
This extensive annotated bibliography explores multidisciplinary literature that is “diverse, fast moving, controversial, and scattered among unfamiliar sources, we have asked leading scholars to identify the most significant themes and areas of study in their fields, recommend the best sources for exploring them, and discuss these works conceptual and empirical significance to provide a series of guided studies through the diverse approaches to a wide array of complex subjects.
The MSU African Studies Center (ASC) is one of nine Title VI National Resource Centers on Africa designated by the U.S. Department of Education. This site provides access to directories, research guides, and digital documentary projects on African Studies. Subjects include Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Rural Development, Education, Health, Medicine, and Science, Business, and Government, Social Development and Political Empowerment, Internet and Technology, and projects relating to Arts, History, and Language.
The African e-Journals Project: Journal Archive offers full text articles from eleven social science and humanities journals published in Africa. Mainly historic, coverage varies. A project of Michigan State University’s African Studies department.
In February 2008 this English-language database had indexed over 60,000 articles from over 500 English-language and multilingual journals and periodicals that specialize in African Studies or consistently cover the African continent.
The Index Islamicus database indexes literature on Islam, the Middle East and the Muslim world. Material cited in the Index Islamicus includes not only work written about the Middle East, but also about the other main Muslim areas of Asia and Africa, plus Muslim minorities elsewhere. Over 3,000 journals are monitored for inclusion in the database, together with conference proceedings, monographs, multi-authored works and book reviews. Journals and books are indexed down to the article and chapter level.
Historical and Primary Sources
Full-text of seven 19th Century African American Newspapers: Freedom’s Journal, The Colored American (Weekly Advocate), The North Star, The National Era, Provincial Freeman, Frederick Douglass Paper, The Christian Recorder. Coverage varies by newspaper.
Full text of sixty-nine historic newspapers from different African cities. Coverage differs per title. Dates range and represents 1800-1920s. This selection is a subsection of Readex’s World Newspaper archive. See link below.
The MSU African Studies Center (ASC) is one of nine Title VI National Resource Centers on Africa designated by the U.S. Department of Education. This site provides access to directories, research guides, and digital documentary projects on African Studies. Subjects include Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Rural Development, Education, Health, Medicine, and Science, Business, and Government, Social Development and Political Empowerment, Internet and Technology, and projects relating to Arts, History, and Language.
The Heinemann’s African Writers Series was founded by Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka in 1962. It features the key texts of modern African literature, and a record of post-colonialism in culture. This database includes the full text of collection’s over 230 volumes of fiction, poetry, drama and non-fictional prose from African writers. Titles can be browsed or searched.
19th Century US Newspapers (NCNP) provides access to over 28 million articles of primary source newspaper content from the 19th-century, featuring full-text content and images from newspapers from a range of urban and rural regions throughout the U.S. The collection encompasses the entire 19th century, with an emphasis on such topics as the American Civil War, African-American culture and history,Western migration and the Antebellum-era among other subjects. Newspapers from all 19th-century U.S. states and territories are included.
This image archive features numerous maps, images, and photographs depicting the slave trade and African culture in the Americas. Most are drawn from sources between the 17th and 19th centuries.
Set of primary sources from African Americans actively involved in the movement to end slavery in the United States between 1830 and 1865.
Over 15,000 items are available for searching.
Black Drama contains the full text of hundreds of plays by playwrights from North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries. Also contains theatrical production information.
This is a full-text collection of documents from the “United Kingdom’s Colonial, Dominion and Foreign Offices’ confidential correspondence relating to Africa between 1834 and 1966.”
The Cooperative Africana Microform Project (CAMP), founded in 1963, is 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 and to make these materials in microform available to researchers.
A Current Bibliography on African Affairs (CBA) is compiled as a quarterly guide for study and research in the field of African Studies and related subjects. It presents a thoughtful selection of references to a considerable diversity of materials, not only in subject and geographical selection, but also to point the user toward an increasing range of resources focusing on a sociotechnical approach to African affairs.
Coverage: 1968-
EJAB is a refereed online journal of bibliographies created by the late John Howell, University of Iowa Libraries. Coverage includes any aspect of Africa, its peoples, their homes, cities, towns, districts, states, countries, regions, including social, economic sustainable development, creative literature, the arts, and the Diaspora.
Includes the full image of articles published in the Chicago Defender from 1910 to 1975. The Chicago Defender was the most influential African-American newspaper of the 20th century. With the majority of its readership outside the Chicago region, it served as the de facto national black newspaper in the U.S. You can browse individual issues by clicking Publications at the top of the screen, or search by keyword(s), author(s), article title, date ranges, and more. Includes illustrations and advertisements.
One of the nine African American newspapers available through ProQuest. This weekly paper was founded in 1928 with a merging of the Cleveland Call and the Cleveland Post, and is still published today. Keep in mind, this database does not include the full run of the newspaper.
Provides primary source documentation on Black history, politics, culture, and the arts. Full text search of articles, classified ads, display advertisements, bylines, headlines, obituaries and more. Cross-searchable with all other ProQuest titles.
The Los Angeles Sentinel is the flagship newspaper of the local African-American community. The database provides coverage from 1934 to 2005.
One of the oldest African American newspapers of the United States, Amsterdam News was founded in New York in 1909 and is still published today. Keep in mind that this database does not contain the full run of the title.
Provides primary source documentation on Black history, politics, culture, and the arts. Full text search of articles, classified ads, display advertisements, bylines, headlines, obituaries and more. Cross-searchable with all other ProQuest titles.