Go to African Newspapers Union List
[searchable database]

The Africana Librarians Council (ALC) of the African Studies Association (ASA) and the Cooperative Africana Microform Project (CAMP) of the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) are beginning a two-year project to create an electronic database of holdings information for newspapers (all formats and all languages) published in sub-Saharan Africa.   Initially, this database, the African Newspapers Union List (AFRINUL), which will be created and maintained at CRL, will consolidate holdings information for collections in North America, but will later expand to include holdings in Africa, Europe, and elsewhere.   The Union List will meet the needs of researchers by providing greatly enhanced access to African newspapers.

The Cooperative African Newspapers Project will also, while developing the Union List database, explore issues related to the preservation of this inherently ephemeral and fragile form of publication.  Access to contents through both traditional and new technologies will be investigated.

The project phases include:

• creation of an African Newspapers Union List, a centralized finding aid for African newspapers held in North American libraries and elsewhere;
• preservation of these fragile resources through microfilming of titles existing only on paper; and
• digitization of the content of newspapers, facilitating research on African political, economic, and cultural events.

The two-year first phase of this project will develop the Union List, analyze costs and benefits, and review user responses.  It will provide an opportunity to address any problems arising from the initial implementation and to formulate strategies for expanding the project to include more African newspapers.

The first phase will also include initiatives in the areas of preservation, digitizing, and indexing.  Participants include institutions represented by the membership of the ALC and CAMP, in conjunction with CRL.

Information in AFRINUL will be initially drawn from existing lists and finding aids, primarily "African Newspapers Currently Received by American Libraries" .  This work, first issued as an ALC project in 1975, is presently compiled by Mette Shayne, Northwestern University, and is available via the CRL website.

A related program, hosted by Columbia, links to online newspapers from Africa. See: "Electronic Newspapers of Africa"
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/africa/cuvl/newspapers.html

For More Information:

David L. Easterbrook
Project Director
Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies
Northwestern University
phone (847) 491-4549
fax      (847) 467-1233
email: dleaster at northwestern.edu