Monthly Archives: February 2014
Happy blog birthday, African Studies Library!
Now we are two! Our second blog anniversary was yesterday, so we feel that we can congratulate ourselves today. What’s our most popular blog post? The UNESCO General History of Africa post has received 300% more views than the next most popular page on this site. It’s a great resource, is a free, full text, e-book […]
LibraryBox 2.0
More on the successfully Kickstarted LibraryBox project releasing as v. 2.0 (public beta) in March 2014. LibraryBox is designed to enable the distribution of digital information to areas with little or no Internet access, even off the grid. It does so using open source software and very inexpensive hardware, allowing the distribution of LibraryBox hardware at […]
World interactive forest map
Enjoy exploring using this Google Earth based interactive map of world forest losses (and gains) from the Global Forest Watch. The website (currently in beta mode) includes tutorials, details on how the data are collected, and a gallery of stories (and photos) to illustrate many situations across the globe. There is also a country based arrangement, though […]
Kongo-Atlantic Dialogues
The 2014 Gwendolen M. Carter Conference, “Kongo-Atlantic Dialogues” will be held this coming Friday and Saturday, February 21-22 at the Harn Museum, in connection with the Harn’s superb Kongo Across the Waters exhibit. The conference includes distinguished international scholars in a range of disciplines as well a number of artists. The full program for Carter Conference […]
Paper databases
Many of us recognize that paper based research notes, documentation, and analysis remain an important part of the scholarly toolset across the humanities and social science disciplines, even as options for electronic tools grow. The above linked blog entry describes one historian’s personal research file and quotes from a recent ITHAKA S+R report on historian’s research practices: “In some […]
Do African researchers collaborate too much?
From the Chronicle of Higher Education. An analysis by University of Pretoria’s Anastassios Pouris and Yuh-Shan Ho of Asia University found that “African countries generally exhibit substantially higher collaboration patterns than other countries in the world” and: Scientific papers produced by African academics in collaboration with international partners grew dramatically – by 66% – over […]
Guide to historical photographs from Africa on the web
A useful and thorough guide to digital projects offering open access historical photographs from Africa on the web, from iliss Africa (internet library of sub-Saharan Africa).
Detective fiction from Southern Africa
Dr. Ranka Primorac, University of Southampton, will lead Africa’s Literary Detective: Cases from the South, a seminar on detective fiction from southern Africa this week. SCOLMA (the UK Libraries and Archive Group on Africa) has arranged the event for Friday 14th February 2014, 13:00-14:00 at the Seng Tee Lee Centre, Senate House Library, Malet Street, LONDON, WC1E […]
Matatu urban transit map of Nairobi
Beautiful map, important research. Researchers and students at the University of Nairobi, the Center for Sustainable Urban Development at Columbia University, and the Civic Data Design Lab at MIT produced [an informal “matatu” urban transit] map – and the underlying data behind it – after carrying cell phones and GPS devices along every route in the […]
Fashion news from Africa: “I am the captain of my soul”
African fashion was recently highlighted in a Guinness beer television commercial. Even more surprisingly, it featured Congolese (Brazzaville) men promoting a strong message of personal worth and agency. As the narrator says, “with every brace and every cufflink we say, ‘I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.’” See: “Ad of the […]
African Studies library 