A survey to better understand the needs of our African Studies users and audience.

Greetings from JSTOR!  This blog certainly looks different. Over the course of the next few months, we’re going to continue the conversations we started earlier on this new wordpress site.  Please feel free to send suggestions for topics.  We are also interested in guest bloggers so if you have some relevant news you wish to share or a topic, let us know in the comments box below.

For many months now, e have been working to enhance resources forAfrican Studies in the JSTOR Archive, and soon you will see more journals relevant to African Studies available in JSTOR.  JSTOR has also recently launched an online survey about African Studies.  The purpose of the survey is to receive and evaluate important feedback from all segments of the African Studies community about our collection development efforts and to learn how we can better serve the global African Studies community in the coming years.

The link to the survey is: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/7NGS3HN

Please take a few minutes to fill out this survey and share the link with colleagues who would like to participate in giving feedback to JSTOR.  Thank you in advance for your cooperation and assistance.

Dr. Masinde’s visit to Khartoum, Sudan

From October 27-28, 2010, Dr. Siro Masinde, JSTOR’s Regional Coordinator for Africa will provide two training workshops to faculty and students from various regions in Sudan, meeting in Khartoum.  This workshop has been jointly organized by the Sudanese Universities Information Network – founded in 2004 by the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research and JSTOR.  These training workshops provide us with an important opportunity to expand access to our digital resources to scholars and researchers in Africa, while also providing us with a greater understanding of the issues libraries and scholars face in a particular country or region.   Sudan is famous for a number of things.  Many don’t know Sudan is the largest country in Africa in terms of land mass and area.  It is also the 10th largest nation in the world  – just ahead of Algeria and behind Kazakhstan.  It is also listed as the 20th largest nation in terms of its oil reserves.  Sudan is a nation of tremendous diversity both in terms of its peoples as well as of natural and cultural landscapes.  Mountain ranges divide the deserts in the North from the marshes and tropical forests of the South.  Sudan is also home to more pyramids than its northern neighbor, Egypt and home to Gebel Barkal, a testament to the second Kingdom of Kush.

New Getty Conservation Institute images of restoration efforts at Royal Palaces of Abomey

Abomey, located in the Republic of Benin along the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa, was the capital of the kingdom of Dahomey that ruled the Fon people from the mid-17th to late 19th century. The kingdom at one time occupied a region from the borders of the Asante kingdom (in present day Ghana) to the territory controlled by the Yoruba city states (in present day Nigeria).  The Royal Palaces of Abomey are a testament to the power and sophistication of the Dahomey kingdom.  In the mid-1990′s The Getty Conservation Institute and the West African Republic of Benin’s Department of Cultural Patrimony worked together to conserve fifty seriously damaged bas-relief panels that once adorned the Salle des Bijoux (Hall of Jewels) at the Royal Palaces of Abomey. The Getty Conservation Institute has generously shared their documentation from this project and these images are now available for researchers and students to view in JSTOR’s African Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes collection.  JSTOR has many articles that discuss the Dahomey kings but here are two gems.  The first is a letter to the Royal Geographical Society of London describing a meeting between a traveler and the Dahomey king in 1845; the second is an article by the notable scholar Dr. Suzanne P. Blier in the journal RES, critically examining Melville J. Herskovits’ conclusions and research in his well known study Dahomey.

Basil Davidson (1914-2010): Journalist, Scholar, Activist

 

Basil Davidson, a notable British journalist, historian of Lusophone Africa, and activist passed away last week.  The UK’s Guardian paper published an extensive obituary.  One of his many accomplishments was to be one of the first Western journalists to accompany the MPLA guerrilla movement in Angola, fighting to overthrow Portuguese colonial rule, as well as his coverage of subsequent liberation movements and civil strife in Eritrea.  From 1969 – 1985 he served as President of the UK’s Anti-Apartheid Movement, publishing a series of articles in the New Statesman exposing the horrors of the apartheid system and causing him to be banned as a “prohibited immigrant” from South Africa.

JSTOR’s Struggles for Freedom in Southern Africa collection includes numerous full text examples of Basil’s work such as some important monographs, pamphlets, and articles that he authored.  The JSTOR archival collections also contain a fascinating record of his scholarly publishing as well as critical readings of his own texts and ideas.  A fascinating life that contributed much to our contemporary understanding of Africa, but perhaps even more important, an excellent example of an individual who pursued social justice on the continent and the expansion of human awareness about Africa’s complexities and rich cultures and histories.

The grand finale of South Africa’s World Cup

Later this weekend, Africa’s first world cup tournament ever will conclude in a Sunday match with Spain vs. the Netherlands.  Two European soccer teams will fight for first place and the world championship.  There were a lot of lessons for the world.  All the paranoia and hysteria about South Africa’s criminality never materialized and the world was definitely treated to a dazzling array of football skill and international camaraderie.  And yet, it is important to appreciate and remember how far South Africa has traveled, and how much so many have sacrificed, in order to rebuild this nation from shunned pariah to the continent’s super star.  We are proud of South Africa and we congratulate all those who ensured that the legacy of fair, competitive sport amongst and between all peoples and nations, that this could become one of the lasting legacies of the anti-apartheid movement and the new South Africa.

Recent publicity on the African Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes database

A couple of weeks ago, two widely disseminated stories appeared online first in Fast Company magazine and then also in ICON Magazine (see here and here) describing with wonderful detail the work of Prof. Heinz Ruther and his Zamani project. For many years, this team has been traveling through various parts of Africa, working with local government and heritage officials to document and create digital 3D models of various sites and landscapes. To date, the African Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes database includes detailed spatial, visual, and contextual documentation for 11 sites and landscapes.  This cutting edge online resource provides educators and students with a unique and diverse view of Africa’s living heritage. From natural landscapes that include vast irrigation channels and settlements from hundreds of years ago in the great Rift Valley (Engaruka) to the rock hewn churches in Ethiopia’s highlands (Lalibela) – this resource remains one the only academic databases available for teaching and research that combines content and data from over a dozen global partners focusing on Africa’s diverse and unique patrimony.  Courses and syllabi that cover archaeology in Africa, African civilizations, or African cultural production will all benefit from the unique resources available in this JSTOR collection.

JSTOR Awareness and Training Workshop, University of Zambia, Lusaka, May 26th, 2010

A JSTOR awareness and training workshop will be held at the University of Zambia, Lusaka on May 26th, 2010. Participants are expected from among librarians, research and teaching staff as well as postgraduate students from the University of Zambia and other JSTOR participating institutions in Lusaka. The workshop will be hosted by University of Zambia Library and conducted by Rahim Rajan, Content Development Manager, and Siro Masinde, Regional Coordinator for Africa, who will be in Lusaka to attend the eLearning Africa 2010 Conference, May 26-28, 2010.The workshop is part of JSTOR’s efforts to increase awareness and enhance usage of JSTOR resources in Africa. The African Access Initiative was launched in 2006 by waiving participation fees for African non-profit and academic institutions.

JSTOR has a long history of capacity building through education and outreach on the African continent, including previous stops in

• Ibadan (University of Ibadan) and Kano (Bayero University), Nigeria
• Nairobi, Kenya (for both a symposium and a GIS workshop)
• Dakar, Senegal (for eLearning 2009 Conference related workshops at Cheikh Anta Diop University)
• Tunisia and Egypt (training workshops at IHEC and Tunis El-Minar Universities, Cairo and Ain Shams University)
• Accra, Ghana (for eLearning 2008 and training workshop at the University of Ghana, Legon)

New Content available: The BIEA Somalia collection

In our continuing collaboration with the British Institute in Eastern Africa, we are pleased to release a collection consisting of over 1800 archival images, slides, notebooks, and documents collected by the late Neville Chittick during his field work and visits to Somalia in the early 1960′s.  These collections provide valuable and useful visual imagery with which scholars can conduct further research and investigation, as well as useful digital content to introduce these cultural landscapes and historic geographies to students and researchers who may never have an opportunity to visit Somalia.

To see these materials, please click here.

This collection provides us with a rich glimpse of various monuments, urban, mountainous, and coastal environments, as well as religious monuments (of various faith communities) prior to the destructive civil wars that began in the 1970′s and that continue today. It is by no means hyperbole to mention that some of these sites and places may not exist today, or 40 years from now.

Somalia has a rich and interconnected history with the Indian Ocean and the East African coast – surely one that even predates the arrival of Muslims. JSTOR’s archival collections include a number of fascinating articles relevant to this collection including one by Dr. Mark Horton that explores trade and other connections between medieval East Africa and the Indian Ocean, and another by Dr. Felix Chami that provides an overview of archaeological surveys and expeditions along the East Africa coast.   There are also excellent articles that describe the arts and cultural contributions of Somalia in particular.

For example, this description of Mogadishu from an article in the journal African Arts by Mary Jo Arnoldi precedes an excellent introduction of material culture and art objects from Somalia:

“Mogadishu, now the capital city of Somalia, was one of the first Muslim settlements on the East African coast and its first secure harbor. Though it had been settled long before the arrival of Islam in the seventh century, this expansion made it an important commercial center for the trade of cloth, ivory, hides, slaves, spices, cattle and porcelain with merchants from Arabia, the Persian Gulf, Indonesia and China. Ibn Battuta in 1331 writes of Mogadishu as an enormous sized town over which presided the Sultan or Shaikh. Mogadishu was for a while in the sixteenth century under the control of the Portuguese and then fell under the suzerainty of the Sultan of Zanzibar in 1871.”

 

Recent JSTOR training workshops at Nigeria’s University of Ibadan and Bayero University

In April 2010, Dr. Siro Masinde and Rahim Rajan visited Bayero University of Kano in northern Nigeria and to the University of Ibadan to provide two half day training workshops to faculty and librarians from the University, as well as dozens of faculty and librarians from neighboring institutions across northern Nigeria – including those from Zaria, Kaduna, Katsina, Maiduguri, and Sokoto. In total, over 100 faculty and librarians attended the two sessions. This training was generously funded by a grant to JSTOR from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Access to all JSTOR collections is freely available to all non-commercial institutions in Africa (this includes NGO’s, government organizations, museums, secondary schools, etc.) as part of JSTOR’s Africa Access Initiative.  We have recently loaded some photos from the recent workshops.  Safe and reliable supply of electricity and the exorbitant price of bandwidth were two leading obstacles, we were particularly heartened by the drive and ingenuity of the librarians and scholars to figure out ways to still make use of these powerful online educational resources.  They are making full use of whatever information they can access today and using that knowledge to create innovative solutions to solve these issues.

The Africa Network’s 2010 conference (April 16-18) @ Denison University

This weekend, scholars, archivists, librarians, and researchers from liberal arts colleges across the country will meet at Denison University, Ohio to promote the importance of the study of Africa in the United States.  Denison University has particular significance for the history of the founding of JSTOR (as some may already know).  Rahim Rajan is participating in an engaging session on Saturday afternoon on building courses on Africa in the Social Sciences and Sciences.  If you are planning on attending, please introduce yourself to Rahim.  Here is a link to the Africa Network website as well as this weekend’s program.  Hope to see you there!