African Studies Portal - UW-Madison Libraries : Databases

A database of 40 searchable African newspapers covering the period from 1800 to 1922. Coverage is largely of English-language papers but a few in African languages are also included.

A collection of over 300 full-text major African literary titles of fiction, poetry, drama and non-fictional prose. For over 40 years, Heinemann's African Writers Series published the key texts of modern African literature. It has a unique importance in the history of postcolonial writing. It includes works by Chinua Achebe, Ama Ata Aidoo, Steve Biko, Buchi Emecheta, Nadine Gordimer, Bessie Head, Doris Lessing, Nelson Mandela, Dambudzo Marechera, Christopher Okigbo, Okot p'Bitek and Tayeb Salih and other well-known and not-so-well-known authors. Each work is fully seachable for textual analysis. The collection also provides a full gallery of book covers. A wide geographic range is also represented: most of the works come from English-speaking countries in Western, Southern, and Eastern Africa, but there are also a number of volumes translated from French (from Cameroon and Cote d'Ivoire) or Portuguese (from Mozambique).

The ATLA Religion Database is the premier index to journal articles, book reviews, and collections of essays in all scholarly fields of religion. Featuring articles written in 36 languages, ATLA includes over 400,000 article citations from over 1,400 journals, 600 of which are currently indexed. It also provides bibliographic coverage of over 200,000 essay citations from 15,500 multi-author works, over 375,000 book reviews, and features 128,000 subject-headings.

This collection of primary source documents, archives, films, and ephemera relate to significant border areas and events from the 19th to 21st centuries. It offers researchers historical context and resources, from both personal and institutional perspectives, to the growing fields of border(land) studies and migration studies, as well as history, law, politics, diplomacy, area and global studies, anthropology, medicine, the arts, and more. The collection continues to expand, and at completion will include 100,000 pages of text, 175 hours of video, and 1,000 images. Materials in the collection are organized around fundamental themes of Border Identities, Border Enforcement and Control, Border Disputes, Border Criminologies, Maritime Borders, Human Trafficking, Sea Migration, Undocumented and Unauthorized Migration, and Global Governance of Migration.

Cairn.info est un portail de sciences humaines et sociales de langue française. Tout internaute peut y découvrir gratuitement les résumés et plans des publications, ainsi que, dans certains cas, leur texte intégral. Les institutions peuvent mettre ces publications à disposition de leurs membres dans le cadre de différentes formules d’abonnement ou d’achat à l'unité.

This journal database covers subjects in the humanities and social sciences, representing primarily French and Francophone scholarly publications. Since February 2006, the National Library of France has been involved with this project. UW-Madison library subscribes to Cairn's humanities and social sciences package which includes 218 journals, most with articles in French, but a few in English. Subject areas include law, economics, business, geography, history, literature and language, philosophy, psychology, communications, education, political science, and sociology. To use the Cairn database, stay on the homepage with the Revues tab highlighted. Type a keyword or words in the top box, or select journals by discipline or title. Please note: a few of the search results might not allow access, as the UW-Madison library does not subscribe to all of the journal titles included in Cairn.

The Encyclopaedia of Islam includes more than 15,000 articles on the current state of the Islamic world, from religion and history to politics and culture. Articles cover distinguished Muslims, tribes and dynasties crafts sciences political and religious institutions the geography, ethnography, flora and fauna of various countries and the history, topography and monuments of the major towns and cities. Its geographical and historical scope encompasses the old Arabo-Islamic empire the Islamic countries of Iran, Central Asia, the Indian sub-continent and Indonesia the Ottoman Empire and all modern Islamic states. (Updated Irregularly)

Ethnic NewsWatch (ENW) features newspapers, magazines, and journals of the ethnic and minority press, providing researchers access to essential, often overlooked perspectives. With titles dating from 1990, ENW presents a comprehensive, full-text collection of more than 1.8 million articles from more than 315 publications offering both national and regional coverage. While the content may mirror mainstream media coverage, the viewpoints are decidedly unique. Ethnic NewsWatch delivers hundreds of important ethnic press publications. The voices of the Asian-American, Jewish, African-American, Native-American, Arab-American, Eastern-European, and multi-ethnic communities can be heard. Titles include Kurdish Life, Asian Week, Jewish Exponent, Seminole Tribune, Appalachian Heritage, The Boston Irish Reporter, Chinese America, The Filipino Express, Hmong Times, and many more. A majority of this content is exclusive to ENW and not available in any other database. Of the more than 1.8 million articles contained in the collection, nearly a quarter are presented in Spanish, making ENW an unmatched bilingual diversity database. Dozens of major Latino publications are featured, including El Nuevo Herald, and El Andar. As a complement to this wealth of untranslated titles, help options and screen assists are also available in Spanish. Ethnic NewsWatch: A History provides older years of newspaper coverage from 1960-1989.

GenderWatch is a gender, women, and gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) issues database with thousands of English-language full-text articles from over 200 magazines, academic journals, regional publications, and newsletters. Earliest articles are from 1970; most are from the 1990s to the present. (Updated quarterly)

Historical Abstracts indexes and abstracts information in world history and the related social sciences and humanities, excluding the U.S. and Canada. (See America: History and Life for U.S. and Canadian coverage.) Links to full-text articles are included when available. It lists articles covering the years 1450 to the present, including more than 2600 periodicals published in 90 countries in 40 languages. Collections of essays, conference papers, dissertations, and books are also included. (Updated monthly)

This collection of primary and secondary source materials offers access to comparative documentation, analysis, and interpretation of major human rights violations and atrocity crimes worldwide, from 1900 to 2010. The collection includes multiple media formats and content types for each selected event or human rights theme, including Armenia, the Holocaust, Cambodia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda, Darfur, and more than 30 additional subjects. Resources for each theme or event guide users through the full scope of the event, from the historical context that made such violations possible through the international response, prosecution of perpetrators, and steps toward rebuilding. The collection will continue to grow to include 75,000 pages of text and 150 hours of video.

The Index Islamicus database indexes literature on Islam, the Middle East and the Muslim world. Records included in the database cover almost a hundred years of publications on the world of Islam. 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.

The IBSS indexes the information contained in over 2,600 social sciences journals and 6,000 books each year. Coverage includes both core and specialized material from over 100 countries in more than 90 languages in the fields of economics, political science, sociology and anthropology. Approximately 70% of the records are in English. (Updated quarterly)

JSTOR is a full-text journal database which provides access to more than 1,200 titles in the fields of African-American studies, anthropology, architecture, Asian studies, biological sciences, botany, ecology, economics, education, film, finance, folklore, history, language, literature, mathematics, middle east studies, music, philosophy, political science, population/demography, religion, sociology, and statistics. Coverage begins with volume one of each title and continues to within 3 to 5 years of the most current issue, depending on the title. The "moving wall" represents the time period between the last issue available in JSTOR and the most recently published issue of a journal; it is specified by publishers in their license agreements with JSTOR. Graphs, photographs, and other images are included. UW-Madison Libraries have acquired the following JSTOR collections: Arts & Sciences I-XIV; Biological Sciences; Business; Ecology & Botany I-II; Health & General Sciences; Ireland; Language & Literature; Music. (Updated irregularly)

The Modern Language Association International Bibliography indexes 4,000 periodicals in English and other languages as well as books, book chapters, and dissertations. Its subject matter includes critical works on literature, language, linguistics, film, and folklore. Though reviews of individual literary and scholarly works are not included, broader review essays ARE included. Many articles listed have no abstracts. Approximately 50,000 citations from journals in JSTOR's Language and Literature collection are also included, providing access back to the 1880s for those titles. (Updated 10 times per year)

Women's Studies International indexes women's studies, women's issues, and gender-focused books, book chapters, journal and magazine articles, dissertations, and reports from throughout the world, starting in about 1972. Most material cited is in English; some in French-Canadian, Spanish, or other languages. (Updated twice a month)

This site is conceived as an educational encyclopedia of African political cartooning and cartoonists. As such, when finished, it will have entries on cartoonists from all African countries and show copious samples of their works. As appropriate, there will be links to news, interviews, reviews, journalistic articles and scholarly books and essays on cartooning in Africa generally, and individual cartoonists. This encyclopedia is inspired by a book in progress on political cartooning in Africa.

Many African scholars visit the UK each year on scholarships or research fellowships, while the UK has an active and long-established community of researchers specialising in Africa. Information on these links and relationships is often hard to find and collaborative work hard to track. The Africa Desk will therefore serve as both a directory of expertise, and a map of the Africa-UK research landscape, principally in the social sciences and humanities. It will provide a central source of information on Africanist research carried out in the UK, publicising the activities of the UK Africanist community and strengthening its profile. It will also act as a portal to support collaboration between UK and African researchers, enabling them to locate and make contact with colleagues sharing similar research interests and to identify potential future collaborators.

This online collection is maintained by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries. It contains digitized images and sounds of Africa contributed over the years to the African Studies Program of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. These digital files are stored in an accessible database and are provided for personal use or educational presentations. The project was developed through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The completion date was March 1, 2000, at which time the site contained in its searchable database the digital representations of more than 3000 slides, 500 photographs, and 50 hours of sound from forty-five different countries. As we continue to expand, amend, and evaluate the site, suggestions and criticisms are welcomed by digitalcontent@library.wisc.edu.

Africa South of the Sahara: Selected Internet Resources is an annotated directory of online resources about Africa.

Provides access to over 700 stories daily in English and French and offers a diversity of multi-lingual streaming programming as well as a 400.000-article searchable archive (which includes the archive of Africa News Service dating from 1997). Distributes news produced primarily on the African continent about all areas of African life, politics, issues and culture. It is available in both English and French.

The Center for Research Libraries (CRL) is an international consortium of university, college, and independent research libraries. Founded in 1949, CRL supports original research and inspired teaching in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences by preserving and making available to scholars a wealth of rare and uncommon primary source materials from all world regions.
CRL's deep and diverse collections are shaped by specialists and experts at the major U.S. and Canadian research universities, who work together to identify and preserve unique and uncommon documentation and evidence, to ensure its long-term integrity and accessibility to researchers worldwide.

Columbia International Affairs Online (CIAO) is the world’s largest online resource of documents and articles devoted to research, analysis, and scholarship on international politics and related fields, including security studies, global finance, diplomatic practice, humanitarian law, global governance, development studies, and environmental studies. With more than 500,000 pages aggregated from 300 international publishing institutions, CIAO is a unique and valuable archive and cross-searchable library of full-text articles from government research organizations, independent think tanks, university analysis centers, and scholarly journals.

The Cooperative Africana Materials Project (CAMP) was founded in 1963 as 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. CAMP acquires and preserves materials in microform and digital formats. CAMP collects newspapers, journals, government publications, personal and corporate archives, and the personal papers of scholars and government leaders. CAMP's materials are in many African and European languages, including Swahili, Portuguese, French, Zulu, Xhosa, English, and German.

The FRANCIS database is created by the Institut de l'Information Scientifique et Technique of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (INIST-CNRS) in France. It is strong in areas such as archaeology, geography, linguistics, philosophy, religion, and sociology. The database contains more than 14 million records, with abstracts in French or English, and descriptors in both languages. It covers journals, books, conference papers and proceedings, and other documents. (Updated monthly)

Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes most peer-reviewed online academic journals and books, conference papers, theses and dissertations, preprints, abstracts, technical reports, and other scholarly literature, including court opinions and patents.

The Literary Map of Africa is a bio-bibliographical database, designed to be a comprehensive research and information tool on African literature. It does not focus on selected authors or national / regional litteratures, nor does it follow the sometimes rigid North & sub-Saharan Africa divide; instead, the database seeks to cover the whole continent. This wider scope makes it possible for writers from different regions and countries, with varied histories and cultures, and who produce works in diverse African and European languages to be represented in one project. One objective this project hopes to fulfill is to include as many emerging writers as possible, especially those based in Africa. Many in this category of creative writers do not have a readership beyond their national boundaries and are therefore hardly represented in many bibliographies and encyclopedias.

University of Texas at Austin
The Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection is an extensive map collection owned by the Perry-Castañeda Library at The University of Texas at Austin.
Many of the maps in the collection have been scanned and are available online, and most of these maps are public domain.

PubMed comprises more than 28 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites.

The WDL makes it possible to discover, study, and enjoy cultural treasures and significant historical documents on one site, in a variety of ways. Content on the WDL includes books, manuscripts, maps, newspapers, journals, prints and photographs, sound recordings, and films.
WDL items can be browsed by place, time, topic, type of item, language, and contributing institution. The search feature can be used to search all of the metadata and descriptions and the full text of printed books on the site.