2022 Newsletter

In 2022, we were finally able to take up book acquisition trips for the Specialised Information Service (FID) African Studies. The acquisition of literature by publishers from the African continent and the African diaspora is one of our central objectives.

The SIS works with a number of specialist distributors for print publications. We have recently licenced an eBook package from the African Books Collective and provide access to eJournals via the South African provider Sabinet. Book acquisition trips now complement these activities. Accordingly, we organised three special book deliveries in 2022: one from Côte d’Ivoire specialising on the publishers Editions Eburnie and the Editions CERAP (Centre de Recherche et d’Action pour la Paix).

In August 2022, we carried out a book acquisition trip to the Ghana International Book Fair (GIBF) and were able to acquire, among others, publications in Ghanaian languages from the Bureau of Ghana Languages as well as many titles from small and micro-publishers. This was completed by an order through the Ghanaian online shop Booknook.

New portal of the Specialised Information Service (SIS) African Studies

The portal African Studies Library is now online at www.africanstudieslibrary.org. This new research portal makes it possible to simultaneously search library collections of important African Studies centres in Germany and internationally (such as the Nordic Africa Institute or the Bibliothèque nationale de France). In addition, over 110 repositories of African universities have been integrated via BASE (the Bielefeld Academic Search Engine). Thus, the African Studies Library has become a one-stop place for searching and locating literature for Africa-related research. The portal offers a log-in for personalised services such as watch lists. This does not require a new user account, but you can simply log in using your ORCID ID.

In addition to the catalogue search, the portal also offers new services and functionalities, such as the African Studies Toolbox blog which offers information on open access, archives and library holdings, and online resources for African Studies. Information and access options to our licensed databases is also included in the portal; all interested researchers working at an institution in Germany can register for these resources free of charge.

Opening of the new BSKW (Languages and Cultures) Library

In September 2022, the new Library for Languages and Cultures (Bibliothek Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaften, BSKW) opened on Campus Westend. Aïsha Othman, Head of the Africa Collections at the Central Library, was instrumental in the relocation of the Institute of African Languages and Linguistics Library to this new departmental library, which she now leads. The new library integrates 12 libraries of institutes from the Faculty of Languages and Cultures, among them for example Japanese and Korean Studies. The BSKW holds up to 385.000 items (most of them in open stacks) and offers 350 study spaces.

This newsletter also appeared on pages 80-81 of the Annual Report 2022 of the Centre for Interdisciplinary African Studies (ZIAF) of the Goethe University Frankfurt.