2023 Newsletter

Roadshows for the new portal of the Specialised Information Service (FID) African Studies

In 2023, at the Specialised Information Service (FID) for African Studies, we were able to extend and deepen contacts with colleagues, publishers and distributers across the African continent, as well as researcher communities across African Studies Centres at German universities and librarians working with African Studies collections across Europe. The year started with a brief stint of a colleague from Ghana as “visiting librarian”. As a prelude to the 2023 European Conference on African Studies (ECAS) Conference in Cologne, we took part in the annual European Librarians in African Studies (ELIAS) meeting. Here, we exchanged with colleagues working in related collections across the European continent.

The acquisition of literature by publishers from the African continent and the African diaspora remains one of our central objectives. The FID works with a number of specialist distributors for print publications. Following the ECAS conference, we were able to set up a new partnership with Clarke’s Bookshop in Cape Town, which specialises in the distribution of books from South and Southern Africa. Additionally, we provide access to eJournals via the South African provider Sabinet and we are continuing our licenced eBook package from the African Books Collective, which is being extended through the addition of new titles. At the Frankfurt Book Fair we were able to catch up with colleagues from the African Publishers Network (APNET) and acquire new titles. We were also able to set up a new partnership with Éditions FHB of the Félix Houphouët-Boigny Foundation for Peace Research based in Yamoussoukro, Côte d’Ivoire following a generous book donation on their behalf (pictured).

From the end of 2022 and throughout 2023, we presented the new African Studies Library portal www.africanstudieslibrary.org at African Studies Centres across Germany, including the Cluster of Excellence “Africa Multiple” of Bayreuth University, the Institute for Asian and African Studies at the Humboldt-University in Berlin, the Institute for African Studies of Cologne University, at the Asia-Africa-Institute of the University of Hamburg, at the Institute for African Studies of Leipzig University and at the Institute for Anthropology and African Studies at the Johannes-Gutenberg-University in Mainz.

The new African Studies Library research portal makes it possible to simultaneously search library collections of important African Studies centres in Germany and internationally, as well as the repositories of over 100 African universities. The services of this portal will be fine-tuned in the coming years, making it more efficient and user-friendly. The African Studies Toolbox blog continues to offer information on new initiatives to make Africa-related research more equitable and ethical, as well as information on open access, archives and library holdings, and online resources for African Studies.

New funding phase 2024 – 2026

The year 2023 ended well, in that our funding proposal was approved and that the FID African Studies will obtain German Research Foundation (DFG) funding for another three years. In these years we are planning new book acquisition trips (including to the Gaborone Book Festival in Botswana and the Foire Internationale du Livre de Lomé in Togo), an exciting cooperation on authority files from oral sources with the University of Hamburg and the National Centre for Arts and Culture (NCAC) in the Gambia, as well as new features in our portal, including direct subito and inter-library loans, a geographic search and a completely new interactive researcher compass.

This newsletter also appeared on pages 70-71 of the Annual Report 2023 of the Centre for Interdisciplinary African Studies (ZIAF) of the Goethe University Frankfurt.