More African Studies Resources

If you can’t find what you need in our collections, there are various resources in the Boston area, on BU’s campus, and online that can enhance your research in African studies (see the menu on the right). Here are a few we have selected for the extent of material relevant to African topics.

Resources at BU

  • African Studies Center Outreach Program:
    • Teaching Africa Library: materials for classroom teachers, elementary through high-school. Audio-visual materials may be borrowed through the mail, while print materials are generally lent only to visitors. The collection currently comprises approximately 1,000 children’s books, 1,500 adult books, 300 curriculum guides, and 200 videos.
  • Center of Global Christianity and Mission:a networked group of researchers, teachers, and activists, who have a vision of studying Christianity as a worldwide, multi-cultural movement and Christian mission as a series of multi-directional boundary crossings.” 
    • The Center is home to the Dictionary of African Christian Biography (an electronic, open-access resource that uses biography to document the 2000 year history of Christianity in Africa. This international, collaborative project is a response to the lack of historical information on the African figures who shaped this history), and its Journal of African Christian Biography (quarterly online journal, begun 2017. Its purpose is to showcase, interpret, and make more readily accessible biographical and historical resources in the field of African Christianity).
    • Old and New in Shona Religion:a multimedia website showcases the photography and work of Dr. M.L. Daneel. His research among the Shona people of Southern Africa in the 1960s through the 1990s.
  • School of Theology Library: holds various mission/missionary archives and various Africana materials within its collections (see their  Guide to African Theologies)
  • Pappas Law Library: materials on human rights and law in Africa.  International Law and Foreign Law Materials (K-KF; KZ) are collected by selectors at the Pappas Law Library.

Online Resources

Cooperative Africana Microforms Project (CAMP) is a consortium of Africana libraries which use the pooled funds of the membership to purchase commercially available microform sets of research materials on Africa, and undertakes original filming of unique resources. Materials held by CAMP are available on interlibrary loan from its headquarters at the Center for Research Libraries.

The Union List of African Newspapers (AFRINUL) is a project of the Africana Librarians Council of the African Studies Association and CAMP, with funding by the Association of Research Libraries through a grant from the Mellon Foundation. AFRINUL is a web-based database of titles and holdings of African newspapers in any format in North American libraries.