Virtual library ilissAfrica

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Logo from ilissAfrica

The internet library sub-saharan Africa (ilissAfrica) is a virtual specialist library for information on sub-Saharan Africa . It is operated jointly by the Frankfurt University Library and the Hamburg German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA), which also look after the special collection area on sub-Saharan Africa and are financed with project funds from the DFG . Since June 2009 the library has been offering central access to scientifically relevant information and other services in German, English and French. ilissAfrica is closely involved in the European cooperation of the African Librarians (European Librarians in African Studies, ELIAS) and serves, for example, as an aid to catalog and archive freely accessible electronic documents from only one of the participating libraries.

services

Scientists and those interested in Africa can use ilissAfrica to search through library catalogs and specialist databases and access websites that are relevant to their research interests. ilissAfrica essentially has three modules:

The general search

It is a metasearch that searches multiple databases and library catalogs at the same time. At the moment the general search includes:

  • the Africa section of the catalog of the Frankfurt University Library ( special collection area Africa south of the Sahara 6.31)
  • the Africa section of the catalog of the information center at the GIGA Hamburg (special collection area sub-Saharan Africa 6.311 - gray literature)
  • the catalog of the library of the African Studies Center Leiden (largest scientific library in Africa in the Netherlands)
  • the catalog of the library of the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala (comprehensive Africa library of the Scandinavian countries)
  • the catalog of the library of the Institute for Ethnology and African Studies Mainz (including the Jahn library for African literatures )
  • the retro catalog of the Frankfurt University Library (literature acquired until 1986)
  • Online contents section "Africa-South of the Sahara" (article title from 170 Africa-specific journals )
  • the internet source database of ilissAfrica
  • an Africa excerpt from the Bielefeld Academic Search Engine
  • the colonial image archive with 50,000 digitized historical photos from the holdings of the Frankfurt University Library and the Sam Cohen Library, Swakopmund, Namibia
The internet sources database

The link collection includes more than 4500 selected Africa-specific internet sources and is set up, expanded and maintained by the ilissAfrica editorial team. The acquisition takes place in the Academic LinkShare network , around 10% of the acquired pages could be reused by other virtual specialist libraries such as ViFaPol in particular . An advanced search allows the use of filters and browsing by country, topic and source type.

The young talent database

The personal database of young researchers from German African Studies is used for networking. Interested parties can register on the ilissAfrica homepage. The profiles are publicly visible.

The Open Access Guide

An Open Access Guide is aimed primarily at scientists in Africa . It lists information offers that are accessible from African countries free of charge or for a reduced fee.

Current awareness and Web 2.0 services

The main goal of ilissAfrica is to support you with literature and information research. Further services have now been developed based on this core offering. To stay up to date and to cope with the flood of information, web desktops such as Netvibes , Pageflakes or iGoogle are suitable . They provide a browser-based virtual web desktop over the Internet. ilissAfrica has configured a preselection with the web feeds u. a. of current news, tables of contents of new magazine issues or conference information. These are presented clearly arranged on one page. A dashboard was set up at Netvibes as an example. The compilation of ilissAfrica can be reused and then adapted to your own needs. Using the underlying OPML file, the compilation can also be imported into other web desktops and feed readers. A Facebook page, a blog and a Twitter account have also been set up to pick up “modern” users wherever they are on the Internet . Here news about ilissAfrica, reports about the book market in Africa, new databases, national licenses or new activities in the area of Open Access are presented.

BASE - Bielefeld Academic Search Engine

With the integration of the Bielefeld Academic Search Engine as OAI-PMH service provider, a large number of relevant university publication servers and other article databases could be integrated into ilissAfrica's meta search in one fell swoop . Above all, thirty repositories from African universities and the article database African Journals Online (AJOL) could be included, which in turn massively increases the visibility of research results from Africa and somewhat reduces the digital divide between North and South. In addition, the francophone resources could be massively expanded: HAL, Persee, CAIRN, Gallica and the IRD directory are included. With the help of large digitization projects such as Gallica or the companies of American universities, more types of documents can now be found, such as historical photos, maps, videos. This means that more and more primary sources can be identified directly with ilissAfrica. In addition, around 75% of the documents listed in BASE are Open Access: direct access to online publications is massively improved.

Related virtual specialist libraries

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cohen, Nadia; Siebold, Thomas, 2009: ilissAfrica virtual library - the entry portal for searching for literature and information on the Sub-Saharan Africa region. In: Periplus. Yearbook for Non-European History 2009 : 148-151.
  2. ↑ Garba, Faisal, 2009/2010: Tackling African development challenges. In: The African Courier Dec / Jan 2009/10  : 14f.
  3. ↑ On the course of the project and the critically viewed DFG funding cf. Bergenthum, Hartmut: "internet library sub-saharan Africa" ​​(ilissAfrica): Balance of a Virtual Specialized Library, in: ABI-Technik 31 (2011), 1, pp. 12-22, doi : 10.1515 / ABI.2011.002 .
  4. ↑ Bergenthum, Hartmut / Thomas Siebold: African Studies - Striving for Integrated Information Services: Recent Developments in Germany and Europe, in: Africa Spectrum 45 (2010), 2, pp. 109–121.
  5. ^ Lauber-Reymann, Margrit: Information resources. A handbook for librarians and information specialists, Berlin 2010, p. 457.
  6. ↑ "New offers from ilissAfrica: Wiki tutorial, Web2.0 services and web desktops", article in the vascoda blog , November 11, 2010.