Instruction and Class Guides

Web Resources for the Peoples and Cultures of Africa

Indexes || Web Sites || Search Engines || Evaluating Web Sites
Research Guide: Peoples and Cultures of Africa

The study of African peoples and their cultures can be richly supplemented by resources on the Web, but should be grounded firmly in published works. For a guide to print sources and a discussion of ethnic groups and languages of Africa, consult the research guide.

Arm yourself with a list of all the possible variations on the name of the ethnic group and its language before you start searching in indexes. Being prepared is half the battle when it comes to research.

Ethnologue (http://www.ethnologue.com) is the most comprehensive and authoritative online guide for identifying African ethnic groups and languages and verifying their names. Also consult print resources.

Indexes

African Studies [Log-in required] is an exclusive combination of 17 databases from three continents providing access to multi-disciplinary information on Africa. Combining 17 databases from three continents searchable together for the first time, this premier information resource contains over 662,800 indexed references, many with abstracts. Records are derived from books, periodical articles, pamphlets, maps and music recordings. Topics include politics, history, economics, business, mining, development, social issues, anthropology, literature, language, law, music

Anthropological Index Online [Log-in required] indexes approximately 750 scholarly journals and other serial publications in the field of anthropology held by the British Museum Department of Ethnology (Museum of Mankind). Materials are collected in all languages and for all geographical areas. Coverage is from 1965 to the present.

Anthropological Literature [Log-in required] describes articles and essays on anthropology and archaeology, including art history, demography, economics, psychology, and religious studies. Updated quarterly, Anthropological Literature indexes articles two or more pages long in works published in English and other European languages from the late 19th century to the present.

Bibliography of Africana Periodical Literature Database This English language database indexes over 33,000 articles from over 280 English language and multi-lingual journals and periodicals that specialize in African Studies or consistently cover the African continent. The titles were originally chosen from the library at California State University-Chico and that number were later expanded by using materials from Northwestern University and other major university libraries as well as the Library of Congress.

South African Studies [Log-in required] a unique anthology (published by NISC South Africa) of 15 different databases providing access to over 914,400 records. South African Studies supplies unprecedented access to the great majority of documents published in and about South Africa, including theses, dissertations and current research.

Do not depend only on electronic indexes for research on African ethnic groups. Also look at the library's array of print indexes and bibliographies.

Web Sites: a Sampling

General

Minnesota State University: http://emuseum.mnsu.edu/cultural/oldworld/africa.html
Summaries of 55 ethnic groups

Guide to Preserving Anthropological Records http://www.nmnh.si.edu/naa/copar/bulletins.htm

Ethnographic Archives http://www.nmnh.si.edu/naa/links.htm

Arts and Life in Africa http://www.uiowa.edu/~africart/toc/people.html

AfricaFocus: Sights and Sounds of a Continent http://africafocus.library.wisc.edu/

African Voices http://www.mnh.si.edu/africanvoices/

Art

African Art Museum. http://www.zyama.com/
"On-line reference to the artistic styles of Africa." 88 ethnic groups.

Kente Cloth: A Selected Bibliography http://www.founders.howard.edu/moorland-spingarn/KENTE.htm

AfricanCraft http://www.africancraft.com/
Commercial site spotlighting African artists and artisans

African Art: Aesthetics and Meaning http://www.lib.virginia.edu/clemons/RMC/exhib/93.ray.aa/African.html

National Museum of African Art http://www.nmafa.si.edu/

Culture

African South of the Sahara: Culture
(http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/culture.html)

African Cookbook http://www.sas.upenn.edu/African_Studies/Cookbook/about_cb_wh.html

Languages

University of Pennsylvania K-12 Electronic Guide for African Resources on the Internet http://www.sas.upenn.edu/African_Studies/K-12/menu_EduLANG.html
Despite its focus on schools, this site is also useful for other researchers.

African South of the Sahara: Languages
(http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/lang.html)

Columbia University Library: Languages (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/africa/cuvl/langs.html)

University of Wisconsin guide to selected language information and Web sites. (http://www.langlink.net./langlink/#)

Languages of South Africa. http://salanguages.com/

University of California African Languages Directory. http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/aflang/

The Asmara Declaration on African Languages and Literatures
http://www.outreach.psu.edu/programs/allodds/declaration.html

Languages on the Web http://www.lonweb.org/
A commercial site highlighting self-selected Web sites on languages around the world, including a sampling of African languages.

Hausa http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/aflang/hausa/hausa.html

Shona: Fortune Shona Sources. http://web.uflib.ufl.edu/cm/africana/fortidx.htm
Contains materials on Shona and other southern African langauges.

Swahili The Kamusi Project Internet Living Swahili Dictionary http://www.yale.edu/swahili/
An online dictionary

Zulu: IsiZulu.net - Zulu/English, English/Zulu Online Dictionary
http://isizulu.net/

Bisharat! A language, technology, and development initiative http://www.bisharat.net

African Writing Systems http://www.library.cornell.edu/africana/Writing_Systems/Welcome.html

Music

Columbia University Library: Music and Dance http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/africa/cuvl/music.html

African Music Archive
(site no longer available) http://ntama.uni-mainz.de/ama/

Gramophone Library of the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Service
(site no longer available) http://ntama.uni-mainz.de/ama/content/section/5/29/

Ntama - Journal of African Music and Popular Culture
http://www.uni-hildesheim.de/ntama/

Rhythmweb.com - World percussion ; Provides video/audio clips of African percussion. http://www.rhythmweb.com  [Drums of Uganda]

Photographic Collections

Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives http://africa.si.edu/research/archives.html

Dogo - Lobi (Photo Albums) http://www.dogon-lobi.ch

Search Engines

Search engines take the terms you type in the search box and match them with words somewhere in the text or underlying code of Web pages. The quality of the results will depend on where the engines look for matching words (do they look at the top page only? the top three? Headings only? full text?) and how the developers of the pages have used words in their text and coding. Part of the behind-the-scenes code of Web sites is "metadata", tags that can apply the equivalent of subject headings to Web sites. If the developers use these tags, it is much more likely that a search engine will capture their site and include it in your results. This can be very good - or really bad, depending on the skill or intentions of the site developers.

Google (http://www.google.com/)

Google is an oddly named but very useful search engine that searches 1,610,476,000 web pages. Google automatically returns web pages that contain all of the search terms you use (although it excludes certain common words such as "where" or "how"), so there's no need to use the Boolean operator 'and'. The order of the words in the search phrase can affect the results. Putting the phrase in quotation marks ensures that the words will appear next to one another.

Many of the sites listed above came from doing a search on Google, using the phrase African Languages. The phrase without quotation marks yielded 734,000 hits; with quotation marks, it yielded 39,500. For both searches the first ten or twenty sites were the same, although not in the same order.

Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com/)

Yahoo is much more commercially focused than Google, but has some useful features, such as the advanced search option. Using quotation marks with Yahoo also narrows the search. The number of results for African Languages resembled the results for Google.

Lycos (http://www.lycos.com/)

Lycos is also heavy on advertising, and works much the same way as the other search engines.

Evaluating Web Sites

Library Research A research guide containing useful tips on evaluating and citing Web sites.

Africa South of the Sahara Africa South of the Sahara
(http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/evalu.html) provides a list of Web sites that advise on evaluating sites found on the Web. The five basic criteria are: Accuracy; Authority; Objectivity; Currency; Coverage.

Questions to ask:

Who is responsible for the Web site? Is it: an academic institution? an individual? a group?

What is the purpose of the site. Is there a hidden agenda?

Can the information be documented? Does the page provide sufficient information. How long will it be there?

Can the information be verified?

Let's look at some sites found by using search engines and see how they measure up.

http://www.yoruba.org

http://www.abantu.org

http://berclo.net/page99/99en-afr-languages.html

http://www.elite.net/~runner/jennifers/languag2.htm

http://www.zambia-travel-guide.com/bradt_guide.asp?bradt=560

Gretchen Walsh
http://www.bu.edu/library/instruction/africanpeoplesweb.html

Links Updated Sept. 2009