Panel 145: African Studies on the Web

This panel discusses new initiatives and opportunities for African Studies on the Web. Long standing services like AJOL and Africa Wide Information are joined by new initiatives like ilissAfrica. Repositories from universities are supposed to be permanent facilities - but how will information on websites from African governments or organizations be safeguarded?

Some researchers think that information that can not be found on the internet doesn't exist. Does it? And why do libraries keep buying the same books from mainstream western publishers and forget to spend money on books from Africa? Access from Africa poses yet another problem, but at the same time information on health (HINARI), agriculture (AGORA), environment (OARE) and arts and culture (JSTOR) is freely available for non commercial organizations from Africa.
This panel can be seen as a follow-up of the panel African Studies on the Web at ECAS Leipzig (2009) and the workshop African Studies on the Web II in Bayreuth (2010).

It will try to point out new initiatives and new directions, but also to bridge gaps between researchers, librarians and archivists.