Trusted Archives for Scholarship

Broadening Access to scholarly e-resources from and about Africa

By

Rahim S. RajanManager, Content Development

JSTOR

I T H A K A is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to helping the academic community take full advantage of rapidly advancing information and networking technologies. 

Our Mission

• Ithaka S+R works with initiatives and organizations to develop sustainable business models and conducts research and analysis on the impact of digital media on the academic community as a whole.

• JSTOR helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive of over 1,200 academic journals and other content. JSTOR uses information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.

• Portico preserves scholarly literature published in electronic form—more than 10,000 e-journals and 28,000 e-books—and ensures that these materials remains accessible to future scholars, researchers, and students.

Our Services

Our Mission

We serve scholars, researchers, and students by providing the content, tools, and services needed to preserve the scholarly record and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways.

Our Mission

We are committed to working in collaboration with a variety of scholarly organizations, content providers, repositories, and archives to maximize benefits to all stakeholders.

JSTOR

• JSTOR (www.jstor.org) and Aluka (www.aluka.org) merged in July 2008

• The complete archives of more than 1,200 academic journals (19 collections, 37 million pages)

• More than 6 million articles in 51 academic disciplines

(African American Studies – Zoology)

• Primary source collections from and about Africa include

• African Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes• Struggles for Freedom in Southern Africa• African Plants + http://plants.jstor.org

JSTOR Overview

• All digitized journals begin at volume 1, issue 1

• Journals are scanned from cover to cover at 600 dpi – we include advertisements, letters to the editor, and other miscellaneous information

• All journals are full-text searchable and images are also searchable by captions (one of the benefits of digitization!)

• JSTOR receives about 1 BILLION accesses per year

• Africa collections at www.aluka.org received ~ 400,000 accesses in 2009

JSTOR Overview

• JSTOR is primarily a back issues archive

• Moving walls range, but usually somewhere between 3-5 years

• In 2011, JSTOR’s Current Scholarship Program will introduce current issues of e-journals on www.jstor.org

• Also JSTOR is beginning to diversify the range of content types we’re preserving and providing access to: British Pamphlets collection, Auction Catalogues project, Africa collections in Aluka

British Pamphlets collection at www.jstor.org

http://auctioncatalogs.jstor.org

http://www.aluka.org (+ KIP materials)

Struggles for Freedom in Southern Africa

• Contributions by more than 25 content partners around the world and with input and advice from more than 50 scholars, activists, librarians, archivists

• Relevant disciplines include: Political Science, History, African Studies, Anthropology, International Relations, Cultural Studies, Feminist and Women’s Studies, Law, Journalism, Public Policy, and Religion

• Wide variety of digitized materials available; more than 200,000 pages including: pamphlets, posters, UN correspondence and documents, letters, speeches, periodicals, monographs (more than 100), oral histories and interviews about the Struggles (200+), newspaper collections, slide photographs, and other ephemera

Struggles for Freedom in Southern Africa collection (21,000+ digital objects)

African Plants

• Contributions by more than 100 content partners around the world (mainly botanical gardens, herbaria, museums)

• Relevant disciplines include: Botany, Biology, Ecology, History, Environmental Studies, Art History, Colonial Studies

• More than 420,000 digital objects including: digitized type specimens, drawings, photographs, taxonomic data, correspondence, artifacts, and paintings

African Plants(420,000+ digital objects)

http://www.aluka.org

http://plants.jstor.org

http://vimeo.com/jstorplants

African Cultural Heritage Sites & Landscapes

• Contributions by more than 20 partners in Africa, Europe, and North America (including ~7 African Nations);

• Spatial, visual, and historical materials about Africa’s heritage (monumental sites & cultural landscapes)

• African Rock Art (25,000+ images) digitized in Africa

• disciplines include: History, African Studies, Anthropology, Archaeology, Cultural Studies, Geography, and Religion

• Sites and Landscapes: Elmina, Kilwa Kisiwani, Axum, Lalibela, Gedi, Djenné, Timbuktu, Great Zimbabwe, Mapungubwe, Asante Kingdom, Lamu, Somalia, Engaruka, Meroë, Songo Mnara, Wonderwerk cave, Cameroon’s Mandara Mountains, and Lalibela

Materials in African Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes collection (57,000+ digital objects)

Zamani team at University of Cape Town

http://www.zamani-project.org/data/panotours/Panotour_Great_Zimbabwe_LowRes/TourWeaver_Panorama_GreatZimbabwe.html

Access to JSTOR in Africa

• Access to all this content is free to all academic, government, non-profit, and research institutions in Africa(institutions must register)

• Content available for free is all collections & the Aluka collections about Africa

• Launched in July 2006, the Africa Access Initiative now provides more than 500 institutions in Africa access

• Dr. Siro Masinde (based at the National Museum of Kenya in Nairobi) is JSTOR’s Regional Coordinator for Africa and leads our outreach and training across Africa (Siro.Masinde@ithaka.org)

Dr. Siro Masinde, Regional Coordinator for Africa

JSTOR Access in Africa

JSTOR Access in Africa

The three “musts”

• We must advocate to strengthen Africa’s ICT and library infrastructure especially in the academic, cultural, and tertiary education sectors (support e-learning)

• We must achieve greater awareness & use globally – esp. in Africa (requires commitment, involvement, and creativity)

• We must do more to raise global awareness about Africa’s intangible and tangible heritage, histories, literature, folklore, sacred beliefs, environment, landscape, biological heritage, architecture, knowledge systems, etc..

If not us, who?

Please help increase awareness and use of these collections in Europe, the UK, and across Africa

Thank You!

http://www.facebook.com/JSTOR.org

http://twitter.com/jstor

www.jstor.org // www.aluka.org

My email: rahim.rajan@ithaka.org

To participate, email: participation@jstor.org