News items from SCOLMA members
9th January 2019 Dear Baroness Amos, Re: SOAS Library – Open Letter I am writing on behalf of SCOLMA (the UK Libraries and Archives Group on Africa) to express our deep concerns about the proposed cuts to SOAS Library. SOAS Library holds one of the most important African Studies collections in the UK, widely … Read more
SCOLMA Annual Conference Decolonising African Studies : questions and dilemmas for libraries, archives and collections Monday 10 June 2019 University of Edinburgh Appleton Tower 2.12, 11 Crichton Street, Edinburgh EH8 9LE CALL FOR PAPERS There has been an increasing call for the decolonisation of the curriculum across the disciplines in Northern institutions and elsewhere, … Read more
A new digital collection has been launched on Cambridge Digital Library to celebrate 150 years of the Royal Commonwealth Society (1868-2018) and 25 years since its library was acquired by the University of Cambridge. The new digital collection can be found at https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/rcs150 and a blog describing highlights of the material now available is at … Read more
The papers of Derek Ingram (1925-2018), journalist, author and authority on the Commonwealth, have been catalogued and are available to researchers at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies Library in Senate House, University of London. After working for the Daily Mail for seventeen years Ingram was a founder of Gemini News Service in 1967 which provided … Read more
Bookings are now open for the SCOLMA 2018 Conference which will be held at the University of Birmingham, Monday 10th September. ‘Things come together?: Literary archives from, in and for Africa’ will explore African literary archives, their creation, preservation, digitisation and use in research and teaching. African literature is multi-faceted and multi-lingual. Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall … Read more
The papers of Richard Hall (1925-1997), journalist and historian of Africa, have been catalogued and are available to researchers in the Institute of Commonwealth Studies Library in Senate House, University of London. Hall was editor of the Central African Mail and Times of Zambia, founded the financial and political bulletin Africa Analysis and wrote books … Read more
SCOLMA’s annual conference, ‘Things come together?: literary archives from, in and for Africa’, will take place at the University of Birmingham on Monday 10 September 2018. This conference will explore African literary archives, their creation, preservation, digitisation and use in research and teaching. African literature is multi-faceted and multi-lingual. Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958) … Read more
A second edition of Livingstone Online (http://livingstoneonline.org/) has been released as the Livingstone Online Enrichment and Access Project comes to an end after four years. Livingstone Online is a digital museum and library, hosted by the University of Maryland Libraries, which makes available David Livingstone’s visual and written legacy. It contains images of manuscripts held … Read more
Senate House Library will be holding a Commonwealth Studies Research Day on Tuesday 14th November 2017 which is intended for researchers ranging from undergraduates to PhD students and academics. There will be presentations on the Library’s anti-apartheid collections and Nigerian pamphlets and the opportunity to discuss research topics with specialist library and academic staff. The … Read more
An exhibition has opened at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery displaying a selection of photographs and film relating to the British Empire and Commonwealth. The items come from the vast collection of images held at Bristol Archives and the selection has been made by 27 individuals, including artists, historians and relatives of the photographers, to … Read more