Research Guides: *African Studies Resources: Get Started

Collection Highlights

Arabic Manuscripts from West Africa - Umar Falke, John Paden, John Hunwick, and University of Ghana Collection
Archival and Manuscript Collections - personal papers, photographs, records and microform
Audiovisual collection (access restricted to Northwestern users only - login for access) comprises over 680 recordings which include politicans, poets, and other authors discussing their works.
16th-Early 20th Century Maps of Africa - digital copies of antique maps of Africa.
Photograph Collections - Humphrey Winterton, Vernon McKay, Zanzibar, Justine Cordwell, E.H. Duckworth, and Ifeoma Onyefulu. Access to some of these collections is restricted to Northwestern users only.
Posters from the Herskovits Library (digitized) - on politics, health, religion, liberation struggles, art exhibitions, social issues, etc. Note that all posters (Digitized & non-digitized) can be found through a search in the catalog.

Herskovits Library Search This link opens in a new window Search for photographs, maps, posters, videos, books in African languages, archival materials, manuscripts, art objects, ephemeral materials and other artifacts. https://libguides.northwestern.edu/nulasc
NUL Digital Collections This link opens in a new window NUL Digital Collections contains thousands of items from Northwestern University Libraries. While only a fraction of materials from the Libraries' collections are represented, the site is representative of the distinction and diversity of collections from the Northwestern Government and Geographic Information collection, Herskovits Library of African Studies, Music Library, McCormick Library of Special Collections and University Archives, and Transportation Library. The collections contain a wide range of media and include many primary sources covering many topics.

WorldCat This link opens in a new window The world's most comprehensive catalog of library holdings, particularly (though not exclusively) from North American libraries, containing over 2,000,000,000 records from over 10,000 libraries.