African Newspapers, Series 1
1800-1922
- Created in partnership with the Center for Research Libraries and its contributing members
- Online access to more than 60 African newspapers published in the 19th and early 20th centuries
- Wide-ranging coverage of the issues and events that shaped the continent and its peoples
“African Newspapers, Series 1 & 2 (1800-1925)….is essential for any institution with an African studies program….[It] offers direct access to valuable primary sources for a continent and period for which such resources are rare and hard to come by…..for individuals seeking to explore the colonial mind-set and customs, the collection is invaluable. The 100-plus newspapers offer a dazzling array of insights into imperial expansion and exploration….African Newspapers is a unique product. There is simply nothing comparable in terms of electronic access to journalism from the continent for the 19th and early 20th centuries….African Newspapers is unrivalled in its breadth, diversity, and sheer amount of content.”
— ccAdvisor (May 2018)
“African Newspapers, 1800-1922, part of Readex’s World Newspaper Archive collection, is a rich database that indexes and provides full-page scans of 40-plus newspapers from several African countries (mostly countries in western, eastern, and southern Africa). While most of the countries represented in the database have only a few newspaper titles available, South Africa boasts the most—16. When looking at the list of available titles for a country, one can tell at a glance how many issues are included, along with the dates the publication started and ceased. This database, much like the others that Readex provides, allows searchers to locate material by dates and eras (in this case, users may enter custom publication dates or choose to search by decade), by language (from Afrikaans to Zulu and several in between), by place of publication or even within specific newspaper titles. The results from a search are listed chronologically, and each includes a thumbnail image of the search term where it appears within the article. Once clicked, the image opens up into a full-size image of the article as it appeared on the page and users may zoom out to view the entire page as well. Summing up: recommended. Academic libraries with users interested in primary sources for 19th- and early 20th-century African history; lower-level undergraduates through faculty/researchers.”
— E. A. Francis, Oberlin College Library in Choice (February 2010)
“The digital edition of the Rand Daily Mail, 1902-1985, and the online collection of African Newspapers, 1800-1925, have proved to be more than useful. These two Readex databases have been simply wonderful for the historical questions that I am working on. There is, of course, a great deal of intrinsic value in any of the items that one recovers from these digital resources, but, for a historian, there is a transcending importance. It not only gives you a precise fix in terms of time and topic that you are interested in but, by so doing, also hints at where issues can be followed up in the national archives and elsewhere. Both newspaper collections are an invaluable asset for historians, anthropologists, art historians, sociologists, legal scholars and those interested in the evolution of the media and advertising. I cannot stress sufficiently how central a resource these databases are for modern scholars and post-graduate students at a time when the original newspaper collections are often either disintegrating, incomplete or inaccessible. No reputable university should be without access to the Rand Daily Mail, 1902-1985, and African Newspapers, 1800-1925.”
— Charles van Onselen, Research Professor, Faculty of Humanities, University of Pretoria
“I am currently teaching a third-year class on the history of the black press in South Africa. I have structured the course around a practical research assignment, which is a really great way to teach a course for aspirant historians. I can only do this because of the Readex database, African Newspapers, 1800-1922.”
— Prof. Natasha Erlank, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Historical Studies, Head of Department and Associate Professor, University of Johannesburg
“I am astonished at the quantity of available material in the Readex digital collections. I am studying South African leader Sol Plaatje’s involvement as a politician and journalist in pre-apartheid resistance movements. The Readex African Newspapers collection, which includes the newspapers he edited, has been critical to my research."
— Raquel G. A. Gomes, Doctoral Candidate, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil
