CAMP microfilming of Liberian newspapers

CAMP has microfilmed issues of seven Liberian newspaper titles from the holdings of Michigan State University.  Michigan State has been committed to acquiring Liberian newspapers for many years, and CAMP has allocated funding on several occasions for the preservation of batches of newspapers from this collection.  CAMP efforts have resulted in a collection that is unique in North America and will now be available on microfilm to CAMP and CRL members.

The newspapers microfilmed by CAMP cover this turbulent time in Liberia from a variety of perspectives:

Daily Times  (January 1997 – February 2001)

Front Page  (November 2009 – December 2011)

In Profile  (November 2008 – December 2011)

Insight  (June 2010 – December 2011)

New Dawn  (January 2010 – December 2011)

New Republic  (July 2009 – December 2011)

New Vision  (April 2005 – December 2011)

This set of titles was approved in November 2012 by CAMP members.  At its November 2013 meeting in Baltimore, CAMP members voted to fund the microfilming of 13 additional Liberian newspaper titles collected by Michigan State.

Radio Mogadishu archives to get digitized

After more than 60 years of analogue storage in an inadequate environment, the Radio Mogadishu audio archive is being digitized in order to save it from deterioration and introduce the unique Somali historical recordings to new audience.

African Blue Books digitised

A collection of African Blue Books has been digitised by Microform Academic Publishers and made available on their British Online Archives database. The collection covers 13 former colonies and protectorates, with volumes dating from 1821 to 1953.

‘Blue Book’ is the name given to the annual statistical reports which governors were required to compile. The books were prepared as pro-formas to be completed in the same way in each colony or protectorate. This attempt at standardisation, allowing volumes to be compared either over time or across geographies, was only partially successful owing to variations in interpretation and the availability of data. Nevertheless, the Blue Books provide the most detailed accounts of the day-to-day concerns and policies of colonial administrators. Alongside statistics, governors sometimes included other material such as maps and even illustrations of plants. Examples can be seen on Cambridge University Library’s Colonial Blue Books web page.

Collections of Blue Books can be found in a small number of libraries across the UK, including in the collections of several Scolma member libraries. The British Online Archives collection covers:

• Basutoland 1926- 1946
• Cape of Good Hope 1821- 1909
• Gambia 1828- 1945
• Gold Coast 1846- 1939
• Kenya 1901- 1946
• Nigeria 1862- 1945
• Northern Rhodesia 1924- 1948
• Nyasaland 1904- 1938
• Sierra Leone 1824- 1943
• Southern Rhodesia 1906- 1953
• Tanganyika 1921- 1948
• Uganda 1901- 1945
• Zanzibar 1913- 1947

These join other collections in British Online Archives including Colonial and Mission records from West Africa, Universities Mission to Central Africa, and Gold Coast records of the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. The database is free to search and browse, but access to documents is by subscription. Registered readers of the British Library have access to these collections from Reading Rooms at St Pancras, London, and Boston Spa, West Yorkshire.