The Nordic Africa Institute

Databases

Subscribed and free databases, Nordic research repositories, library catalogues.

Africa-specific databases/e-resources we subscribe to

 

E-books

Digital platform for African e-books for online reading.

 

Brief overview

  • NAI subscribes to two of their collections:
    • Samir Amin (70+ titles)
    • Social sciences (1800+ titles)
  • Languages: Titles in English and French.

 

Access options for full contents

 

Included in search with AfricaLit Plus, our main search tool?

  • No

Online edition of selected works from the Heinemann series of modern African literature, published 1946-2003.

 

Brief overview

 

Access options for full contents

 

Included in search with AfricaLit Plus, our main search tool?

  • Yes

 

Privacy policy including information about cookies External link, opens in new window.

 

News and periodicals

(Formerly: South African Press Association, SAPA.)

Full-text news reports covering South African and African news. The database covers the period 1998 - 31 March 2015 and from November 2015 onwards.

Access:

Privacy policy including information about cookies External link, opens in new window.

Aggregates and distributes news from 140+ African news organizations and own reporters. Top news, latest news, country and regional news, business, sports and various topics.

Archives include millions of articles from 1996 onwards, and the website comes in an English version as well as a French, reflecting also the language of the news sources.

Access:

Privacy policy including information about cookies External link, opens in new window.

Hosted at Centre for Research Libraries (CRL) in USA, CAMP External link. promotes the preservation of publications and archives concerning the nearly fifty nations of Sub-Saharan Africa. The digital and microform collections form a large pool of historical, political, linguistic, economic, and geographical data and primary source materials that are not available elsewhere.

Access:

CRL's privacy policy including information about cookies External link, opens in new window.

More than 3 million newspaper and periodical articles within Social sciences, Politics, Economy and more. Searchable through keywords and topics, articles viewable as pdfs. Focused mainly on southern Africa.

Access:

Privacy policy including information about cookies External link, opens in new window.

 

Other

 

Combination of several databases, providing access to more than 4 million references.

 

Brief overview

  • Topics: Politics, history, economics, business, mining, natural sciences, environment, development, social issues, anthropology, literature, language, law, music, tourism etc.
  • Sources: Books, periodicals and magazines articles, radio and television broadcasts, newspapers, pamphlets, maps, reports, theses, music recordings etc.
  • Coverage: 1800s to the present.
  • More info: EBSCO's presentation of Africa-Wide Information External link, opens in new window.

 

Access options for full contents

 

Included in search with AfricaLit Plus External link, opens in new window., our main search tool?

  • Yes, with limitations. While outside of NAI you need to be signed in to see results.

 

Privacy policy including information about cookies External link, opens in new window.

Peer-reviewed bibliographies. Short introductions followed by listing of annotated citations. Regularly updated. We subscribe to two subject areas, both including a few hundred articles/topics each:

Access options for full contents

  • Remotely?: Not currently
  • At NAI premises on wifi: No
  • At NAI premises on desktop computers: Yes

Searchable in AfricaLit Plus?

  • Yes

Privacy policy including information about cookies External link.

Peer-reviewed, regularly updated encyclopedia. We subscribe to the subject area African history, which includes close to 400 articles.

Access options for full contents

  • Remotely?: Not currently
  • At NAI premises on wifi: No
  • At NAI premises on desktop computers: Yes

Searchable in AfricaLit Plus?

  • No

Privacy policy including information about cookies External link.

76 collections, 20K+ objects, 190K+ pages focusing on the liberation struggles in Southern Africa, with an emphasis on Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. More info on JSTOR website External link, opens in new window..

Access:

Privacy policy including information about cookies External link, opens in new window.

 


Free Africa-specific databases

AfricaBib External link, opens in new window.. Five bibliographic databases in one: Africana Periodical Literature, African Women, Women Travelers, Explorers and Missionaries to Africa: 1763-2004, Islam in contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa, and Kenya Coast.

ASKIA - Access to Scientific Knowledge in Africa External link, opens in new window.. United Nations Economic Commission for Africa's federated search portal for scientific and socio-economic information on Africa from several different sources - including Open Access literature, commercial databases, online journals, (UN)ECA publications, etc.

Connecting Africa External link, opens in new window.. A service that provides access to African research information and materials produced in the Netherlands and elsewhere.

IlissAfrica - Internet Library Sub-Saharan Africa External link, opens in new window.. Find literature, internet resources, contacts and further information concerning African Studies,

Noovell External link, opens in new window.. Global news aggregator with a focus on politics and current affairs. In English. Specific section for Africa and also subpages for each country.

Publishing, Books & Reading in Sub-Saharan Africa : A Critical Bibliography External link, opens in new window.. An online version of the book with the same title.



Current research on Africa in the Nordic countries

Nordic countries each have national portals for academic research published. The repositories contain a mix of references and open access fulltexts.

Denmark

Research Portal Denmark

The Research Portal Denmark External link, opens in new window. (launched in March 2024) facilitates "discovery, exploration, and analysis of Danish research – from input, to output, and impact".

Direct search:

Finland

Research.fi

Research.fi contains information on the Finnish research system, publications by Finnish organizations, projects funded by public and private research funders, and statistical information on the development of research resources and impact. The service is planned to be extended to research data and other data sets in the future.

Direct search:

Iceland

Opin vísindi

The institutional repository of several universities on Iceland hold peer reviewed articles and dissertations open access. It is possible to search with combined search terms as well as to limit search results according to year etc.

Direct search:

Skemman

Skemman is a collective digital repository for publications until 2016 for universities on Iceland. Skemman contains both full text as well as references and it is possible to search and browse.

Direct search:

Norway

CRISTIN Current Research Information System In Norway

Collective database for academic output in Norway.

Direct search:

Sweden

Swepub

Swepub contains references to research publications registered in at present approximately 40 of the Swedish universities and of other authority publication databases.

Direct search:


Free general databases

DART-Europe E-theses Portal External link, opens in new window.. Search electronically published open access dissertations and theses from hundreds of European universities.

Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB). External link, opens in new window. Search and browse peer reviewed, scholarly open access books.

Doria. External link, opens in new window. Multi-institutional repository maintained by National Library of Finland.

The Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) External link, opens in new window.
Search for full text theses and dissertations in the NDLTD Catalog.

NORA. External link, opens in new window. Norwegian open research archives

OAPEN Library. External link, opens in new window. Freely accessible academic books, mainly in the area of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Open Knowledge Repository. External link, opens in new window. The World Bank’s official open access repository for its research outputs and knowledge products, among others reports, journal articles, serial publications, working papers etc.

The Swedish Media Database (SMDB). External link, opens in new window. Search TV and radio broadcasts, documentary films and much more, some of them with an African focus. Researchers can order materials from the SMDB and access the material either at the National Library in Stockholm or as an interlibrary loan on DVD at a university library. SMDB is only available in Swedish.

SwePub. External link, opens in new window. Academic publications at Swedish universities. Search among scholarly articles, conference papers and dissertations etc.


Library catalogues

Libraries and archives. From Africa south of the Sahara. Selected internet resources ed. by Karen Fung, Stanford University Libraries & Academic Information Resources. [Archived at the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/http://library.stanford.edu/africa-south-sahara/browse-topic/libraries-archives External link, opens in new window.]

African Studies Centre Catalogue. Search the library collection of ASC, Leiden, The Netherlands; social and economic development, political and constitutional developments, as well as anthropology, sociology, religion, law, education, contemporary history and literature.
https://catalogue.leidenuniv.nl/primo-explore/search?vid=UBL_V1&search_scope=lib_asc&sortby=rank&tab=leiden&lang=en_US&mode=simple External link, opens in new window.

BCEA, the Portuguese Central Library of African Studies. https://bcea.cei.iscte-iul.pt/en/catalog/ External link, opens in new window.

Bibliotèque nationale de France with several catalogues to search. http://www.bnf.fr/ External link, opens in new window.

British Library. https://bll01.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/search?vid=44BL_INST:BLL01&lang=en External link, opens in new window.

Clark Library, MLibrary - Stephen S. Clark Library, MLibrary, Univ. of Michigan, for Maps and Government Information. https://www.lib.umich.edu/clark-library External link, opens in new window.

IDS/BLDS. British Library for Development Studies at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), Brighton, UK. Library catalogue and other resources on economic and social change in developing countries. http://blds.ids.ac.uk/search-the-collection External link, opens in new window.

The Library Network catalogue, serving the World Bank Group and IMF. https://library.worldbankimflib.org/ External link, opens in new window.

Library of Congress. https://catalog.loc.gov/ External link, opens in new window.

NU Libraries Searchcat. Catalogue of the Northwestern University Libraries. Search special NU Databases, Africana Conference Paper Index and the Africana Vertical File Index. https://search.library.northwestern.edu External link, opens in new window.

School of Oriental and African Studies. https://library.soas.ac.uk/ External link, opens in new window.

University library of Mainz / The Library of the Department of Anthropology and African Studies. http://opac.ub.uni-mainz.de/ External link, opens in new window.

University of Vienna, African and Middle Eastern Studies Library / African Studies Holding 1991-. https://usearch.univie.ac.at/primo-explore/search?vid=UWI&lang=en_US External link, opens in new window.

WorldCat (OCLC). Cross search a database of over 1 billion books, music, videos, articles and other items in more than 10,000 libraries worldwide. https://www.worldcat.org/ External link, opens in new window.