Quarterly Index of African Periodical Literature Merges with AfricaBib

The African Studies Centre (ASC) in Leiden, the Netherlands and the Library of Congress’s Nairobi Office are pleased to announce the merger of the database of the Library’s Quarterly Index of African Periodical Literature (1991-2011) with the ASC’s Africana Periodical Literature AfricaBib database.

This is exciting for African Studies as it will allow researchers to consult one significantly enhanced database instead of two separate and smaller databases. Some 51,000 QIAPL citations from 750 journals from 29 Sub-Saharan African countries will be added to the ASC’s AfricaBib database, which will then have almost 200,000 entries. Wherever possible, QIAPL citations will include links to the full text of an article to make elusive articles with original African content easier to access. The merger will be effective as of March 31, 2013.

From 1991 until 2011, the Library of Congress (Nairobi Office) published the Quarterly Index of African Periodical Literature. Scholarly journals were usually selected for inclusion but other materials of a less scholarly nature were also chosen to cover subject areas not found in more readily available literature (e.g. prisons), organizations that do not frequently circulate their publications (e.g. NGOs) and each of the countries in the region. The Index served as an essential bibliographic resource at a time when few African journals were being included in international indexing resources.

The URL for the merged databases, which is hosted by the ASC, is http://www.africabib.org/perio.htm. If you require any further information about the merger, please contact to Jos Damen, Director of the ASC Library, at JDamen@ascleiden.nl