Aluka is a new electronic resource available from the VCU Libraries. A Zulu word meaning “to weave," Aluka is an international, collaborative initiative to build an online digital library of full-text scholarly resources about Africa. An ongoing project that links researchers around the world, Aluka features materials posted by partner institutions that document the history, culture, and biodiversity of Africa. Resources include archival documents, periodicals, books, reports, manuscripts, and reference works, as well as three-dimensional models, maps, oral histories, plant specimens, and photographs. Aluka collections are divided into three main categories: African Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes; African Plants; and Struggles for Freedom in Southern Africa.
African Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes makes available an extensive range of materials related to significant cultural centers of Africa, the history of African exploration, maps of Africa throughout history, travelers’ accounts, aerial and satellite photography, and ongoing scholarly research.
African Plants comprises scientific data from the African Plants Initiative (a collaboration of more than 50 research centers in Africa, Europe, and the United States) and features high-resolution digital images drawn from the estimated 60,000 plant species native to Africa, Madagascar, and the other islands surrounding the African continent.
Struggles for Freedom in Southern Africa reflects the regional and global nature of political movements to achieve de-colonization. Documents in this collection address issues of colonial rule and international efforts that supported generations of resistance. A growing collection, with more than 180,000 pages of documents, nationalist publications, records of colonial government commissions, local newspaper reports, personal papers, correspondence, UN documents, out-of-print books of special relevance, oral testimonies, life histories, and speeches – as well as an extensive collection of documentary photographs.
Aluka will continue to expand these extensive collections, and add important new collections in the coming months and years – with particular focus on the histories of individual nations. Current collections that will be significantly expanded with additions of documents still being processed include the United Nations Documents collection and the World Council of Churches Programme to Combat Racism Collections. Finding aids, research guides, and bibliographies, intended to provide additional leads to information on a wide range of relevant materials held at scholarly institutions in Africa and around the world, will soon be available.