Library Projects and Activities in or about...

L’AFRIQUE QUI DISPARAIT! THE CONGO POSTCARDS OF CASIMIR ZAGOURSKI
Exhibition based on the Casimir Zagourski postcard collection, now part of the Library's African Collection, which consists of 200 postcards made from photographs taken by Casimir Zagourski in Africa between 1924 and 1941, which formed a part of his overal project, "L'Afrique Qui Disparait" (Disappearing Africa). The photos are set in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly known as the Belgian Congo), Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Chad, Kenya, Central African Republic, Cameroon, and Congo-Brazzaville. The postcards depict a variety of aspects of everyday life in these different settings, including, for example, housing styles and traditional grave sites.

Sterling Memorial Library (Nave), jANUARY 15 - February 28, 2007.

Collaborative Research on Encoding and Preserving Materials in Bamum Script
In August 2006, at the request of the Bamum Scripts and Archives Project, Charles Riley worked for two weeks in Foumban, Cameroon, to collect materials for use in the preservation of the Bamum script, in order to develop a proposal for its digital encoding. Invented and in use since the 1890's, this script is represented by a sizable archive of unpublished materials housed in the Foumban Royal Palace. Efforts to preserve this collection are being made possible, in part, through the Endangered Archives Programme administered by the British Library and sponsored by the Lisbet Rausing Charitable Fund.

Time frame: 2006

Contact: Charles Riley, Catalog Assistant

The Records of the Church of Uganda
The Divinity School Library is partnering with Uganda Christian University (UCU) to archive and microfilm Christian records in Uganda and the Great Lakes region of East Africa. The records cover the history of the Anglican Church of Uganda and are kept at the UCU archives located in Mukono, about fifteen miles northeast of Kampala. The project is being financed under the Latourette Initiative for the Documentation of World Christianity. The microfilming is expected to begin in September 2006.

Time frame: 2006 onward

Contact: Paul Stuehrenberg, Divinity Librarian

Microfilming of the Sudan United Mission Archives
The archives of the Sudan United Mission are currently held at the Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World at the University of Edinburgh. With income from the Latourette Initiative for the Documentation of World Christianity, the Yale Divinity School Library has agreed to underwrite the cost of filming this archive. Adam Matthew Publications will be the vendor.

Time frame: 2005-06

Contact: Paul Stuehrenberg, Divinity Librarian

Journal of Religion in Africa
At the suggestion of the editors of the Journal of Religion in Africa, which was not held at any African institution, the Yale Divinity School Library agreed to underwrite the cost of a subscription to the journal for selected African institutions in return for their sending us “grey” literature documenting Christianity in their regions.

Time frame: 2005-06

Contact: Paul Stuehrenberg, Divinity Librarian

Proposal to Add the Vai Script to the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP) of the Universal Character Set (UCS)
Working Group document written by Michael Everson (writing systems expert and Unicode Standard co-author), Charles Riley, and José Rivera (CDLI [Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative] Research Associate, UCLA) as a proposal to add the West African Vai script to the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP) of the Universal Character Set (UCS).

The Vai writing system, in use in Liberia since the mid-19th century, will be included into a future release of the Unicode Standard for character encoding. This will allow for enhanced communication and computing in the Vai language, which will in turn increase accessibility to archival texts written using its script.

Time frame: 2005

Contact: Charles Riley, Catalog Assistant

Archiving The Papers of Gakaara wa Wanjau
Dorothy Woodson, Curator of the African Collection, with the assistance of Derek Peterson, Director of the African Studies Centre at Cambridge University, is organizing the manuscript materials and published papers of the noted Kenyan journalist, publisher and dissident, Gakaara wa Wanjau (1921-2001), and providing a copy, along with the originals, to the National Library of Kenya.

Time frame: 2004-onward

Contact: Dorothy Woodson, Curator, African Collection

Casimir Zagourski Postcard Collection
Casimir Zagourski, of Polish parentage, was born in the Ukraine in 1880. After a military career in the Russian air force and the Polish army, he left Eastern Europe and moved to Africa in 1924, settling in Leopoldville, now Kinshasa, Congo, where he began his career as a photographer. During the next seventeen years, until his death in 1941, Zagourski traveled around Central Africa photographing its people, places, and local traditions. At the same time, he established and maintained a store in Leopoldville to sell these images as postcards and large prints. He also exhibited his work at the Paris World's Fair in 1937.

This extraordinary collection consists of 200 postcards made from photographs taken by Casimir Zagourski in Africa between 1924 and 1941, which formed a part of his overal project, "L'Afrique Qui Disparait" (Disappearing Africa). The photos are set in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly known as the Belgian Congo), Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Chad, Kenya, Central African Republic, ameroon, and Congo-Brazzaville. The postcards depict a variety of aspects of everyday life in these different settings, including, for example, housing styles and traditional grave sites.

Time-frame: 2003

Contact: Dorothy Woodson, Curator, African Collection; Carol King, Archives Assistant, Manuscripts and Archives

David E. Apter Collection
This online exhibit represents the photographic work of David E. Apter, the Henry J. Heinz II Professor of Comparative Political and Social Development Emeritus at Yale. These photographs were taken to complement field research on African nationalism and the transition to independence from 1952 to 1960. They represent ordinary life during the last and final years of colonialism when expectations for a bright political future were running high, and the political and social complexities of life in a post-colonial world as not yet struck home.

Time-frame: 2002

Contact: Dorothy Woodson, Curator, African Collection

Cooperative Africana Microform Project (CAMP)
The Cooperative Africana Microform Project (CAMP), founded in 1963, is a joint effort by research libraries throughout the world and the Center for Research Libraries (CRL), in Chicago, to promote the preservation of publications and archives concerning the nearly fifty nations of Sub-Saharan Africa and to make these materials in microform available to researchers. CAMP acquires expensive microform sets and authorizes original filming of unique research materials in North America, Africa, and Europe. The microform collections of CAMP form a large pool of historical, political, linguistic, economic and geographical data and primary source materials that are not available elsewhere. Member libraries can rely on the vast microform collections of newspapers and journals and, thereby, avoid the high costs of acquiring, cataloging, and storing these materials locally.

Time-frame: 1963-onward

Contact: Dorothy Woodson, Curator, African Collection