“The U.S. and Africa,” a wood engraving by Tom Killion, © 1991.

Scholarly resources for Africana studies mainly are represented in the Library’s online catalog. These include printed works (newspapers, books, pamphlets, magazines, and broadsides), collections of unpublished materials such as letters, diaries, photographs, and business files, and the archival record of Bowdoin College.

More detailed descriptions of pertinent research resources, especially for manuscripts, are also available online, as is a comprehensive research guide for Africana Studies that summarizes the indexes, databases, edited versions of primary sources, and reference books available through the library’s collections and services.

The left-hand menu above leads to summaries of resources in Special Collections that are especially rich in documenting the enslavement of Africans, their passage to the Americas, and the subsequent African American experience, particularly in Jamaica and the United States.