La Biblioteca virtuale dell’Africa sub-Sahariana è un portale che consente un accesso integrato a risorse informative tradizionali (libri, riviste ecc.) e digitali (siti web, documenti digitali) di notevole interesse scientifico. Il portale interroga simultaneamente una serie di cataloghi e banche dati, facilitando l’operazione di ricerca.

The internet library sub-Saharan Africa (ilissAfrica) is a portal that offers an integrated access to relevant scientific conventional and digital information resources on the sub-Saharan Africa region. Information scattered on private or institutional websites, databases or library catalogues are brought together in order to facilitate research. Without ilissAfrica this information has to be collected in a laborious and time-consuming process.

ilissAfrica allows simultaneous searching (“General search”) in the following electronic resources:

• Library Catalogue UB Frankfurt (mainly books)
• Africa Section of the database World Affairs Online incl. the Africa library catalogue of GIGA Hamburg (books and journal articles) as from 1985
• Library Catalogue of the African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands (books and journal articles)
• Library Catalogue of the Nordic Africa Institute (NAI) in Uppsala/Sweden
• Library Catalogue of the Department of Anthropology and African Studies at Mainz University with Jahn Library and AMA
• SSG-Section of the Swets database “Online Contents” (titles of journal articles)
• Database on internet resources with more than 3000 websites on sub-Saharan Africa

Furthermore an Africa Section of the Electronic Journals Library (EZB) to search E-Journals is provided.

ilissAfrica is a project of the Africa Department of the University Library Johann Christian Senckenberg in Frankfurt on the Main in cooperation with the GIGA Information Centre: Africa Library in Hamburg. Together they are in charge of the DFG Special Collections on sub-Saharan Africa.

The project is financed by the DFG. It is embedded in the cross-disciplinary portal for virtual libraries vascoda.

ilissAfrica supports the association “European Librarians in African Studies” (ELIAS) as a european network aiming to promote professional exchange and cooperation among its members. The “Africa Section” of the Electronic Journals Library (EZB) was one source for the Wikipedia-article “African Studies Journals“.

URL: <http://www.ilissafrica.de/en/about/iliss-project.html>