Liberia Documents from the Library of Congress
- African American Perspectives: Pamphlets from the Daniel A.P.Murray Collection, 1818-1907Nine documents related to the American Colonization Society's work in Liberia. Full-text. Includes the reports of the ACS, each report containing a variety of materials (the constitution of ACS, selected correspondence related to ACS, etc.).
Top Seven
Listed below are the top seven resources you'll want to consult for information on the history and culture of Africa to 1900. These resources include:
- scholarly resources and scholarly background information (secondary and tertiary sources)
- primary source materials
- image collections (photographs, artwork, material culture items)
The resources are in alphabetical, not priority, order.
- AfricaBib: Africana Periodical Literature Bibliographic DatabaseBegun in 1974, this online database indexes articles on all aspects of African Studies. Its design is a bit old but very serviceable. No full-text and no links provided to Baylor's holdings; cut and paste the journal name into the BearCat search tab to see if we own it; fill out an interlibrary loan (OsoFast) request if we don't.
There are two specialized AfricaBib databases listed in the "Scholarly Journal Articles" tab. - African American NewspapersFull-text of 8 major newspapers published by African Americans between 1827 – 1902.
- African Repository and Colonial JournalMagazine published by the American Colonization Society from 1825 - 1892, the title was sometimes shortened to just African Repository. This publication reports on the conditions in the colonies in Liberia and Sierra Leone for freed slaves from America, the growth and funding of the Society, and other topics related to slavery and the slave trade. This collection covers up to 1850 as part of the larger collection "American Periodicals."
- America: history and life This link opens in a new window
Scholarly and peer reviewed articles on the history of the United States and Canada.
- Empire online This link opens in a new windowContains primary sources and scholarly essays on all topics related to "empire." Sources include missionary reports, travel journals and tales, slave narratives, diaries, and images. Covers 1492 - the early 1960's.
- Historical abstracts This link opens in a new windowIndexes and provides abstracts to scholarly journal articles, conference papers, dissertations, books and book reviews in history for all countries except the United States and Canada (for the U.S. and Canada use America: History & Life). Since every subject has a history all subjects are covered, from accounting and biology to warfare and zoology, not just traditional "history.", Includes research on eras from prehistory to the present. Basic, advanced, and visual search features, limits by time period, country, year of publication of article, language of publication, in addition to subject, author, keyword, etc. EBSCO.
Another Primary Source Collection
In the "Top Six" box I mention the primary source collection Empire Online, but this is not the only primary source collection you'll discover as you search BearCat for books and resources. If you encounter "microform," "microfiche," and "microfilm," don't ignore these types of materials. This was the only format before digital copies and many worthwhile resources are still in this format. We have scanners which will allow you to copy the microfiche/microfilm into a PDF format that you can save to a flash or thumb drive - all for free.
Library of American Civilization (LAC)
This is a collection you'll come across fairly often when searching for books in BearCat. It was a project to copy in microform (a photograph, essentially), important books on the founding and development of the United States from Colonial times up to World War I. The types of materials include books (fiction,non-fiction, plays, biographies, and poetry), pamphlets, magazines, and private and public documents (diaries, letters, business records, etc.).
You'll be able to identify these items because they will not have a call number but they will have the phrase "Library of American Civilization ; LAC XXXXX-XX" in the Series line as in the illustration below:
Come to the Jones Information Desk and someone there will be able to help you get the right microfiche card and use the ProScanner to make a PDF of the item you want.
