As a committed archive rat, I firmly believe that determined scrounging through original sources in multiple archives remains the gold standard for research in history. But even the most committed archive-based researchers must celebrate the increasing availability of digitalized primary sources on the web. Such materials are especially valuable for transnational and comparative histories, making available primary sources in distant places.
I recently came across a new resource of potential interest to legal historians: digitalized anti-apartheid periodicals from South Africa.
From the website Finding World History: "The Digital Imaging Project of South Africa (DISA) has digitized 38 anti-apartheid periodicals covering the period 1960 to 1990. These years were pivotal for South Africa’s liberation struggle against the apartheid system....
"For many years, scholars and activists have documented South Africa’s path to freedom. In 2001 the ANC-led South African government’s Road to Democracy project was established to collect oral and written sources on anti-apartheid campaigns. An important component of this effort is DISA. Funded by the U.S.-based Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, DISA brought together a group of South African historians and archivists to identify and retrieve relevant periodicals for public access. The DISA documents, many of them published in the 1970s and 1980s, are written primarily in English, but include some documents in Afrikaans, isiZulu, seTswana and siXhosa."
For the rest, and access to the sources, go here.
