| BLACK
THOUGHT AND CULTURE
Another notable resource from
Alexander Street
, this site connects students and scholars with nonfiction works by
leading African Americans. The materials, currently 619 sources by
246 authors, document “the development of African American thought
from its beginning to the present” and support research in the
humanities and social sciences. The site is guided by editorial
advisers Sharon Harley (
Univ.
of
Maryland
), Russell Adams (Howard Univ.) and Clayborn Carson (
Stanford
Univ.
), and was last updated in November 2004. At completion, the site
will contain about 100,000 pages of books, articles, interviews,
speeches, and letters. Sources include familiar works (Autobiography
of Malcolm X and W.E.B. DuBois’s The
Souls of Black Folks) in their entirety, as well as fugitive and
previously unpublished materials. Ease of navigation and wealth of
primary sources are this resource’s major strengths.
Tables of contents allow users to browse documents by
multiple facets, including author and source name, years, personal
and historical events, subjects (geographical locations,
organizations and institutions, persons) and broad and narrow topics
(economics, religion, equality, interracial marriage, travel). Find
and Search features help experienced researchers locate sources and
individual documents and generous hypertext links between documents
help users see relationships between people and events.
The Help section is visible and thorough. A special Showcase
feature currently includes images of select issues of the Black
Panther Party newspaper. Users less familiar with these African
American leaders would benefit from photographs and information
about authors that includes their historical significance.
Summing Up: Highly
recommended. General and academic collections. – D.C.
Wright,
University
of
Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign

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