Africa's Sources of Knowledge Digital Library (ASK-DL)

The Africa’s Sources of Knowledge Digital Library (ASK-DL) is a collaborative effort to build a digital library that makes accessible rare and out-of-print African-language documents of literary and historical importance.
ASK-DL Screenshot

In Project ASK-DL, we are actively working with dedicated national and international collaborators collecting documents written in unique African scripts. These scripts are found in unpublished booklets, poetry, essays, treatises, travelogues, private letters, and other documents.

Project ASK- DL focuses on eight languages from West and East Africa:

  1. Amharic
  2. Berber
  3. Mandinka
  4. Oromo
  5. Somali
  6. Swahili
  7. Tigrigna
  8. Wolof

Project ASK-DL works with the Harvard College Library (HCL) personnel in order to target, digitize, catalog, and index the documents, with the primary goal of making them available to the world in a digital library that is intended to grow and expand in its holdings of materials reflecting Africa’s sources of knowledge.

The project is pioneering the consolidation of information contained in African documents written in non-Roman and non-Arabic scripts as well as selected handwritten documents and availing them to the world in a freely accessible online electronic library.

Visit the ASK-DL Website