More Tips on doing Internet research in Nigeria
In response to last week’s column, I received an email from one of the savviest researchers I know: Professor Abdalla Uba Adamu at Bayero University. He has some excellent suggestions for other online research tools, which I will copy below. Although some of the tools he suggests are not free or require institutional support, they […]
In response to last week’s column, I received an email from one of the savviest researchers I know: Professor Abdalla Uba Adamu at Bayero University. He has some excellent suggestions for other online research tools, which I will copy below. Although some of the tools he suggests are not free or require institutional support, they are, nevertheless, good to know about. If your university or non-profit organization does not have access to these tools, you should pressure the librarian to register the institution. I have copied Professor Abdalla’s contribution in italics below:
I read your column on internet searching. As one of the topics for my MPhi/PhD class, it caught my interest. I thought it was good, BUT probably space limited you to the tip of the iceberg as you yourself suggested!
For Nigerian students, researchers and independent scholars, Questia (questia.com) is an excellent collection of books, journals, magazines that provide a massive source of first class references. I mention Nigeria because the subscription charges for a year cost $100 and can be paid through a Nigerian bank (my GTBank naira mastercard does the trick).
EBSCO Host (http://search.epnet.com/) and Project Muse (http://muse.jhu.edu/) are both institution-based, but provide a more updated material to JSTOR’s excellent historical archives. I think ASUU should force all universities to provide ALL staff members access to these depositories! It’d certainly spice up our conference presentations and lectures — using 2012 references instead of 1990s!
The excellent Google Scholar you referred to uses a little known software to extract books and chapters – GooReader. Most Google Books readers would know of course you may not download the books you have opened in the browser […] However, GooReader enables you to actual load the book from Google Books and in most cases (about 90% or more) would allow you to get about 30 pages from the book! Not perfect, but at least you have enough for a citation! In one lucky case, I was able to download the ENTIRE Religion and Political Culture in Kano by John Paden, a rare and expensive book (at $44 from Amazon).[…]
Finally, Worldcat.Org provides an excellent tool for frustrated researchers. Remember reading a particular book, but can’t remember the author? Or which citation style to use? Well WorldCat provides you with all these — just input the name of the book, and the author and other publication details appear; in addition, it also gives you the opportunity to export the details of the book in one of the five citation styles: thus ensuring consistency in your bibliography or referencing system.
In addition to these suggestions from Professor Abdalla, Dr. K. Korb in the Faculty of Education at University of Jos pointed me to National Academies Press, which offers over 4000 books and reports, most of which deal with science, engineering, health and education topics, available for free pdf downloads. She also alerted me to Africa Journals Online, which on its site claims to be “the world’s largest online collection of African-published, peer-reviewed scholarly journals.” If you register with the site, you can find some open-access content, though it seems that because Nigeria is considered to be a lower middle-income country, articles that are not “open-access” cost $9 each. Another database Dr. Korb mentioned is that of the academic journal publisher Taylor and Francis, which through their “STAR” programme offers one time trial vouchers for access to their database for up to 30 days.
I also talked to Dr. Stephen Akintunde, the Deputy Librarian at the University of Jos, who told me about Hinari, a database for research in health and medicine, which provides free access to over 15,000 journals. Although Hinari’s website says that a researcher needs to access the articles through an institution, I was able to access free articles with my personal internet modem. Another resource Dr. Akintunde mentioned was the World Bank Library, which requires an institutional subscription to access all 8,000 peer reviewed publications on the site. However, there is still much free content even if you don’t belong to an institution. He also mentioned the IMF Library. Although there are currently only five Nigerian institutions listed as subscribers on the IMF’s website, the IMF library provides access free of charge to academic, non-profit, and government institutions as long as librarians register their universities. Other research databases available to institutions, who register for them, free of charge or for a small fee are ARDI (Access to Research for Development and Innovation), AGORA (Global Online Research in Agriculture), OARE (Online Access to Research in the Environment), TEEAL (the Essential Electronic Agricultural Library), the ACU (Association of Commonwealth Universities), all of which provide access to massive journal article databases.
In the course of following through on Dr. Korb and Dr. Akintunde’s tips, I also came across the following initiatives open to individuals: The African Digital Library has a collection of 8,714 books. Although you have to fill out an application form before you are granted access, the ADL website claims they make their collection available free of charge to anyone living on the African continent. Another resource that might be useful for those doing historical research is the African Book Bank Online, which allows users to “download scholarly publications in sub-Saharan Africa that appeared before 1960.” On most of these sites there are also “links” pages, which provide links to a truly overwhelming number of global digitization and database projects on almost any topic you can imagine. Rather than reprinting them all here, I would encourage you to explore for yourself, using the names I’ve provided as starting points.
Hopefully, these tips will 1) encourage librarians to sign up for databases which are offered to African institutions free of charge, 2) prove useful to students and lecturers alike as they prepare and write up their research. Good luck, and email me if you have any other suggestions!