“The Library Company of Philadelphia’s Afro-Americana collection has long been one of the essential archives for early African American studies. From broadsides to sermons to pamphlets to narratives, it has been indispensable to every stage of my research. Now its online iteration, Afro-Americana Imprints, 1535-1922, has become central to how I teach early African American literature and print culture. The collection’s breadth (generic, linguistic, geographic) and depth has allowed me to introduce students (graduate and undergraduate) and colleagues to the archive of Afro-Americana in ways heretofore impossible. What once took forays into multiple online sources, microfilm collections, personal archives, and anthologies can now be done through one online interface. More, the organization by Genre, Subject, Author, History of Printing, Place of Publication, and Language provides multiple vectors for engaging the archive. The History of Printing category has been especially helpful for giving a sense of just how vast early African American print production was, while the Genre breakdown provides both organization and points of departure for thinking about how we categorize and canonize texts in the field more broadly. While online interfaces can never replace encounters with material objects, Afro-Americana Imprints and its independently available subset of Black Authors makes getting students excited about archival research much easier. In that sense, it provides a fantastic gateway to black print culture.”
— Derrick R. Spires, Assistant Professor of English, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
“The Library Company’s Afro-Americana Collection is one of the most comprehensive and valuable archives of printed material by and about people of African descent anywhere in the world. From early descriptions of African society and culture to the black struggle for justice in the Americas during the 19th century, it remains a touchstone for scholars and students alike. To have it available online and at your fingertips in a searchable format is a dream come true.”
— Richard Newman, Former Professor of History, Rochester Institute of Technology, and author of Freedom’s Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church and the Black Founding Fathers, and The Transformation of American Abolitionism
“The Afro-Americana Collection at the Library Company is widely recognized as an unparalleled and indispensable resource for scholars of early African-American history and culture. For generations, this rich collection has been available only to those able to work on site in Philadelphia. Today, early African American studies is a global enterprise that includes researchers throughout the United States as well as Europe, Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America. This collaboration between the Library Company and Readex will bring new resources into reach and enrich this still expanding field of research and study.”
— Martha S. Jones, Associate Professor, Department of History and Department of Afroamerican & African Studies, and Affiliated Faculty of Law, University of Michigan, and author of All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture, 1830-1900
“The benefits to scholarship and teaching that will come when the Library Company’s Afro-Americana Collection is made into a digital database are virtually immeasurable. This will be a major step in infusing American history in general with its vitally important African American component. Teachers at all levels will find this a goldmine.”
— Gary Nash, Professor Emeritus and Director, National Center for History in the Schools, University of California, Los Angeles, and author of The Forgotten Fifth: African Americans in the Age of Revolution
“The Library Company of Philadelphia’s Afro-Americana Collection is a crucial resource for those who study the history and literature of Africans in America and of slavery. This extensive collection, meticulously documented, expands our access to literary cultures in America before the early 20th century. Having it in digital form—searchable, incorporating the LCP’s metadata, able to cross-reference with the other elements of the Archive of Americana—will be a major benefit to researchers.”
— Samuel Otter, Professor and Chair, Department of English, University of California, Berkeley, and author of Philadelphia Stories: America’s Literature of Race and Freedom