For now, I am excited to say that the spreadsheet of African folktales (which includes more broadly myths, legends, all kinds of traditional storytelling) ended up here with over 10,000 items; 10,077 to be precise. Those stories come from 545 different books and articles that you can find online at the Internet Archive; all the links are in the spreadsheet, story by story. When I started this project back in May (here's the very first post), I knew I would find great resources at the Archive... but I never imagined it would be this comprehensive. There are materials here for readers at any level — K-12 students, college students, independent scholars, and all the book-lovers out there — to explore the storytelling traditions of Africa in real depth.
Some of those are public domain sources, and some are more recent publications available thanks to Controlled Digital Lending. If you are not aware of the current legal battle around Controlled Digital Lending, I would urge you to learn more about that and to lend your support. You can find out more here about the Internet Archive's legal fight in defense of their right to loan out digital copies of the physical books in its possession based on strict controls that mean only one copy of the book is ever in circulation at any one time:
If you use Twitter, you can tweet your support with the hashtag #ControlledDigitalLending.
As I've explained in previous spreadsheet updates, you can do searches and create data filters at this shared spreadsheet of stories from Africa, and you can also copy the spreadsheet for your own use. For example, I have my own copy of the spreadsheet where I keep track of which stories have animals, stories I want to use for a "tiny tales" project, etc. etc.
Below are just a few of the books I've indexed since the last update; the links below go to the book at Internet Archive: so many beautiful books, and all just a click away thanks to Controlled Digital Lending. As you'll see, one of the new books is one that I wrote, using the great resources available online at the Archive. So, as always, THANK YOU, Internet Archive, for making it possible for us to learn about the great storytelling traditions of Africa this way.
Thanks. Wonderful content. I appreciate your sincere dedication and hard work. Is there a way to know which one of these are in the public domain? Thanks.
ReplyDeleteI have not gone through and tagged them like that, but what I should do is filter out a list of public domain titles and links separately; I've got a different spreadsheet that I can filter by year. I'll do that this weekend and I'll put another reply here to let you know (or you can send me an email at laurakgibbs@gmail.com and I'll reply to you directly that way). I'm actually working on an anthology of some public domain stories for a related project: Bibliography and Anthology which I hope to finish in March! :-)
DeleteI've done a quick listing of books and articles in the public domain (published 1926 and earlier) here:
DeletePublic Domain Items. I hope that might be helpful.
You have done prodigious work here! Anytime I enter Internet Archive, I lose myself and end up spending more time than I planned. But this should keep me focused for a while (or a looong while, really). Thanks, Laura!
ReplyDeleteTHANK YOU! I know exactly that feeling: having these themed-projects at Internet Archive gives me a focus, but along the way I'm accumulating heaps and heaps of bookmarks to other books that show up in searches, books written by these same authors or illustrated by these same illustrators... which will have to end up in some kind of project sooner or later. It's endless book-fun at the Archive! :-)
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