Access to the College Green area of campus will be restricted until further notice. Current students, faculty and staff with a valid Penn card may enter and exit Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center through the Rosengarten Undergraduate Study Center on the ground floor, and may enter and exit the Fisher Fine Arts Library through the 34th Street entrance to Meyerson Hall. 

During reading period, April 30 to May 14: Access to both Van Pelt and Fisher Fine Arts Library is limited. Find more information.

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African Studies Collection

The Penn Libraries have substantial Africa holdings, covering all subject areas, with concentrations in history; ethnography; archaeology; Western-language African literature and media; political science and law; local non-Arabic African languages and literature; and economics. Print collections are shared among Van Pelt Library, the Penn Museum Library, and other departmental libraries.

Overview

Collection Description

Local African languages and their literature are an important component of the collection, with more than 5,400 titles held in 96 languages (June 2018). Well-represented languages include Swahili, Amharic, Yoruba, Afrikaans, Shona, Malagasy, and Tigrinya; recent acquisitions and gifts have strengthened Wolof, Fula, Setswana, and Hausa holdings. Complete sets of locally-published graded language textbooks in multiple editions are held for Swahili, Igbo, and Yoruba.

The Penn Libraries media collections for African studies are among the largest in the Ivy Plus group, with more than 1,000 Africa-related sound recordings and more than 2,100 videos and videostreams.

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