The Library is pleased to announce online access to The African American Experience. The resource is described as:

The widest-ranging and easiest-to-use online collection on African American life ever assembled, The African American Experience is the definitive electronic research tool for African American history and culture from one of the most respected publishers in the field. The two primary goals: to provide rock-solid information from authorities in the field, and to allow African Americans to speak for themselves through a wealth of primary sources. Drawing on over 300 titles, and designed under the guidance of leading librarians, this database gives voice to the black experience from its African origins to the present day.

It includes:

*Brand new material from major multivolume print reference sets, such as The Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Literature, The Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Folklore, Encyclopedia of Racism in the United States, Encyclopedia of Multiethnic American Literature, The Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Civil Rights, African American Religious Experience in America, and Encyclopedia of Rap and Hip Hop Culture
*A deep backlist of reference books and monographs, many now available in electronic format for the first time
*A vast collection of hundreds and hundreds of primary documents: manuscripts, speeches, court cases, quotations, advertisements, statistics, and other papers
*Over 4,000 interviews with former slaves—the WPA slave narratives—from the acclaimed The American Slave: A Composite
*Autobiography, now re-indexed and for the first time fully searchable
*Sixty-seven Negro University Press texts from the late 1700s to the early 1970s—classics in black scholarship.

Enjoy! —Al Vara