Aluka


Aluka was an online digital library focusing on materials about Africa. Aluka's mission is to connect scholars from around the world by building a common platform that allows online collaboration and knowledge sharing. Aluka's audience is higher education and research communities worldwide.
Aluka is an initiative of Ithaka Harbors, which is a non profit organization that has a mission of incubating promising new projects that support the use of technology for the benefit of higher education. An assumption of the incubation process is that successful projects will eventually become independent or join larger, existing organizations serving the academic community. In June 2008, the Ithaka and JSTOR Trustees approved a recommendation that the Aluka initiative be integrated into JSTOR.
Founded in 2003, Aluka was an initiative of Ithaka, a non-profit organization based in New York City and Princeton, New Jersey. The initial funding was provided by the Mellon Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Stavros S. Niarchos Foundation.
The first release of Aluka took place in early February 2007 with preview access to JSTOR subscribers. In Africa, Aluka is free to all academic and other not-for-profit institutions.
The name 'Aluka' is derived from a Zulu word meaning 'to weave'.
Aluka seeks to attract other collections of scholarly interest from institutions and individuals worldwide. By bringing materials together, Aluka creates new opportunities for research and collaboration. Documents and materials that were previously hard or impossible to access are now available for researchers around the world.

Content

Initial focus of Aluka digital library is in three major areas: