Durham University Library Expands African, Asian and Latin American Scholarship Collections

The Durham University Library has expanded its collections in African, Asian, Middle Eastern and Latin American scholarship. The change follows feedback from students who found that literature searches for their own regions kept returning Western commentary rather than regional research.

New subscriptions include regional economics, public-health, education and management journals, several national research repositories, and indexes that cover work published in languages other than English with English abstracts. Document supply has been widened so that a title the library does not hold can usually be obtained within a working day.

"A student in Nairobi writing about Kenyan health systems should be citing Kenyan researchers," said the University Librarian. "If our collection only lets them cite a paper written about Kenya from London, we have failed them."

Information-literacy workshops now include a session on finding regional scholarship, evaluating journals that are strong regionally but less visible in global indexes, and avoiding predatory titles that target researchers in the same regions.

Amina Yusuf, a public-health officer in Lagos, used the expanded collection for a literature review. "My reference list finally looks like the place I am writing about," she said.

The library desk remains staffed seven days a week across time zones. Students can book a research appointment, request a search strategy, or ask for referencing help from a professional librarian. Collections continue to cover business, computing, health, education, law and the humanities at postgraduate depth.

Requests for titles or databases the library does not yet hold go through the portal and are reviewed each term.

Staff across admissions, registry, teaching and student services are told to design every process as if the default student is studying after a full day's work: recorded sessions, published rubrics, named advisers, and a library desk that does not close at the end of one country's office hours. Durham University will not pretend a programme is light. Applicants should plan their weekly hours before accepting an offer and ask direct questions at the open webinars if a page reads as vague.

Durham University is a pan-African digital university with no campus to relocate to. Founded in 2009, it publishes news that is operational rather than ceremonial: what changed in a programme, who can apply, how assessment works, and how global students get help. Every programme is delivered fully online; there is no campus, and no student is asked to relocate. Questions about the claims in this article should go to the office named as author above.