Africa Speaks: West African University Students Write About Their Lives features a collection of short autobiographical essays written by students in an English-language composition class taught by Dr. Patricia Stoll at the University of Niamey in the Niger Republic. Dr. Stoll, a Fulbright Professor of Writing and Literature, who collected, edited, and published her students' deeply personal life histories, explains that the common denominator in all their stories is the shared experience of becoming "an outsider in one's own country" through a western-style education. Written between 1990 and 1992, the letters touch on a wide range of topics related to the trials of children, adolescents, and young adults in Niger and several other African countries. These include the tensions between individualism and family obligations, gender roles, parenting, love and courtship, rural versus urban life, formal religion and folk beliefs, and most significantly, the trials and consequences of a western-style education.

The Fulbright Association-supported Africa Speaks site that went on-line in 1998 lacks the usability and polish of today's more advanced websites. The student essays are grouped into non-searchable thematically organized collections on: education, childhood, marriage, customs, family, magic and belief, teaching, politics, martyrs, town and country, trouble, heritage, letters home, life stories, and outsider. While the website's overall layout is simple but serviceable, the single spacing and dense formatting of the students' entries make them difficult to read on line. There are also seven galleries of general images featuring the geography and people of Niger. Dr. Stoll also provides a detailed account of her experiences teaching at the University of Niamey.

Despite the site's shortcomings, the great strength of Africa Speaks is the honest and unfiltered voices of the Nigerien students. Rather than being described and defined by journalists, scholars, and other outsiders, they speak for themselves about the experience of growing up in a developing and politically unstable African country during the 1970s and 1980s. Unfortunately, the website offers little guidance on how to contextualize their stories. There is no supporting information on the authors' gender, ethnicity, or regional origin apart from what can be gleaned directly from the entries. Similarly, there is not much information on the intense political upheavals that shook Niger in the early 1990s apart from the information provided by Dr. Stoll. Consequently, it will take some extra reading and research for non-specialists to use these materials. To this end, the following sources will provide a helpful starting place: Jibrin Ibrahim "Political Exclusion, Democratization and Dynamics of Ethnicity in Niger," Africa Today, 41:3 (1994), 15-39; Samuel Decalo, "The Process, Prospects and Constraints of Democratization in Africa," African Affairs, 91:362 (1992), 7-35; Samuel Decalo, Historical Dictionary of Niger, (Lanham MD: Scarecrow Press, 1997); U.S. Department of State, Background Note: Niger; University of Pennsylvania African Studies Center, Niger Page.

With additional preparation, Africa Speaks will provide teachers with some interesting possibilities for lecturing and lesson planning. The simplest but perhaps most productive assignment would be to ask students to compare and contrast their own life and schooling experiences with those of their Nigerien counterparts. Additionally, the essays in the "Magic and Belief 1" and "Customs 2" collections about the importance of rain in agrarian societies provide an opportunity to think about the origins and meanings of the folk customs that western observers often dismiss as primitive superstition. Teachers willing to undertake more detailed background reading in Nigerien history can use the stories about school strikes and general unrest in the "Politics 1" and "Martyrs 1" collections. For students, these will shed new light on how younger Nigerien generations experienced the inherent fear and optimism associated with the populist demands for reform and multi-party democracy that swept through much of sub-Saharan Africa following the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s.

Africa Focus: Sights and Sounds of a Continent is a repository of images, sound clips, and scanned texts produced by the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center. The collection consists of two distinct databases: the Africa Focus: Image and Sound Collection and the Africana Digitization Project. Africa Focus features an impressive 3,000 slides, 500photographs, and 50 hours of sounds collected by University of Wisconsin faculty and staff members from 45 African countries. The Africana Digitization Project offers digitized versions of a handful of European accounts of pre-colonial West Africa, several bibliographic guides to these sources, and a collection of essays on slavery and the slave trade. (These sources are all from the University of Wisconsin libraries.)

Most images in Africa Focus date from the last four decades although there are some of colonial era children. The database is organized into pre-defined collections of images featuring:

• artisans,
• buildings and structures,
• cities and towns,
• education,
• landscape,
• religion,
• women,
• audio clips of songs and singing,
• rites and ceremonies,
• drums, and
• greetings.

The education collection—which is the most relevant to the study of children and youth—consists of 120 pictures of students and school buildings and several audio clips of students singing. Searching "child" and "children" produces 27 and 183 images respectively. There are also 141 images of "boys" and 59 of "girls." A search for "youth" returns 87 pictures of mostly older adolescents and young adults. There is also an "atlas" feature that targets searches to a specific country. Most of the images are high quality and feature relatively detailed citations, and visitors have the option of saving and e-mailing the results of their searches. Listening to and saving the audio files requires a Realplayer media player.

The paired databases comprising Africa Focus: Sights and Sounds of a Continent will be useful to teachers interested in incorporating children's experiences into their courses. Searching the Africana Digitization Project returns several hundred results for children and youth, but teachers will need a fairly advanced background in African history to make effective use of them. The pictures and sounds in Africa Focus are considerably more accessible to non-specialists, but it will still take some care to make proper use of them in the classroom. The collection shows young people wearing a wide variety of clothing engaged in an equally diverse range of activities, and the extensive identifying tags offer useful guidance on how to contextualize each image. Nevertheless, instructors will want to take care to ensure that the pictures featuring non-western topics and themes do not reinforce popular stereotypes of African peoples and cultures.

To this end, exercises drawing on this material can provide a richer understanding of both the unique trials facing young Africans in the second half of the 20th century as well as the similarities and differences with children and youth in other parts of the world. Comparing and contrasting the various images of worship, schooling, work, and play will highlight the vast cultural and ecological diversity of Africa while also demonstrating that there was often nothing particularly unusual or exotic in the way many African children spent their days. Equally important, however, Africa Focus offers key insights into the unique challenges of growing up in a developing society. Instructors can draw on the collection's images of child refugees, laborers, and even soldiers to develop lectures and lesson plans that provide a youthful perspective on some of the key problems that have confronted many African societies in the post-imperial era.

Featuring approximately 600 photographs chronicling daily life and politics in Swaziland, the Swaziland Digital Archives provides visual insights into the experiences of childhood and adolescence in southern Africa over the past century. The Swaziland National Trust Commission hosts the website, but it is the work of a Swaziland-based author and photographer who has collected, scanned, and posted historical images drawn from private collections and the Swaziland National Archives.

The photographs are organized into galleries based on decades, and the collection can by searched by title, date, caption, and photographer. There are also brief historical essays linked to each gallery sketching the main events of each decade, which vary in quality. While the first essays dealing with the late 19th century are detailed and fairly sophisticated, the entries covering the later decades of the 20th century are little more than quick blurbs.

Consequently, non-specialists planning on using the website might wish to consult the following sources: Hilda Kuper, Sobhuza II, Ngwenyama and King of Swaziland: The story of an Hereditary Ruler and His country, (New York: Africana Publishing Company, 1978); Alan Booth, Swaziland: Tradition and Change in a Southern African Kingdom, (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1983); Alan Booth, Historical Dictionary of Swaziland, 2nd Edition, (Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, 2000).

Children and adolescents figure prominently in the collection. Using the "caption" search function, which is more productive than searching "title" tags, yields 19 hits for "children," seven for "student," eight for "boy," 11 for "girl," and four for the antique category of "maiden." Both Swazi and European children (from settler and missionary families) are the subjects of these photographs.

Each image has a catalogue number, approximate date, and a caption that can range from highly informative to whimsical. While the website's search feature is reasonably thorough, it is still worthwhile to browse the galleries for more unconventionally tagged child-related pictures.

If properly contextualized, the images in the Swaziland Digital Archives suggest some interesting possibilities for exploring the various and changing meanings of childhood in 20th-century southern Africa. While the Swazi ruling family dates to the 19th century, modern Swaziland was originally a British protectorate that spent much of the last century under the economic and social influence of South Africa.

The series of photographs chronicling the childhood of Swaziland's Paramount Chief (later iNgwenyama, 'King') Sobhuza II, coupled with two related pictures on the Images of Empire website, illustrate how British imperial officials ruled by co-opting local institutions of authority. These images, which show the young Sobhuza with his mother and grandmother (and queen regent), sitting in state council (Images of Empire, Media ID 00007073), inspecting the present of a toy elephant from the wife of a British imperial official (Images of Empire, Media ID 00007077), and as a young recently enthroned ruler, offer students a unique look into a highly politicized form of African childhood.

The numerous photographs of young Swazi girls and "maidens" in varying degrees of dress and undress are equally illuminating but should be used with caution and are probably not for younger students. Western colonial-era male photographers obviously found them a popular subject, but teachers can give these young Swazi women their proper dignity through lesson plans that consider the cultural and political form and function of their clothing styles.

Grouping their portraits with the collection's corresponding images of young Swazi Catholic "communicants" and European girls in Swaziland (Watts family, St Marks Kids, and Holtman family will help students understand how education, religious conversion, and race shaped the experience of gender and childhood in colonial southern African society. The archive's various initiation and marriage images similarly show how these young western and African Swazi women marked the transition to adulthood (e.g., "Miss Krogh's Wedding," "Wedding Smile," "Umcwasho Maiden," "Umcwasho maidens," Dlamini Khumalo wedding, "Dlamini Khumalo wedding," "lamini Khumalo wedding," and "Dlamini Khumalo wedding," "Sobhuza II, King of Swaziland, with toys," [Images of Empire, Media ID 00007077] "Sobhuza II, King of Swaziland, as a child" [Images of Empire, Media ID 00007073]).

UNICEF—the acronym stands for United Nations Children's Fund—got its initials from its former name "United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund." It now focuses on the state of children's welfare in all countries on a permanent basis, not only in emergency situations. Accordingly, UNICEF's website is much more than just an information portal. It is an active part of UNICEF's work, providing data, involving the public, and raising awareness of important global issues affecting children.

First, the site is a mine of data on children's welfare, with portals for aggregate and country-by-country statistics on child welfare indicators regarding birth, nutrition, education, access to sanitation and disease, to name just a few. Tracking progress in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) is one of the centerpieces of several United Nations organizations, including UNICEF. A good summary portal is the sidebar link to ChildInfo, which highlights UNICEF's flagship publications, The State of the World's Children and Progress for Children, and also provides quick links to individual statistical indicators as well as data collection initiatives such as Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys / MICS3, household surveys in individual countries.

The site offers an excellent combination of comprehensive presentation of data, explanation of that data, and access through easily downloaded reports, data sets, and attractively presented material in multiple formats. For example, the 2009 The State of the World's Children report mentioned above offers: a download of the entire report; demographic information for the whole world as a spreadsheet document or pdf file; beautiful photographs; and individual charts and graphs. Several other studies are available in this way, through multiple links that allow a user to browse the site by interest areas and still reach all of the important information sources. The site also features a well-organized, user-friendly menu bar similar to an FAQ approach, such as "What We Do," "Why We Do It," "UNICEF People," and others. The graphics are colorful but not cluttered.

The most extraordinary aspect of the website is the extent to which children themselves are featured in photographs, videos, interviews and other media. The range of countries and issues represented is extraordinarily diverse, putting faces to child abuse programs, youth with disabilities, and many other ways in which youth are advocating for causes and helping themselves and others in concrete ways. These contributions are not poster children eliciting donations, but calls to action and testimony to individual determination and constructive effort. Voices of Youth is a section of the site where youth can gather information on the important issues, learn about UNICEF initiatives that address them, and participate in discussion forums and activities related to these causes. There are several sections here and in other places on the site for video contests, participation in leadership forums with world leaders, youth reports on local initiatives, and digital diaries, artwork displays, and the like. Teachers will find a lot of material here with which to stimulate discussion, research and create lesson material in a wide variety of disciplines.

A few examples show how the site supports UNICEF's focus on engaging children directly. The "Child-Friendly Report" Have Fun, Be Safe is about everyday safety and injury prevention, addressing standards of living involving rural cooking over open fires, congested cities where children walk and ride bikes in traffic, addressing the full range of human economic and social conditions. The document's chapters on topics such as burns, falls, traffic safety, and poisoning are available separately in five languages that include comic strips, games and illustrated text—perfect for language instruction that provides more than practice texts. The second example is the Unite for Child Survival, Radio Drama Contest, which emphasizes the wide access of radio over other media and engages children's creativity to reinforce messages about children's health and welfare. Digital Diaries on the Voices of Youth section of the UNICEF site include input from children who would otherwise be unheard and invisible, such as Yemetu youth speak out on water and sanitation.

Teachers of modern history and regional or world geography will find a wealth of primary sources on this site that can contribute to filling in a realistic picture of children's situations and the economic, public health, scientific, social, cultural, and political issues that affect them, as well as initiatives of remarkable creativity that are currently being employed to address them. There is much material to use here for comparison with earlier global development efforts, historical situations that helped create these complex challenges, and much to draw upon for engaging discussion and inviting participation.

The World Images site, a project of California State University, is designed for simplicity of use if not aesthetic elegance. It is a utilitarian database well suited to teachers, professors, or students looking for presentation images licensed for educational use on a comprehensive range of subjects including photography, painting, illustration, and material culture with global geographic representation.

The image collections are arranged as thumbnail panes on the home page, each hyperlinked to a list of portfolios that indicate how many images each contains. The site holds an archive of 72,000 images organized into 867 portfolios, and a tutorial shows how to create Community Portfolios. Users can browse the collection using keywords, artists, topics, titles, regions, or periods in quick or advanced search modes. Search results can be viewed as titles with hyperlinked acquisition numbers, as thumbnail images with titles, or as small or zoomable images with their metadata.

Categories include institutional collections in the database, faculty collections, course materials, and a collection of image portfolios correlated to required history topics in the California Educational Standards for grades 4–10. Since these curricular requirements are fairly common across the U.S., and in world history beyond the U.S., this is a valuable resource for teachers.

World Images is rich in images related to children and youth. The "People and Portraits" portfolio contains three sub-categories on children with a total of 1,094 images, some overlapping. They include Children to 1500 (234), Children 1500-2000 (544), and Children of the World (316).

The first is fairly inclusive geographically, but includes many images from Western traditions. The second is almost entirely European and American, and the third includes North and South American, African, Asian, and European children's photos and a few artworks and artifacts. Much of the third collection is the work of photographer Kathleen Cohen.

The following search terms returned images on children and youth: "children" (1000), "childhood" (80), "girl" (382), "boy" (555 items), "infant" (119), and "family" (858). The metadata provided with each image includes title, artist or maker, historical period, region or country of origin, copyright holder of the image, and/or museum holding the object. The individual object view also shows what other collections include the object, and links to other objects by the same artist or unknown generic maker from that culture. The photographs are labeled with title, year, location, and photographer, but nothing further, though some of the titles are very descriptive.

The information associated with World Images is thus limited, providing no further contextualization, nor are there links to descriptive information on museum sites where some are housed, for example. For this reason, the works of art found through this website are starting points for research about children in history rather than destinations. Some images, however interesting, remain mysterious.

Teachers wanting to illustrate already researched lectures or activities with licensed images will find this site a rich resource, especially if the lack of detailed information on the images is not a problem. Interesting objects from the collection can stimulate fruitful discoveries of available research on the web or from books and articles. For example, an image of an ancient baby bottle led to a trove of online information about infant feeding through the centuries.

Teachers can also create thematic collections that can be used for primary source investigations. A number of art images show punishment of children's misbehavior, for example, and children at play, as well as infant equipment from various times and places. These images can be used as exercises in examining primary sources as if they were "found objects" at a site or in an archive.

World History Sources at the Center for History and New Media has extensive lessons, exercises, and scholarly models for analyzing primary sources, including photographs, that could provide tools for working with the rich sources available on this website. A feature called "You be the Historian" could be adapted to interrogating the images from the World Images collections, and would reveal much about childhood by investigating questions to ask, and suggesting how to find answers.

The vast collection of the Metropolitan Museum is effectively arranged and integrated on the www.metmuseum.org website. Navigation of the site is straightforward, enabling efficient browsing or research. Although no specific essays or exhibits on children and youth are found on the site, several hundred artworks relevant to the topic can be located by searching the Collection Database or the Timeline of Art History (TOAH)—more than sites dedicated to the subject.

The Collection Database of 129,022 objects can be searched as a whole, by subject, by curatorial department, or by exhibit. The collection database search is comprehensive, and returned 3629 entries under "children." Childe Hassam is a distracter in this keyword search, but the search "Children NOT Childe" reduced the return to 319 items. "Boy" returned many distracters, but "girl" returned 954 items, and "infant" returned 252 items. "Toys" returned only 21 items, indicating a limitation of the museum's collection in that area. "Youth" returned 186 works and "young" 1741 items. The biggest drawback of the collection search was that many of the works are associated with placeholder images, although the metadata may help locate images elsewhere. As digitization of the collection proceeds, this may improve.

The TOAH is an unmatched resource for educators. The 6,000 included artworks are organized by three integrated elements: maps, timelines, and thematic essays. World and regional maps correlate artwork to eleven world eras and locate it in ten world regions. Timelines place the artworks in historical context, and include key events, political, stylistic and technological periodization. Eight hundred thematic essays provide historical context for groups of artwork and discuss characteristics, techniques, and significance. The essays reveal connections among civilizations and regions, and provide material for comparative study.

Educators searching for information on children in art can locate artworks featuring children and youth by a search of the TOAH, which seems more rewarding than the database search because all of the works are associated with images, and they are easily placed in context by TOAH's features. The searches are conveniently shown by category, so the user can bring up all relevant artworks, essays, timelines or other occurrences with one click.

A TOAH search of "children" found the term in 23 timelines, 153 thematic essays, and 396 works of art. "Figure, Child" in the Subject Index returned 21 essays and 80 works of art, each shown as a thumbnail image with titles. On the subject of childbirth, 15 artworks can be viewed. Terms such as "girl" (97 works), "boy" (9) and "young" or "youth" (4) returned artworks from across the globe and the eras.

An activity using the 97 artworks under "girl" might compare the relative age connoted by the term in various cultures and periods. Some depict small children, while others are clearly young women. A selection of western European drawings and paintings could focus on the changing definition of girlhood over time or explore symbols and objects associated with girlhood. Some of the artworks show girls in active social roles, playing sports and games, fulfilling ritual roles, or being mourned in funerary works. Some of the works are expressions of girls' work in various societies, such as needlework, preparation of trousseaus, or manual labor at home. In short, the collection can be used to gather ideas about girlhood over time and across cultures. Similar explorations about youth and boys could be made. Educators will find many ways to place childhood in historical context using this website.

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-Rom

But when a vessel arrived to conduct us away to the ship, it was a most horrible scene; there was nothing to be heard but rattling of chains, smacking of whips, and the groans and cries of our fellow- men. Some would not stir from the ground, when they were lashed and beat in the most horrible manner. I have forgot the name of this infernal fort; but we were taken in the ship that came for us, to another that was ready to sail from Cape Coast. When we were put into the ship, we saw several black merchants coming on board, but we were all drove into our holes, and not suffered to speak to any of them. In this situation we continued several days in sight of our native land; but I could find no good person to give any information of my situation to Accasa at Agimaque. And when we found ourselves at last taken away, death was more preferable than life, and a plan was concerted amongst us, that we might burn and blow up the ship, and to perish all together in the flames; but we were betrayed by one of our own countrywomen, who slept with some of the head men of the ship, for it was common for the dirty filthy sailors to take the African women and lie upon their bodies; but the men were chained and pent up in holes. It was the women and boys which were to burn the ship, with the approbation and groans of the rest; though that was prevented, the discovery was likewise a cruel bloody scene.

But it would be needless to give a description of all the horrible scenes which we saw, and the base treatment which we met with in this dreadful captive situation, as the similar cases of thousands, which suffer by this infernal traffic, are well known. Let it suffice to say, that I was thus lost to my dear indulgent parents and relations, and they to me. All my help was cries and tears, and these could not avail; nor suffered long, till one succeeding woe, and dread, swelled up another. Brought from a state of innocence and freedom, and, in a barbarous and cruel manner, conveyed to a state of horror and slavery: This abandoned situation may be easier conceived than described. From the time that I was kid-napped and conducted to a factory, and from thence in the brutish, base, but fashionable way of traffic, consigned to Grenada, the grievous thoughts which I then felt, still pant in my heart; though my fears and tears have long since subsided. And yet it is still grievous to think that thousands more have suffered in similar and greater distress, under the hands of barbarous robbers, and merciless task- masters; and that many even flow are suffering in all the extreme bitterness of grief and woe, that no language can describe. The cries of some, and the sight of their misery, may be seen and heard afar; but the deep sounding groans of thousands, and the great sadness of their misery and woe, under the heavy load of oppressions and calamities inflicted upon them, are such as can only be distinctly known to the ears of Jehovah Sabaoth.

. . . Some of us attempted, in vain, to run away, but pistols and cut-lasses were soon introduced, threatening, that if we offered to stir we should all lie dead on the spot. One of them pretended to be more friendly than the rest, and said, that he would speak to their lord to get us clear, and desired that we should follow him; we were then immediately divided into different parties, and drove after him. We were soon led out of the way which we knew, and towards the evening, as we came in sight of a town, they told us that this great man of theirs lived there, but pretended it was too late to go and see him that night. Next morning there came three other men, whose language differed from ours, and spoke to some of those who watched us all the night, but he that pretended to be our friend with the great man, and some others, were gone away. We asked our keepers what these men had been saying to them, and they answered, that they had been asking them, and us together, to go and feast with them that day, and that we must put off seeing the great man till after; little thinking that our doom was so nigh, or that these villains meant to feast on us as their prey. We went with them again about half a day’s journey, and came to a great multitude of people, having different music playing; and all the day after we got there, we were very merry with the music, dancing and singing. Towards the evening, we were again persuaded that we could not get back to where the great man lived till next day; and when bedtime came, we were separated into different houses with different people. When the next morning came, I asked for the men that brought me there, and for the rest of my companions; and I was told that they were gone to the sea side to bring home some rum, guns and powder, and that some of my companions were gone with them, and that some were gone to the fields to do something or other. This gave me strong suspicion that there was some treachery in the case, and I began to think that my hopes of returning home again were all over. I Soon became very uneasy, not knowing what to do, and refused to eat or drink for whole days together, till the man of the house told me that he would do all in his power to get me back to my uncle; then I eat a little fruit with him, and had some thoughts that I should be sought after, as I would be then missing at home about five or six days. I enquired every day if the men had come back, and for the rest of my companions but could get no answer of any satisfaction I was kept about six days at this man’s house, and in the evening there was another man came and talked with him a good while, and I heard the one say to the other he must go, and the other said the sooner the better; that man came out and told me that he knew my relations at Agimaque, and that we must set out to-morrow morning, and he would convey me there. Accordingly, we set out next day, and travelled till dark, when we came to a place where we had some supper and slept. He carried a large bag with some gold dust, which he said he had to buy some goods at the sea side to take with him to Agimaque. Next day we travelled on, and in the evening came to a town, where I saw several white people, which made me afraid that they would eat me, according to our notion as children in the inland parts of the country. This made me rest very uneasy all the night, and next morning I had some victuals brought, desiring me to eat and make haste, as my guide and kid-napper told me that he had to go to the castle with some company that were going there, as he had told me before, to get some goods. After I was ordered out, the horrors I soon saw and felt, cannot be well described; I saw many of my miserable countrymen chained two and two, some hand-cuffed, and some with their hands tied behind. We were conducted along by a guard, and when we arrived at the castle, I asked my guide what I was brought there for, he told me to learn the ways of the brow- sow, that is the white faced people. I saw him take a gun, a piece of cloth, and some lead for me, and then he told me that he must now leave me there, and went off. This made me cry bitterly, but I was soon conducted to a prison, for three days where I heard the roans and cries of many, and saw some of my fellow-captives.