Somalia Archive (Library System of Roma Tre)

The ‘Archive for virtual documentation’ dedicated to Somalia in the context of the Horn of Africa, is the outcome of an original project designed by the Centre of Somali Studies (CSS) at the University of Roma Tre. It allows for the collection and internet consultation of all the documents and materials which have been collected in Somalia by the scholars and researchers who collaborated in the Somali Studies group, with the Somali National University and/or with the Academy of Science and Arts in Mogadishu. Most of these documents presently belong to CSS materials belonging to scholars who collaborated in the Somali Studies group have been offered by their owners (or their owners’ heirs) to be made available for the Somali Archive.

The Somalia Archive has a collection of a number of materials such as traditional music, collected and described by Prof. Francesco Giannattasio; Santa Cecilia Foundation in Rome keeps these files in its ethno-musicology library, and has kindly allowed their insertion in our Archive. There are also recordings of spontaneous conversations of the Elder members of the Academy of Arts and Science in Mogadishu collected in the 1980s, dealing with subjects of traditional culture, radio broadcasts in Mogadishu, recited poems recorded by the authors themselves and dramas.

Another collection includes different types of materials, namely: posters, pictures of the colonialist period, photographs made by several authors in the 1980s representing landscapes as well as different aspects of everyday life in Somalia (shop windows, dances, musical instruments, etc.).