Definitive 21st Century African American Reference Marks the Start of a New Era in African American Studies

NEW YORK, May 17 -- Oxford University Press today unveiled the Oxford African American Studies Center (http://www.oxfordaasc.com), a milestone in African American studies and online publishing. Fully documenting the African American experience, it incorporates over thirty volumes of the finest reference sets from Oxford into a single online resource. The Oxford African American Studies Center provides students, scholars, and librarians instant, cross-referenced access to the most comprehensive reference works in the field of African American studies.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Chair of the Department of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, is the Editor in Chief for this project. Dr. Gates also wrote and hosted the recent PBS series "African American Lives," in which genealogy, oral history, family stories, and DNA analysis were used to trace lineage through American history and back to Africa. Dr. Gates is very enthusiastic about this project: "The Oxford African American Studies Center will provide students, scholars, and researchers with online access to a landmark resource in African American studies."

"If you bought the print edition of every reference book in the Oxford African American Studies Center, it would take up three-and-a-half feet of shelf space and weigh over one hundred pounds," according to Casper Grathwohl, Reference Publisher at Oxford University Press. "This online service puts all that knowledge at people's fingertips."

Individual subscriptions to the Oxford African American Studies Center start at $17.95 per month, with special pricing available for schools, libraries, and institutions. More information is obtainable at http://www.oxfordaasc.com

The Oxford African American Studies Center will be updated several times a year with new articles and new perspectives, ensuring that this valuable resource will be a living research project and the ultimate authority on African American studies. Included in these updates are the latest biographies from the forthcoming eight-volume African American National Biography, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, due in print in 2008. This set is a key component of the Oxford African American Studies Center and will be the largest narrative collection of black lives ever assembled.

Combining the authority of carefully edited reference works with sophisticated technology to create the most comprehensive collection of scholarship available online, the launch of the Oxford African American Studies Center marks a new era in African American research.