One of Guinea’s foremost scholars passed away in March of this year at the age of 89 from COVID-19. Djibril … Continue reading The epic world of Djibril Tamsir Niane (1932-2021)

As I noted in my first post for the Digital Orientalist in 2018, two 1943 Loma texts remain to be fully translated … Continue reading Advancing on the encoding of Loma

While proposals for Unicode inclusion of the Bété and Kpelle scripts are being developed, there has been some interest on … Continue reading Building tools with Bété, Mende, and Kpelle users

In a previous post, “Minding Mende”, I introduced the notebooks of Bokari Kanneh that had been digitized, and were awaiting … Continue reading Progress in the transcription of a Mende primary source

As I write this, it is the day before George Floyd’s funeral in Houston. It is hard to understate the … Continue reading Lifting up Black voices

Progress toward understanding the Meroitic script has been well underway since the foundational work of Francis Llewellyn Griffith, published in … Continue reading The role of digital tools in relation to understanding Meroitic

The study of Ajami texts, those using the Arabic script and various modifications and extensions of it to represent languages … Continue reading Learning about West African Ajami

The digital needs for the Coptic script are becoming better served in recent years, with the introduction of a standard … Continue reading Keeping up with Coptic

The prospects for cataloging materials in Ge’ez, Amharic, Tigre, and Tigrinya have greatly improved since the introduction of a system … Continue reading Cataloging Ethiopian Materials