Central African Republic Archives and Libraries

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Central African Republic

Archives and Libraries

• Archives collect and preserve original documents of organizations such as churches or governments. Libraries generally collect published sources such as books, maps, and microfilm.
• If you plan to visit a repository, contact them and ask for information about their collection, hours, services, and fees. Ask if they require you to have a reader’s ticket (a paper indicating you are a responsible researcher) to view the records, and ask how to obtain one.
• Although the records you need may be in an archive or library, the FamilySearch Library may have microfilmed and/or digitized copies of them.

Archives

Several organizations, news outlets, and international archives have established their own archives including news articles about the Central African Republic. The country itself does not maintain centralized archives of any note.

Libraries

The French Institute of Scientific Research for Development and Cooperation maintains a research collection of 18,000 volumes in Bangui. The Agricultural Research Center in Mbaïki has a library of 2,800 volumes. There is a municipal library in Bangui as well as a Roman Catholic mission library. The University of Bangui library has 26,000 volumes.

Museums

The Barthélémy Boganda Museum in Bangui (founded in 1964) includes collections on the ethnography, archaeology, and natural history of the country. There are regional natural history and anthropology museums in Bouar and M'Baiki. The Labasso Museum in Bangassou (1975) features archaeological and anthropological exhibits from the Nzakara and Zandé areas.

The Boganda National Museum, also known as the Barthélémy Boganda National Ethnographic Museum, is a national museum of the Central African Republic. It is located in the Rue du Languedoc region of the capital, Bangui. Named after the country's first prime minister, it was founded in the 1960s and remained open until the Central African Republic Civil War. Despite looting, the majority of the artifacts remain at the museum in boxes.