The African Book Bank On-line (in acronym 'Abbol') is an electronic library from which users can download scholarly publications on sub-Saharan Africa that appeared before 1960. The focus in this historical Africana library is on the human and social sciences as well as on relevant adjacent disciplines (such as agricultural and veterinary sciences, human geography, environmental sciences, etc.).

Background, aim, and scope
Abbol is as a charitable foundation established under Dutch law by Auke van der Berg, director of the Amsterdam based Rozenberg Publishers. The idea came up in 1998, when Auke van der Berg paid a visit to the Centre Æquatoria, an africanist library and research centre in north-western Congo whose origins date back to 1937. Unique in the region, the Centre Æquatoria’s library is an exceptionally complete collection of africanist monographs and periodicals having appeared at the end of the 19th and in the first half of the 20th century. The scholarly value of this library is twofold. First of all, it offers access to many indispensable sources which are becoming more and more difficult to find in libraries across the world. Secondly, it constitutes in itself an extremely rich database of the africanist sciences as produced in the colonial era of the early 20th century, immediately allowing for historical and sociological reconstructions of scientific knowledge gathering in such contexts.
This twofold scholarly value is also pursued by Abbol's electronic library of pre-1960 africanist publications on the internet. Aware of the need worldwide for instant, electronic access to the 'old' and important publications in the field and responsive to a growing interest in the history of early 20th century scientific research in and on Africa, Abbol comprehensively selects and locates applicable publications, scans their complete contents into electronic format, and posts these products on its website.
To define Abbol's bibliographic scope in more detail, the selection of the texts to be posted on the site is based on five criteria:

- First of all, all selected texts are 'scholarly' publications in the sense that they were perceived as such at their time of appearance.
- Secondly, the texts Abbol offers all appeared between 1870 (or earlier, for some) and 1960, which we choose as an average closing date of the colonial era in Africa.
- Regionally, the scope is limited to publications on sub-Saharan Africa.
- Fourthly, in terms of scholarly disciplines, Abbol is devoted to publications situated in the human and social sciences, as well as in adjacent disciplines of direct or indirect relevance to people and societies. With this latter category, we want to include domains of research such as agricultural and veterinary sciences, certain branches within geography, and environmental sciences, as we feel their objects of study all affect, or are affected by, people and groups of people.
- In terms of languages of publication, finally, English, French, and German are the main languages targeted, but occasionally other languages such as Portuguese are included as well.