The events of the past few months in northern Africa have been remarkable, world-changing, revolutionary.  A lot of the news outlets try to give background info on events and circumstances that have led to the great upheavals, but if you prefer a more systematic approach to the how we got here, here are a few library resources that can help.

New Encyclopedia of Africa – if you need to understand modern Africa, this is going to give you long articles on Egypt, Tunisia and Sudan.

Europa World – lengthy country background info,  plus a bit of a timeline of what’s going on in the region.  Sadly, the calendar of political events in the Middle East and North Africa ends in September 2010.  Wow – how much has changed in these past few months!

Columbia Gazetteer of the World – chooses Egypt as its Place in the News and features a concise article.

My old standby the Encyclopedia Britannica has an up-to-date article on Hosni Mubarak.  In fact, they’ve got it updated through what he’s doing today.

Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, & Conflict – hats off to the demonstrators in Egypt that have kept this a mostly non-violent protest.

Routledge handbook of religion and politics – includes an article on Islamism in contemporary Egypt.

What’s great about a number of these resources is that they keep linking to more and related info.