An Oregon State University history professor has collected 21 boxes of academic textbooks bound for students at resource-starved University of Zimbabwe — an effort he says he would like to continue.

“Most of their books are at least 20 years old,” said Steven Rubert, an associate professor in OSU’s College of Liberal Arts who teaches African history. “The entire country is facing economic problems, and the university has suffered.”

An OSU student group, MortarBoard, has pledged to pay shipping costs, which Rubert says will reach $2,000 — even at sea freight rates that will take three months to get the books to Africa.

The University of Zimbabwe, in Harare, has an enrollment of about 7,000 students, representing the country’s various ethnic groups as well as neighboring countries. The curriculum includes agriculture, anthropology, economics, political science, geography, history, natural sciences, religion and social sciences.

Rubert, who visited the country last July, says some of the books that have been collected are his own textbooks, others were written or donated by fellow faculty, and some were given by OSU students.

“They heard about the project and offered me their books instead of selling them back,” he said.

The Corvallis Oddfellows donated cash that allowed Rubert and visiting scholar Joseph Mtisi to order some new texts. A scholar of economic history at the University of Zimbabwe, Mtisi spent a year at OSU as a fellow at OSU’s Center for the Humanities.

Rubert says he would love to continue raising awareness of the academic needs of African universities. Modern textbooks — and the money to ship them — are welcome, he said.

“The University of Zimbabwe has gone through a series of budget cuts for several years and the country’s rate of inflation is staggering,” he pointed out. “When I was there, it rose 90 percent in one month — and the official rate is 150 to 200 percent annually. Collecting and shipping books is a small thing by comparison, but it is one way we can help.”