This year we celebrated the 40th anniversary of the opening of the Nairobi Office. We should have done this in the previous FY, but due to unforeseen circumstances, the celebration was postponed until the beginning of FY07. It was a low-key, internal celebration but heartfelt.

LOC Director of Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access visits the office:
In early August, the office proudly welcomed Beacher Wiggins, Director, Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access. We believe that he is the highest ranking LOC member to visit this office--at least he is the highest ranking in living memory. With the able assistance of many staff members, the FD organized the entire visit including an office visit, courtesy call on the ambassador, a lecture about LOC trends, a book donation to the Kenya National Library Service, a reception held at the FD residence and visits to the Kenya National Archives and University of Nairobi Library.

Acquisitions:
The FY2007 total for LC acquisitions was 43,141 pieces, an overall decline of 1.19% when compared to last year.

The FY2007 total for CAP participant acquisitions was 82,672 pieces, a decline of 1.75% when compared to last year.

The combined total for LC and CAP participants was 125,812 a decline of 1.34% overall when compared to last year.

These declines are mainly attributable to fewer materials received from Somalia, the fact that several participants canceled newspaper titles, and better adherence to the collection policy guidelines applied to receipts (i.e., those under 50 pages).

This year we acquired a special collection of 50 older, vinyl recordings (45rpm) of unusual Kenyan music including Benga, Kikuyu, Luo and Luyha from the 1970s. Sets were also acquired for two participants who indicated an interest in the collection.

Digitized Table of Contents Project:
LOC Nairobi continued to contribute to the digitized "table of contents" (DTOC) project. This year we broadened participation to include French and Portuguese language materials, in addition to English. Some 528 files of TOC were contributed, an increase of about 300% over last year.

Posters and Conference Proceedings:
Going through our closets of "stuff" that had been in the office unprocessed for the last 20 years or so the FD discovered about 200 posters to send to LC, 75 to NYPL, 30 to NAL, 20 to NLM and 10 maps for the LC G&M division.

The cataloging backlog was completely eliminated this year as cataloger's productivity increased overall and receipts declined somewhat.

For FY 2007, a grand total of 5,274 records for monographs, non-book materials, and serials were created. This is an increase of 221 titles (4.2%) as compared to 5,053 records in FY06.

A total of 2,748 new authority records were created representing an increase of 427 over the previous year. Modified authorities decreased from 482 in FY06 to 476 in FY07.

Non-book material cataloging increased markedly by 340% from 249 in FY06 to 1,097 in FY07.

We continued the internship program started in FY06 for local library school students. We had two interns complete their internships and one dropped out after a week to accept gainful employment with PriceWaterhouse. After an office overview, the interns were trained in work on the ILS, OCLC, cataloging and periodical indexing.

Quarterly Index to African Periodical Literature:
A total of 2,822 new articles were added to the QIALP bringing the total number of articles indexed to 43,139 from over 700 African journals. Two volunteers were recruited from the US to help with the indexing and two volunteers from Kenya contributed as well.

Sabre Foundation/Library of Congress/East Africa Book Trust Donation:
Continuing the work done last year, the office distributed the final sets of the World Book Encyclopedia to the Kenya National Library Service during an event commemorating the visit of Beacher Wiggins. The event received local press coverage in the People newspaper.

Newspapers Preservation:
Encouraged by last year's successful proposal to CAMP for Malawian newspapers, the FD made another proposal to the Cooperative African Microfilm Project, this time to microfilm about 50,000 pages of Zaire/Congolese newspapers from 1985-2005 for $21,000. Although initially the group did not have sufficient funds for the project, they approved the project and later collectively raised the funds amongst themselves to pay for the filming. This should result in about 45 reels of film for LC. The Madison Council also earmarked funds to microfilm several thousand issues of older Africana newspapers that had been accumulating in the office for over two decades. We initiated the sorting and collating for this project during the FY. LC received about 45 reels of film from the Malawi project in Jan/Feb of this year.

Public Service Outreach:
In addition to the donation to the Kenya National Library Services, LOC donated eight computers to the NGO Computers for Schools Kenya via the State Department's Public Affairs Service. This received some good press for LC in the local newspapers.

Responding to a request from the Mauritius National Librarian, the FD was able to procure a copy of The Library of Congress: Volumes to Speak DVD for showing on Mauritius national television.

The FD was invited to give two lectures at the 73rd IFLA meeting. One was entitled "Initiatives in Kenya for Digitizing, Indexing and Preserving Newspapers" and the other was "Out of Africa....Into International Libraries: the role of the Library of Congress Nairobi Office in Africana collection development."

The FD was one of two American librarians invited to participate in the second European Conference for Africana Librarians held in the Netherlands and gave a brief presentation about the AfriCAP program to the audience. She stayed on in Leiden to attend the first European Conference for Africana Studies and visited a newly recruited participant in The Hague, the International Criminal Court.

The FD also attended the annual African Studies Association conference and Africana Librarians' Council meeting in San Francisco and gave a presentation about the office's activities for the previous fiscal year. She also submitted a report to Fehl Cannon for him to give at the ALC Spring meeting.

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