Minutes from the Bibliography Committee of the Africana Librarians Council

Chicago, IL, Oct. 29, 1998.

Present: Dawn Bastian (Northwestern U.), Helene Baumann (Duke U.), Julianne Beall (Library of Congress), Ruby Bell-Gam (UCLA), Phyllis Bischof (U.C. Berkeley), Simon Bockie (University of California, Berkeley), Daniel Britz (Northwestern U.), Joseph Caruso (Columbia U.), Jill Coelho (Harvard U.), Daniel J. Cook (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee), Badara Diakhate (Northwestern U.), Elli de Rijk (African Studies Centre, Leiden), David Easterbrook (Northwestern U.), Gregory Finnegan (Harvard U.), Marion Frank-Wilson (Indiana U.), Robin Fryde (Thorold Booksellers, Johannesburg), Karen Fung (Stanford U.), Miki Goral (UCLA), Dag Henrichsen (Basler Afrika Bibliographien, Basel), David Hogarth (London), Al Kagan (U. of Illinois), Deborah LaFond (SUNY-Albany), Frederick Lamp (Baltimore Museum of Art), Joseph

Lauer (Michigan State U.), Bob Lesh (Northwestern U.), Ken Lohrentz (U. of Kansas), Peter Malanchuk (U. of Florida), Lauris Olson (U. of Pennsylvania), Hans Panofsky (Northwestern U.), Loumona Petroff (Boston U.), Katrien Polman (African Studies Centre, Leiden), Elizabeth Plantz (Northwestern U.), Marlys Rudeen (Center for Research Libraries), Mette Shayne (Northwestern U.), Elisabeth Sinnott (New York U.), Alan Solomon (Yale U.), Andrea Stamm

(Northwestern U.), Ruth Thomas (Library of Congress, Nairobi), Catherine Thuku (Library of Congress, Nairobi), David Tuffs (Michigan State U.), Lourdes Vazqúez (Rutgers U.), Gretchen Walsh (Boston U.), David Westley (Boston U.), Milton Wolf (Center for Research Libraries), and Joanne Zellers (Library of Congress).

1.Welcome, introductions, and follow-up reports. The meeting was called to order by Mette Shayne, chair. Introductions were made. Minutes from the April meeting in Gainesville, Florida were approved.

Follow-up reports:

African Newspapers Currently Received by American Libraries. Revised Summer 1998 and available. Shayne volunteered to update one last time. With the advent of the ULAN project, to be discussed later, we must decide what to do after next year's update.

Scarecrow Press. Correspondence has taken place and numerous telephone calls. The editor is in contact with David Henige who has agreed to serve as an advisor to Scarecrow on guidelines for what a good bibliography should be.

CAMP brochure in French is now available from Marlys Rudeen at the Center for Research Libraries.

Clio Press. Letter to editor which was circulated within ALC prior to being sent last spring, never got a response (until after the meeting, later sent out on listserv). Recent information shows that the publisher is going ahead with a database created from bibliography volumes in spite of ALC recommendations.

Jeune Afrique atlas. Publisher responded to letter from chair that no new edition is envisioned.

Electronic Journal of African Bibliography will be in good hands with our new colleague in Iowa; material is available for several issues, and two items are at peer-review stage.

Library of Congress Bibliography Committee web page is still a work in progress, all material intended for inclusion was submitted immediately after the spring meeting and updates or changes should be forwarded to LC.

2. Conover Porter Award. The winners of the 1998 awards and the time for the award ceremony were announced:

McIlwaine, John. Writing on African Archives. (London: Hans Zell, 1996) and Souto, Amélia Neves de. Guia Bbliográfico para o Estudante de História de Moçambique. Maputo: Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, Centre de Estudos Africanos, 1996.

(Honorable mention: Encyclopedia of Africa South of the Sahara. John Middleton, editor in chief. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1997. 4 v.), Haron, Muhammed. Muslims in South Africa: An Annotated Bibliography. (Cape Town: South African Library in association with Centre for Contemporary Islam, UCT, 1997) and Walsh, Gretchen. The Media in Africa and Africa in the Media: An Annotated Bibliography (London: Hans Zell, 1996))

As has been practice , extra copies of the award-winning volumes will be donated to an African library.

3. Introduction of Ken Lohrentz as new chair of the Bibliography Committee with the spring 1999 meeting in Washington, D.C.

4. Introduction of Katrien Polman and Elli De Rijk from the African Studies Centre, Leiden; Dag Henrichsen from Basler Afrika Bibliographien, Basel; and Catherine Thuku, Library of Congress, Nairobi.

Ms de Rijk discussed the work of the African Studies Centre. It is an independent research organization, founded in 1948, funded by government. It has a research department and a documentation center which is the only library in the Netherlands specializing in Africa. They have about 60,000 books and 400 periodicals with a focus on social sciences, humanities, and law. An online catalog containing material published after 1988 is available on the web. Books, journal titles, articles and chapters of books are included. The contents of their online catalog are available on the African Studies database issued by NISC. They publish an acquisitions list. Their quarterly journal, African Studies Abstracts, is now published by Bowker-Saur.

Mr. Henrichsen discussed the Basler Afrika Bibliographien. Its two main units are the Library, including The Namibia Resource Centre, and the Archives. These are not part of the Basler Mission. The Library is the most extensive library on Namibia outside Namibia, including school books in all languages. It is also strong on Angola and Mozambique. The Archives contain a collection of posters, photographs, research papers and bibliographies. They are not yet digitizing

posters or photographs. The BAB runs workshops on African research topics and all their publications are published in Windhoek. The centre works with the publisher P. Schlettwen in Basel, focusing on the publication of old, relevant theses and dissertations. Three titles have been published as the Namibia Studies Series since the series began in 1997.

Ms. Thuku discussed the indexing work that the Library of Congress is involved in with its Quarterly Index to Periodical Literature, Eastern and Southern Africa, which indexes over 300 journals, not all scholarly. Since the office has started collecting in some West African countries, journals from these countries will now also be indexed.

5. Indexing of African journals. Shayne discussed the report of RLIN and OCLC holdings of six indexes. Indexing of journals is something that could be done cooperatively. It was mentioned that the Current Bibliography of African Affairs is still being published, and that the publisher sent out a mailing this month

De Rijk talked about a web-based umbrella project, started by the Working Group for Information Management of EADI (European Association of Development Research Training Institutes). Rather than working to create a mega database, they and three other associated working groups are working to put several databases together under one shell, connected to a search engine that would search all of the distinct databases simultaneously, and allow for keyword searching in various languages, among other features. This project includes IBISCUS from France and IDS (Institute of Development Studies), Sussex and the Royal Tropical Institute, the Netherlands. The working group is broken down into smaller groups. One looks at thesaurus questions, one at technological questions and one at the problem of multilingual access. This is a work in progress and the African Studies Centre, Leiden is closely watching these developments.

Finnegan said that the Tozzer library indexes about 900 journals and monographic series for their Anthropological Literature Index. They are trying to cooperate with the Royal Anthropological Institute in London which now has its index available on the web.

Vazqúez from Rutgers has worked on HAPI, the Hispanic American Periodical Index and described how this work is done cooperatively, by each institution indexing a certain number of journals. Bischof said the first step should be to form a group interested in working further on this project and create an electronic mailing list for the sharing of information.

Panofsky said that Terry Barringer (Cambridge) who has taken on the Africa Bibliography was not able to attend this meeting. She wrote she would try to soon visit the Leiden Centre. Panofsky does not know if the International African Institute will do something beyond the 1995 volume.

Kagan announced he has been looking at the Leiden catalog and database and found it useful, and that there was a link on the Illinois web page to Leiden. He sees the EADI umbrella database project as a model of a method to bring various indexes and bibliographies together, while allowing each institution to keep its individuality. He wondered whether we should work on this kind of project rather than on a merged project.

Thomas emphasized that the idea is to get African journals indexed and that Library of Congress, Nairobi would be happy to cooperate; they are very open to possibilities. Their database is mounted on their website.

Walsh then introduced the possibility of preparing a grant proposal to be submitted to the International Digital Libraries Collaborative Research grant program, partially funded by the National Science Foundation. The grant proposal would have to be ready by Jan. 15, 1999. The idea is to identify a collection of information not easily accessible and to solve the problems of

distance, multiple languages and different technologies to make the material available. CODESRIA would be the natural African component of such a project. Walsh will work with anyone who wants to work on this grant proposal. Northwestern was frustrated in trying to cooperate with CODESRIA just on expanding its periodical index. Zellers mentioned that other groups might be interested in cooperation, including the Ethiopian Research Council which

has a secretariat at Arizona State U. There are many other country- specific research groups we should keep in mind as possible cooperative partners.

Bischof mentioned that a faculty member from Berkeley will be going on an extended research trip to Dakar and might be willing to help. It would be useful to send a representative to the EADI meeting in December in Europe to possibly do a joint proposal with this group.

Caruso said that we needed to move towards something in electronic format and asked how we could get a better index that includes more in one place. He suggested a small group get together to see if they could write up a proposal. The group so far consisted of Caruso, Olson, Walsh, and Bischof. Shayne said we should cooperate with Library of Congress, Nairobi in any indexing projects taken on at this time.

Kagan also wondered if Leiden and LC, Nairobi could be involved. Caruso stated that with something tangible produced, others will come up and join in. Bischof felt that a product supporting one entry point into multiple databases could be our model. She saw such a model as very viable. De Rijk indicated that three or four groups joined the EADI project once it was underway. Kagan asked whether we could get Leiden, LC Nairobi, and Tozzer together immediately to see what they can do now, and then get a grant proposal together.

Finnegan was asked if he could represent Tozzer and speak for that institution as to whether they would be interested in joining such a project. He said that he would speak with the Tozzer Library administration about this possibility.

Walsh concurred with Kagan, and indicated that she would post the proposal announcement to the ALC list. Bell-Gam thought that the dissertation project should be included in this project. But Joe Lauer replied that the proposal would pertain to journals, and would not include monographs. Shayne asked if the publishers of Africa Bibliography and International African Bibliography could become involved in this project. Caruso felt that Bowker-Saur would not pay any attention to these efforts without something on the web to show for it. Concern was voiced about an index available only electronically not being widely accessible in Africa. Thomas informed the group that the index from Nairobi is also sent out on e-mail.

Zellers suggested that besides defining list of journals needing to be indexed we should consider odd-ball journals which might all of a sudden have an article on Africa. The serendipity element is important, so that people will be able to forward citations that they identify that fall outside the box, and the index is not just created from a set list. Finnegan said that African Affairs used to run two bibliographies, one listing bibliographic references from non-Africa related journals dealing with Africa, a second drawing from mainstream publications. However right now we are trying to concentrate on journals published in Africa. Britz stated that it was wrong to work from a set list only and not include other relevant items. The proposal-drafting group agreed to meet over lunch on 30th of October to discuss options.

6. New bibliographies and the updating of old bibliographies. Frederick Lamp, Baltimore Museum of Art, wanted advice on his idea of a detailed bibliography of African Art and Culture. He sees the possibility of putting together a multi-volume bibliography with contributions from specialists on elements of African art and culture. He has worked in Sierra Leone and has valuable

bibliographic material on the arts of that country. Much material is gray literature or unpublished literature. To do such a bibliography for the entire continent would be an incredible job, not possible for one person. The Dictionary of African Art will have bibliographic references after each entry, but will not be detailed. He will have indication of where the more obscure material is available and other specialists would quite possibly have similar information that could be developed into a collective bibliography.

Goral thought that a bibliography listing obscure material that could not be found for another researcher would be a problem. Lohrentz indicated that field notes should go to CAMP which has a collection of these. Olson asked how one goes about integrating 15 or 20 individual indexes. He felt that gloppy integration might be good for electronic searching.

Britz mentioned the danger of very limited marketability of such a specialized bibliography.

Finnegan stated that it is a good thing to have bibliographies, but they must be done really well. Finnegan mentioned the guidelines for what a good bibliography should be and it was discussed if ALC should try to do a workshop on how to prepare a good bibliography.

The question of updating Nancy Schmidt's Checklists for updating holdings on Africa in Community College Libraries was answered. An update by Nancy Schmidt is available in the Patrick O*Meara, Phyllis M. Martin volume Africa from Indiana University Press, 1995.

Al Kagan and Yvette Scheven are publishing: Reference Guide to Africa: A bibliography of Sources with Scarecrow Press.

Boston University Outreach has published an Africa curriculum guide.

Respectfully submitted,

David Tuffs, Secretary