Bibliography Committee of the Africana Librarians Council

Minutes

Los Angeles, CA, April 7, 2000 (corrected, November 15, 2000)

Present: Dorothy Ansart (Indiana), Helene Baumann (Duke U), Ruby Bell-Gam (UCLA), Phyllis Bischof (UC Berkeley), Simon Bockie (UC Berkeley), Jill Coelho (Harvard), Greg Finnegan (Harvard), Karen Fung (Stanford), James Gentner (LC), Miki Goral (UCLA), Al Kagan (U. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Patricia Kuntz (Indiana U), Deborah LaFond (SUNY Albany), Joe Lauer (Michigan State U), Bob Lesh (Northwestern U), Ken Lohrentz (U of Kansas), Peter Malanchuk (U. of Florida), Pauline Manaka (UC Irvine), Lauris Olson (U. of Pennsylvania), Loumona Petroff (Boston U), Bill Pidduck (Adam Matthew Publications), Elizabeth Plantz (Northwestern), James T. Simon (CRL), Elisabeth Sinnott (NYU), Andrea Stamm (Northwestern), Ruth Thomas (LC Nairobi), Gretchen Walsh (Boston U), David Westley (Boston U), Marion Frank-Wilson (Indiana U), Dorothy Woodson (Yale), Joanne Zellers (LC)

I. Welcome

The meeting was called to order at 10:50 am by Chair Ken Lohrentz. Introductions were made

II. Minutes of the November 10, 1999 meeting held in Philadelphia were accepted as corrected. They will be sent to the Webmaster at LC.

III. Interlibrary Cooperation
Bischof is presenting a paper on interlibrary cooperation in May at the Basler Afrika Bibliographien Symposium on cooperation. She wanted to get the Bibliography Committee's opinion about a proposal to create a bibliography of archival and commercial microform collections. Discussion centered on what to do with microform sets. The first step might be to identify existing collections and determine what kind of finding aids they have (good or inadequate). Other areas of cooperation were discussed. M. Frank-Wilson has been asked to be a liaison for the AAU/ARL German Resources Project. L. Olson suggested that consortiums might be the direction to take. R. Thomas said that LC Nairobi would accept voluntary indexing of Eastern and Southern African periodicals. The topic of what might be done with microforms will be put on the CAMP agenda to see if CRL can be involved in future activity. The discussion of cooperation will continue on the ALC list, with someone (undesignated) consolidating the messages..

IV. Bibliography Projects

1. J.Zellers is compiling a bibliography of LC holdings by Julius Nyerere, including book chapters, book introductions, etc.

2. D.Woodson has submitted to the University of the Western Cape for publication a catalog of Official South African Prison Files on Ahmed M. Kathroda.

3. P. Malanchuk announced the microfilming of the Kampala Monitor. Also, University of Florida has available for interlibrary loan videotapes of Zimbabwean poet-in-residence Charles Mungoshi.

4. R. Bell-Gam and David Iyam's revised edition of Nigeria (World bibliographical series ; v. 100) was published in December 1999.

5. Westley is working on a bibliography of Swahili language and linguistics.

6. Finnegan advised that when using Human Relations Area File on the Web, entries from the Encyclopedia of World Cultures serve as introductions to the site.

7. Stamm advised that the ABC-Clio World Bibliographical Series in online on netLibrary. (Scarecrow Press' Historical Dictionary series is also available.)

8. Coelho asked that anyone publishing a bibliography send an email announcement to her for inclusion in the African Book Publishing Record.

X. New Integrated Library Systems

The new systems are mostly better, but there have been problems adjusting to new input procedures and some features from old systems are, at least temporarily, unavailable. However, there are some features worth noting. L. Olson reported creating links to all volumes in a series. J. Zellers noted that Voyager does allow searching in the 043 field, which can be combined with keywords. This is an improvement over the old MUMS system.

XI. Conover-Porter Award Committee

Zellers reported on their activities. The committee is comprised of J. Zellers, R. Bell-Gam, and David Easterbrook. Seven nominations were submitted for this year's award. She reminded the group that all reference books, not just bibliographies, are eligible for consideration and asked that nominations be submitted throughout the year.

XII. New Business

1. Olson asked how institutions determine volume counts for Title VI applications. This will be addressed via the ALC discussion list.

2. Olson raised the possibility of ALC evaluating bibliographic sources that would identify serious flaws that may not be obvious from traditional reviews. K. Lohrentz will work on this issue with Olson.

XIII. ALC Web

1. ALC Web - New Document

2. ALC Web - Replacement Document

3. ALC Web - Correction

4. ALC Web - Question

The meeting adjourned at 12:25pm.

Respectfully submitted,

Miki Goral