Attending: Batoma, Atoma (Illinois); Baumann, Helene (Duke); Bell-Gam, Ruby (UCLA); Berenz, Elizabeth Daroula (CRL); Bischof, Phyllis(UC-Berkeley); Bryan, Ellen (U. of Chicago); Caruso, Joseph (Columbia); Coelho, Jill (Harvard); Evalds, Vicki (Philadelphia); Finnegan, Greg(Harvard); Frank-Wilson, Marion (Indiana); Fung, Karen (Stanford); Goral, Miki (UCLA); Harper, Marieta (LC); Irele, Bassey (Harvard); Kagan, Al (Illinois); Kale, Esmeralda (Northwestern); Kantoroskinski, Zbigniew (LC); Kuntz, Patricia (Madison, WI); LaFond, Deborah (SUNY-Albany); Lauer, Joseph (Michigan State); Lesh, Bob (Northwestern); Limb, Peter, Chair (Michigan State); Loh, Eudora (ARL Global Resources Network); Malanchuk, Peter (Florida); Martin, Giles (OCLC); Mbabu, Loyd (Ohio); Miller, Karen (Northwestern); Miner, Edward (Iowa); Ngo-Nguidjol, Emilie (Wisconsin); Nygren, Tom (ALUKA); Olson, Lauris (Penn); Page, Laverne (LC); Panofsky, Hans (Northwestern, retired); Paulos, Afeworki (Michigan); Petroff, Loumona (Boston U.); Protopappas, Fred (LC); Reboussin, Dan (Florida); Shayne, Mette (Northwestern, retired); Simon, James (CRL); Stamm, Andrea (Northwestern); Steere, Paul (LC-Nairobi); Tiraneh, Fenta (LC); Walsh, Gretchen (Boston U.); Westley, David (Boston U.); Wewerka, Milicent (LC); Woodson, Dorothy (Yale)
Limb convened the meeting with introductions and a call for announcements.Bischof announced that she was retiring and that an announcement for her position at Berkeley would be posted in the near future. She hoped younger colleagues would consider applying.
The minutes of the fall 2004 meeting in New Orleans were approved as drafted and posted to the ALC web site.
1. Discussion of New and Needed Resources/Bibliographies
Kagan reported that the 2nd edition of his Reference Guide to Africa:
a Bibliography of Sources is forthcoming in August 2005.
Frank-Wilson reported on a special issue of Africa Today.
Olson has observed that the Database of African Theses and Dissertations (DATAD) is heavily used at Penn, even if the dissertations themselves are not available. The abstracts are lengthy and apparently useful. Limb noted that ALC members should on principle be supporting African information provision initiatives such as DATAD.
Olson also asked if any ALC members were working on the update to Books for College Libraries. No one present was involved.
2. Conover-Porter Award
Limb expressed satisfaction with the previous Conover-Porter Award cycle: Winner 2004: A.J. Christopher, The Atlas of Changing South Africa. (London: Routledge; 2001) (Honorable mention: Paul Tigambe Zeleza and Dickson Eyoh. Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century African History. (London and New York: Routledge, 2003) and Toyin Falola. Key Events in African History: A Reference Guide. (Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 2002).
The next cycle will begin in mid 2005 with initial communication among the Conover-Porter Award Committee (Kagan, ALC past-past chair; Gretchen Walsh, ALC past chair and chair of the C-P committee; Marieta Harper, current ALC chair). Limb, as chair of Bibliography Committee, will put out a call for nominations and receive the proposals. The C-P committee should convene electronically to review nominations and make a decision by March 15 if an African author is possible recipient so ASA funds may be requested for travel to accept award. Absolute deadline for decision is spring meeting 2006.
3. Trip Reports and Anticipated Travel
A number of ALC members will be travelling to Africa in the near future:
Angola: Page
Botswana: Coelho, Irele, and Page, attending ESARBICA Conference
Ghana: Bell-Gam (discussions with national archives)
Liberia: Paulos has tentative plan to travel to Liberia during the fall. His
trip will have a dual purpose: library assessment at University of Liberia
and purchase books for University of Michigan Library.
Mozambique: Bell-Gam and Coelho (will talk to Joel Tembe and visit National
Archives)
Nigeria: Coelho and Irele (acquisitions and exploration of digital project
to preserve Yoruba oral history project at Ife.)
Senegal: Caruso and Bell-Gam (discussions with National Archives)
South Africa: Page, July 2005. Coelho and Irele, acquisitions, Limb.
Uganda; Frank-Wilson (NGOs) and Miner (Preservation of histories)
Zimbabwe: Page, Zimbabwe International Book Fair
Other travel:
AEGIS conference: Woodson and Frank-Wilson, Angel Batiste.
Montreal and Paris: Ngo-Nguidjol
University of Leiden: Kagan.
4. Assessment of Africana Collections
Frank-Wilson had proposed this topic because Indiana University Libraries is evaluating its collections. She had posted a request on the ALC list for methodologies used at other libraries. Walsh described criteria used by colleagues at BU for weeding: checking circulation records for level of use (number of check-outs and date of last check-out). Walsh did not agree with other BU bibliographers that this was an appropriate indicator of value for research collections. Limb concurred.
Reboussin said Florida's experience with temporary storage and selection of older materials (those classified in Dewey) for reclassification before return to the renovated building was positive. Materials in the new offsite storage area were quickly retrieved and accessible in the catalog.
Olson noted that technical materials were often sent directly to storage because the titles were so clear that keyword searches were sufficient for retrieval. Other disciplines needed more accessibility.
Malanchuk noted that faculty strengths provided some criteria for evaluation.
Limb noted that depth of archival and other research materials attracted faculty and graduate students.
The discussion, while offering some ideas for looking at collections, concluded that one can subjectively make good guesses, but there is no true way to measure quality.
5. Bibliographic and Reference Tools in African Studies
Kagan referred to his meeting in Leiden, and opened a discussion of cooperative indexing. The staff at Leiden have many demands on their time and resources, and questioned whether annotations might be an area where they could cut back. The options for ALC seem to be to indicate support for Leiden's efforts by lobbying the appropriate administrators or/and to join in the effort through cooperative projects. Since the indexing appears in Leiden's catalog, the difficulties of searching African Abstracts Online do not represent an obstacle. Whereas African Abstracts Online is included in the NISC All-Africa database, the PDF version of African Studies Abstracts Online (as well as the Leiden catalogue) is also available free of charge, thereby limiting potential income.
Walsh reminded the group of previous ideas for consolidating the several indexing projects for African studies. Limb noted that with "federated searching" at many libraries, actual consolidation was no longer necessary. Olson noted that HAPI was a good model. Walsh reported that Davis Bullwinkle was open to offers of indexing of full runs of journals not currently indexed in AfricaBib.
6. Coordination of in-house filming of newspapers
Finnegan opined that the Google option was a good model.
Woodson replied that Google wasn't likely to be stopping by her office any time soon, and she needed to know who was filming papers before she had to discard them. No one seems to be assuming responsibility.
7. Vendor Reports
Paul Steere reported on activities of the LC Nairobi Office, and was available for individual discussions. He displayed matrixes indicating materials supplied by country, region, and subject. He emphasized the importance of participants keeping their profiles current to reflect their collection priorities, and noted that changes to the profile did not cause immediate changes in materials sent, since it took time for profile changes to be reflected in purchase. He emphasized that as a government agency, LC cannot make ad hoc arrangements to deal with materials that a participant decides it does not want. Government accountability and audits make such arrangements impossible.
The Quarterly Index of Africana Periodical Literature is continuing, and a half time indexer has been hired. Steere announced the publication of the National Atlas of Kenya. Because of the high cost ($100), he needs an email confirmation from participants to add it to the profile. It was note ntirely clear if non-participants could order the Atlas from LC Nairobi.
Steere ended by announcing that he is leaving Nairobi to take a position elsewhere. (At a later session, Fred Protopappas announced that LC hopes to have a replacement on board soon.)
8. Vendors/Publishers Roundtable
Walsh requested confirmation of the sense of the group that the Vendors/Publishers
Roundtable inaugurated in New Orleans was an idea worthy of repeating. The
group agreed it was, but that the points for discussion should be set by ALC,
with broader representation of vendors and publishers than there had been at
the first session.
Page Last Updated October 15, 2005