Minutes from the Bibliography Committee of the Africana Librarians Council

Washington, DC, April 30, 1999.

Present:Angel Batiste (Library of Congress), Helene Baumann (Duke U), Ruby Bell-Gam (UCLA), Phyllis Bischof (UC Berkeley), Joe Caruso (Columbia U), Jill Coelho (Harvard), Moore Crossey (Yale), Andrew de Heer (NYPL), Mary-Jane Dub (Library of Congress), David Easterbrook (Northwestern), Greg Finnegan (Harvard), Karen Fung (Stanford), Miki Goral (UCLA), Marieta Harper (Library of Congress), Maggie Hite (UNC-Chapel Hill), Al Kagan (U. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Deborah LaFond (SUNY Albany), Joe Lauer (Michigan State U), Bob Lesh (Northwestern U), Ken Lohrentz (U of Kansas), Peter Malanchuk (U. of Florida), Sibyl E. Moses (Catholic University of America), Lauris Olson (U. of Pennsylvania), Laverne Page (Library of Congress), Loumona Petroff (Boston U), Mette Shayne (Northwestern U), James T. Simon (CRL), Elisabeth Sinnott (NYU), Andrea Stamm (Northwestern U), Janet Stanley (Smithsonian), Gretchen Walsh (Boston U), David Westley (Boston U), Marion Frank Wilson (Indiana University), Joanne Zellers (LC)

Welcome
The meeting was called to order at 11:00 am by Chair Ken Lohrentz. Introductions were made.

Minutes of the October 29 meeting were accepted as corrected. They will be sent to the Webmaster at LC.

Announcements

Updates to African Newspapers Currently Received by American Libraries should be sent to Mette Shayne by August 1. D. Easterbrook reported that a top priority of the Union List of African Newspapers (ULAN) is to include African Newspapers Currently Received by American Libraries. The August 1st ed. of the latter title will go into ULAN. M. Shayne noted that some libraries have issue-specific holdings and questioned if that is how all holdings should be reported.

J. Caruso announced a CRL-sponsored conference to be held in Atlanta which may be of interest to ALC members. Unfortunately, it conflicts with the fall ASA meeting.

D.Easterbrook reported that Hans Panofsky will be attending the board meeting of the International African Institute in London and wanted to know what bibliographic concerns, if any, does ALC have. Panofsky is proposing that they discuss making their annual International African Bibliography available on the web along with David Hall's Africa Bibliography. G. Walsh commented that this is an excellent issue for Hans to bring to IAI. ALC supports this action.

J.Zellers mentioned the new Bibliographic Enrichment Program at the Library of Congress. The Africana Division will be the next unit to prepare material for this program.

Title VI

G.Walsh reported on the Title VI+ group meeting. Discussion centered on future cooperative projects. G.Walsh has prepared a document, "Opportunities and Challenges in Africana Library Service: A Framework for Cooperation and Development," which summarizes the work of the last two decades and should provide background information for Title VI Directors. It concludes with recommendations for four continuing and future projects. The African Database Connection (ADC), which is envisioned to consolidate existing databases on various campuses. The proposal which was developed for a DOE grant was not submitted due to lack of time to get all the technical details needed. We will continue to work on this proposal to get it ready for the next funding cycle, which will ask for funding for the planning stage of the project. The question to be considered is where to go from here. It is hoped to connect to databases in Africa. M. Shayne asked about the implications of the African Abstracts (Leiden) deciding to go with NISC. G. Walsh asked what role NISC should play in our plans. R. Bell-Gam asked that the project to develop 3-letter language codes for African languages being worked on by B. Lesh be included in the "Opportunities" document. Other past cooperative projects to be added include the Africana Conference Papers (Northwestern) and the ALC 40th Anniversary papers publication. G. Walsh asked that other suggestions for additions to the document be sent to her.

A.Kagan raised a question about whether the ADC should go to NISC or remain an independent project. He stressed that we should not delay too long if everyone else is going to NISC and suggested that we continue working on our own project where we do have control. M. Shayne reminded us that the original idea for the ADC was to index African periodicals that were not already being indexed elsewhere. The information could be sent to LC Nairobi for inclusion in their database. G. Walsh reminded us that money is for new technologies so "indexing" is not likely to be funded. We will continue to work on our proposal.

Bibliographies in progress or needed

Bill Katz, editor of Magazines for Libraries, was seeking someone to edit the Africa chapter. Apparently someone has been selected but it is not known if the person is an Africanist. K. Lohrentz will contact Katz to find out who the person is.

Nancy Schmidt has given permission to update her bibliographic essay "Africana Resources for Undergraduates: A Bibliographic Essay" (which appears in Phyllis M. Martin and Patrick O'Meara, eds. Africa Third ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995) for mounting on the web. IUP has no intention of mounting the book on the web. M. Goral suggested that this essay may become the basis of the LC African & Middle Eastern Division's Bibliographic Enhancement (B.E./CITES) project. L. Olson moved to put the essay on the web. P.Bischof made a friendly amendment that Karen Fung update the electronic section. The motion was seconded and passed.

P.Bischof suggested contacting Bill Katz about getting the chapter on African serials for the ALC website.

S.Moses suggested adding a project to the "Opportunities" document about the need to gain bibliographic control over the pamphlet material/gray literature/government information and other forms of fugitive literature in the pamphlet collections housed in Africana collections in the United States. Since there is no intellectual access to these materials, for all practical purposes, they do not exist an users must rely on the goodwill of the information professionals working with these collections to find out about them. Experience has shown that where there is no control, librarians are not willing to look through materials for users outside of their immediate on-site user community. There should be some form of access through an inventory of titles (which could be posted on the Web), bibliographic records in a catalog (accessible over the Web), or something; one record for a group of 50 pamphlets is insufficient (ex. LC's practice) and hardly useful for identifying individual items. This issue is crucial because the bulk of the information emanating from the continent is gray literature published by the governments. Why collect if we are not going to promote use? How can one use, if one doesn't know that an items exists? The consensus was that this document will continue to be updated and, after adoption by the Bibliography Committee, will be put on its webpage.

M.Shayne asked about the status of the ABC-CLIO database. A.Stamm reported that they are starting with other parts of the world.

The meeting adjourned at 12:25 pm.

Miki Goral