MINUTES
Thursday, November 11, 2005, 9:45-10:45 a.m.
New Orleans, LA
Present: Peter Limb (Michigan State U), Chair, Marieta Harper (Library of Congress), Gretchen Walsh (Boston U), Joseph Lauer (Michigan State U), David Henige (Madison, Wisconsin), Peter Malanchuk (U of Florida), Andrew de Heer (Schomburg Center), Greg Finnegan (Harvard), Joseph Caruso (Columbia), Jill Young Coelho (Harvard), David Easterbrook (Northwestern), Peter Kargbo (NYU), Dorothy Woodson (Yale), Ruby Bell-Gam (UCLA), James Simon (CRL), Simon Bockie (UC Berkeley), Afeworki Paulos (U of Michigan), Deborah LaFond (SUNY Albany), Akilah Nosakhere (Atlanta U), Phyllis Bischof (UC Berkeley), Al Kagan (U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Miki Goral (UCLA), Karen Fung (Stanford), Bob Lesh (Northwestern U), Edward Miner (U of Iowa), Helene Baumann (Duke U), Margaret Hughes (Stanford), Lauris Olson (U Penn), Lygia Ballantyne (LC), Laverne Page (LC), Joanne Zellers (LC), Ken Lohrentz (U of Kansas), Loumona Petroff (Boston U), Shoshanah Seidman (Northwestern U), Patricia Kuntz (Madison, Wisconsin), David Westley (Boston U), Bassey Irele (Harvard U), Patricia Ogedengbe (Northwestern U), Marion Frank-Wilson (Indiana U), Paul Steere (LC, Nairobi), Robin Fryde (Thorold), Oleg Semikhnenko (Hogarth), Oluranti Olumoroti (Hogarth, Nigeria).
SECTION I. BRIEF REPORTS
1. Peter Limb opened the meeting after a 30 minute delay in concluding the earlier meeting.
2. Welcome and introductions. There were no substantial changes to the agenda.
3. Spring 2004 minutes accepted with addition of Ruby Bell-Gam's name for attendance.
4. New bibliographies/reference works noted: Bibliographies on Darfur (Joanne Zellers, LC); Al Kagan's 2nd ed. of his Reference Guide to Africa will come out in 2005; and a new edition of John McIlwaine's Africa : A Guide To Reference Material forthcoming from Hans Zell Publishers.
5. Conover-Porter Award 2004: Greg Finnegan announced winner and details of award.
6. Trip reports: brief notes on African trips made by Marion Frank-Wilson (Kenya), Dorothy Woodson (West Africa), Peter Limb (South Africa), Lygia Ballantyne, Laverne Page
SECTION II. DISCUSSION ITEMS
7. ASA publications: Peter Malanchuk announced that History in Africa was now digitized and available in JSTOR. He also noted that new publications arrangements were being instituted at ASA. David Henige added that African Issues was going online. Discussion was very supportive of these developments. Lauris Olson noted how useful it had been at U. Penn. to have stable URLs for the special issue of Issue on study abroad in Africa.
8. Access to resources. Discussion continued on African journals and their lack of coverage/searchability in Western databases. Peter Limb suggested ALC members could try and do more to increase their visibility. A related discussion ensued about search engines such as Google and how we might negotiate greater visibility of Africana within them. Gretchen Walsh noted a need to increase access via H-Africa, such as through Tables of Contents. Peter Limb observed there was already some access available to these via H-Africa discussion logs but more could be done, for instance through the H-Africa web editor crafting special threads. Lauris Olson commented on the problems of declining access to ERIC resources.
9. Reference Issues. There was discussion on the problem of getting administrators to acknowledge the importance of complex African studies reference queries/bibliographic instruction. Deborah LaFond raised the need for us to develop tools to meet the needs for assessment. She suggested an audio-visual model that would include reference to African imprints. Peter Limb added that ALC members could develop audio/video files of each of us explaining the importance of African issues/resources and put these on the ALC website to share and to increase the visibility of Africana librarians. Ruby Bell-Gam noted how different libraries might view reference services differently. Al Kagan noted the need for greater African studies bibliographic instruction. We agreed to continue the discussion on reference issues email and at future ALC meetings.
10. Licensing issues. Akilah Nosakhere raised the issue of All.Africa.com and licensing. Jill Coelho noted there had been no full response to queries on this matter as of yet. Peter Limb compared this product with various other news products such as BBC Monitoring Reports Archive and others. Gretchen Walsh suggested the need for a future conference session on licensing issues. The group agreed to continue the discussion on email.
SECTION III. OTHER BUSINESS
11. Brief notes: mention was made of recent digital collections (Political Communications Web Archive Project, African Activist Archive, Namibian National Archives: 'Archives of the Anticolonial Struggle', etc.) and it was agreed to spread news of these projects on the ALC list. Peter Limb noted the usefulness of Hans Zell's Guide to Google & African Studies
NOTE: vendor issues were discussed at length in a special earlier session.
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