Chair Peter Limb convened the meeting at 10:20 am. After institutional introductions, the minutes of the Spring 2005 meeting held at Northwestern University were adopted as previously adjusted, with no further amendments.

Limb also drew attention to the Conover-Porter flyer that he distributed at the meeting.

Page– reported on two acquisitions trips: Angel Batiste to London, herself to South Africa, Angola, and Zimbabwe. Page also reported on ongoing bibliographic projects, including Joanne Zellers’ project on Darfur and her country-by-country guides.

Kagan—announced that the second edition of his reference guide is out.

Olson announced that U. Penn. has completed cataloging several series of graded texts in Swahili, and that a new section on African health and diseases has been added to the Website edited by Ali Ali-Dinar (http://www.africa.upenn.edu/health/)

Frank-Wilson reported on a women’s studies acquisitions trip to Uganda and Kenya. She visited Moi University in Nairobi. IU has also recently acquired a collection of Malawi archival materials.

Coelho reported on a recent trip to Nigeria to collect materials on oral history.

Bell-Gam reported on several recent trips to Africa. These included 1) Senegal, where she discussed preservation needs with librarians and archivists and did some acquisitions work; 2) Ghana, where she visited the National Arrives and discussed preservation projects. For example, some microfilming of newspapers in the early years of independence has been completed that we may want to look at for CAMP copies. She found the Archives very well organized; e.g. they have a conservation lab. It would be easy to work with them for future projects; 3) Nigeria—she explored exchange materials and how to ship gift materials; 4) Cameroon – attended ESARBICA conference; 5) also went to South Africa.

Hans Zell’s African Studies Companion fourth edition is scheduled for 2006.

Finnegan reported publication of Anthropological Literature is now up to date.

Olson suggested that we put information on the Web about projects that our various constituent institutions are pursuing in partnership with African institutions. We need a more effective means of sharing information about these projects. Olson suggested that we collaborate with European NGO’s and establish a blog for discussion of these projects. He will work with the LC Website management and with Simon at CRL to create a web presence for this purpose.

Limb reported on the following MSU initiatives: 1) MSU is looking at new preservation projects on Senegal and Ghana, including a collaborative digital project; 2) He was just back from a trip to South Africa and reported that SA e-Publications (journals.sabinet.co.za/) would like to work with JSTOR to expand coverage of South African journal content; 3) MSU has acquired 24 reels of material from Ghana on state farms; a second copy has been made.

Malanchuk announced: 1) a conference on “War in Africa” to be held March 5-7 2006 at UF, with Dennis Brutus as keynote speaker. There is no fee for the conference; 2) purchase of a set of black-and-white photographs on the Ethiopian war; 3) reported on a Lusophone collection on anthropology and ethnohistory, with 3,200 items entered into the UF catalog for items in the collection. It includes about 600 rare items. Covers the period from 1950 to 1992-3 with Portuguese commentary on the war in Angola.

Woodson reported on an archival collection received from Brian M. DuToit on African communities in various parts of the world, including photographs. A finding aid is being compiled. She also mentioned a collection from Mozambique, with considerable overlap with other collections and sources. The owner would like to keep the sources together, which involves an ongoing dilemma. Such collections keep circulating around in the North without getting back to Africa. One exception to this trend is the Lindfors collection, which went to the University of KwaZulu Natal.

Easterbrook reported on the acquisition of Donald Abraham’s field notes and personal papers. No guide has been prepared as of yet. The collection consists of nine linear feet of material.

Limb announced that nominations are due by Jan. 1, 2006. Africa-related reference works with publication date of 2003, 2004 or 2005 may be nominated, irrespective of format. Online databases are eligible [For Timetable of Procedures, please see the ALC Website at http://www.loc.gov/rr/amed/afs/alc/bibcppro.html]

Discussion: Bischof expressed the need for a bibliography of Arabic publications on Africa, having observed a significant increase in such publications issued by various scholarly societies in several African countries. Woodson also mentioned a need for better access to indigenous African language materials published in Arabic script.

Limb introduced Terry Barringer, who is currently serving as editor of African Research and Documentation. She brought greetings from SCOLMA, and indicated that, as editor of AR&D, she would be happy to receive contributions from ALC members. (Her email is TABarringe@aol.com) She reported that subject specialist librarians are discouraged in the UK due to a diminution of interest and support from administrators, particularly in university libraries. The new blood in SCOLMA is coming primarily from NGO’s rather than university libraries. Grants available for Africa-related initiatives are frequently for short-term projects only, such as publications on Diaspora communities in the UK. She indicated that part of the bias is against small units in the UK. Retirees are doing much good work but new subject specialists are not being appointed to replace them. Walsh mentioned the corresponding tendency for subject specialist librarians to fade into the background and be replaced by electronic generalists in American libraries.

Mary Jay provided an update on the African Books Collective (ABC). ABC now distributes through Michigan State University Press for sales to U.S. libraries. ABC currently has an inventory of 1,800 titles issued by 105 African publishers. ABC’s raison d’être is unchanged: to provide access to publications of indigenous African publishing firms and promote African publishing as an important aspect of cultural development. While the greater part of this publishing is not commercial, there are some very good commercial publishers represented among ABC’s partners. She indicated that while things are grim in Europe, sales in North America are on the increase and represent as much business as the rest of their sales combined. ABC is now working on its next five-year plan. Their books-on-demand service is increasing, with over 200 titles currently available through this service. She also raised the issue of fair trade practices in relation to LC’s overseas acquisitions program.

Finnegan indicated that the notes provided in the meeting agenda on this issue provided an excellent summary of the concerns we face. What librarians bring to the table is authority and judgment. We are promoting judgment, not search engines. What sort of quality do the sources have that we glean from electronic search engines? One of the key things that area studies librarians can do to enhance study of the area is to prepare annotated bibliographies. We need to think of building a resource that everyone goes to, with topical bibliographies such as those available in the Electronic journal of Africana bibliography.

LC Nairobi report. Pamela Howard-Reguindin announced that the Kenya Indexing Project, available at http://www.indexkenya.org/ is indexing articles from various Kenya newspapers. Plans are afoot to add some journals as well on a selective basis. Hard copy is not available at the site but can be ordered from the Kenya Indexing Project.

Limb concluded the discussion by pointing out that we are seeing a whole array of digitization projects from such countries as France and Germany. Some of these are being done by non-Africana librarians, which often makes it difficult to find out who is doing what. Communication about these projects is important.

a. A blog on the ALC website will be set up to improve flow of relevant information from various individual institutions to improve communication. Lauris Olson will work on this with LC and with James Simon at CRL.

b. Nominations can be made by ALC members for the Conover-Porter Award.

c. The Chair declared the meeting adjourned at approximately 11:50 am.