By: Ken Lohrentz, KU Africana Bibliographer
The African Studies Resource Center (ASRC) of the University of Kansas and the University of Kansas Libraries sponsored a regional Africana Library Conference April 11-13 at Lawrence, KS. Funding for the conference was received primarily from the Title VI National Resource Center grant through ASRC. The conference program included sessions on Africana reference sources and acquisitions, as well as cooperative collection development issues. Twenty-two participants attended the sessions, including five attendees from public libraries, two from community colleges, six from four-year colleges and universities, three exchange librarians from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria, and students and faculty from the School of Library and Information Management, Emporia State University (Emporia, KS).
The conference keynote speaker was Walter Bgoya, a noted diplomat and publisher from Tanzania who has had considerable experience with the challenges of publishing and the book trade in Africa. He has served as director of the State Publishing House in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and now manages his own publishing concern, Mkuki na Nyota. Bgoya is a member of the Board of Directors of the African Books Collective, and has served for several years as Chair of the review committee for the Noma Award for publishing excellence in Africa. He spoke on "Africa's 100 Best Books of the 20th Century: A Publisher's Response." In his lecture, he criticized the list as a predominantly non-African representation of published works since a preponderance of the titles were written in non-indigenous languages of Africa and thus accessible only to a small minority of African peoples. Bgoya is a graduate of the University of Kansas (B.A., 1965).
The primary presenters at the conference were Phyllis Bischof, University of California at Berkeley, and Joanne Zellers from the African and Middle Eastern Division, Library of Congress. They shared responsibility for presenting the sessions on Africana reference sources and methods and strategies for the acquisition of Africana. Zellers also presented a session on Africana collections in small and medium-sized libraries with information on children's literature, materials for K-12 classroom instruction, African emigree communities in the U.S., and other topics. Presentations on various aspects of shared collection development, including innovations in
Phyllis Bischof, University of California at Berkeley, and Joanne Zellers, Library of Congress, present a session on Africana reference sources
interlibrary loan delivery and cooperative projects undertaken by other Area
Studies consortial groups, were presented by University of Kansas librarians.
Several KU faculty members also presented a session on readings for various
age levels on Islam in Africa. On the final day of the conference, Bischof presented
a survey of African Studies and consortial library projects undertaken or currently
underway by the Africana Librarians Council
.
Important contacts for future outreach to libraries and librarians throughout
the region were established at the conference. Librarians in attendance from
college and university libraries from the Mountain-Plains states met to form
a regional consortium, choosing Mountain Plains Africana Libraries Association
(MPALA) as the name for the new association. This group will meet once a year
and will focus on various projects such as improving access to and awareness
of Africana library collections, mentoring, and other staff development opportunities.
The next meeting of MPALA will be at the annual meeting of the Africana Librarians
Council in Washington, DC in December of 2002. Contacts with public and community
college library staff will also be useful for future outreach projects to those
professional groups.According to various comments received from attendees, the
conference was especially noteworthy for the excellence of the presentations
by Bischof and Zellers. Their enthusiasm, dedication, and sense of vision for
Africana librarianship were evident to all those who heard their presentations.
Herbert Achleitner, Professor of Library Science at the School of Library and
Information Management, Emporia State University, was especially impressed with
their breadth of knowledge and experience with acquisitions methods and the
contribution these methods are making to bibliographic control of Africana.
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