Title VI Librarians Report 2002

Report of Title VI Librarians of the Africana Librarians Council of the African Studies Association

Boston University (only FLAS fellowships)	Gretchen Walsh
Indiana University	Marion Frank-Wilson, Coordinator
Michigan State University	Joe Lauer  Peter Limb
Northwestern University (not a Title VI center, but contributes $1500 annually to cooperative projects).	David Easterbrook
Ohio University	Loyd Mbabu
Stanford University	Karen Fung
UC-Berkeley	Phyllis Bischof
UCLA	Ruby Bell-Gam  Miki Goral
University of Florida	Peter Malanchuk  Dan Reboussin
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign	Al Kagan
University of Pennsylvania for the Philadelphia African Studies Consortium	Lauris Olson
University of Kansas	Ken Lohrentz
University of Wisconsin	David Henige  Emilie Ngo-Nguidjol
Yale University	Dorothy Woodson

The work of the Africana Librarians Council (ALC) is described in "Opportunities and Challenges in Africana Library Service: A Framework for Cooperation and Development", compiled by Gretchen Walsh (Boston University). The document generally describes activities and challenges related to maintaining and developing Africana collections. It was distributed to area directors at the ASA meeting in Houston and can also be found at: http://people.bu.edu/gwalsh/alc-coop.html.

This report more specifically focuses on cooperative activities of the Title VI librarians among the ALC during the past year. It includes:

- Title VI librarians' proposed common language for the upcoming Title VI proposal
- Update on the microfilming project of the Senegal National Archives
- Update on the acquisition of dissertations
- Update on the creation of electronic union list of African newspaper holdings in U.S. libraries (AFRINUL)
- Other local Title VI related activities by librarians at their institutions

We welcome comments on any of these projects, suggestions for future projects, or other high priority concerns.

Common Language for Title VI Proposal - DRAFT

At their fall meeting during ASA in Houston, the group of Title VI librarians began discussing their proposed common language for the next Title VI proposal. This discussion was continued via e-mail throughout the spring semester. The draft common language below is the result of these discussions. We would like to stress that this is a draft which will not be finalized until the Title VI librarians’ spring meeting in Albany, NY, May 2-4, 2002.

Draft of proposed common language:

The Africana Librarians Council will continue to sponsor cooperative library acquisition and access projects organized collaboratively by our librarians. We request funds to support four cooperative projects: (1) continuation of our partnership with the National Archives of Senegal and other African archives in microfilming and digitizing key documents and other categories of information (e.g., film slides, etc.); (2) continuation of acquisition of African theses and dissertations; (3) continuation of compilation and dissemination of an electronic union list of African newspaper holdings in U.S. libraries; (4) preserving and providing access to new areas of collection such as videos, and popular culture materials.

These cooperative library projects underscore a commitment by the Africa NRCs to work together to make difficult-to-obtain materials from Africa available to U.S. researchers.

Microfilming of the Senegal National Archives: an update

Name of project: Affaires politiques et administratives, sous-serie

The project, coordinated by Dr. Joe Caruso, is under way and will be completed at the end of 2002. The project is progressing smoothly, and the Director of the National Archives of Senegal, D. Saliou Mbaye, will be visiting the USA in early May 2002 to attend a conference at Stanford University. He will not be able to attend ALC and CAMP spring meetings, but he will be in New York City for a few days in mid-May. Dr. Caruso will have an opportunity to meet with him then and discuss the project. In November 2001, Dr. Caruso presented an update on the project which is still valid; it is attached to this report. Also attached is the project's financial statement.

African Newspaper Union List (AFRINUL)

This project, sponsored by the AAU/ARL Global Resources Project, has continued its efforts to develop an on-line distributed input mechanism for records being submitted to the union list. A searchable database has been completed and features records from CAMP/CRL as well as information about African newspapers currently received by American libraries.

Funds for this project have almost been expended, and it is expected that the union list and inputting capabilities will be fully operational by November 2002.

For more details, see:
http://wwwcrl.uchicago.edu/info/camp/afrinul.htm

Acquisition of dissertations:

Progress is being made, albeit slowly. As described in an earlier Title VI librarians report (Fall 1998 report, compiled by Gretchen Walsh, Boston University), questions of intellectual property and copyright slow down the acquisition process. In each case, these questions must be dealt with on the university and national level, which involves travel and face to face negotiations by librarians and, more often, directors and faculty.

Arrangements are in place or under negotiation to acquire dissertations from the following African institutions: University of Zimbabwe (by Michigan State University; ongoing as part of a cooperative scheme between the University of Zimbabwe and Michigan State University), University of Ibadan (by University of Pennsylvania), Eduardo Mondlane University Mozambique (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), University of Rabat and University of Fez (currently being acquired by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Universite de Yaounde (by Indiana University),Dissertations from several Nigerian universities (University of Florida).

Local Title VI related activities by librarians at their institutions

On Friday, 1 February 2002, under the sponsorship of the Philadelphia African Studies Consortium, Penn Library area studies bibliographers conducted a day-long workshop for local community college librarians on strategies for building area studies collections.

Regional Africana Library Conference on Reference and Collection Development, April 11-13, supported by Title VI grant of U.S. Department of Higher Education, and organized by Ken Lohrentz at the University of Kansas. Phyllis Bischof, librarian for African and African American Collections at UC-Berkeley, served as resource person/consultant for the conference on Reference and Collection Development organized by Ken Lohrentz at the University of Kansas.

Africana bibliographers Peter Limb (coordinator) and Joe Lauer (PI) from Michigan State University are involved with the Africa e-Journals Project, supported by the Title VI Program of the U.S. Department of Education for Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information Access, authorized under Title VI, (Sec. 606) Part A of the Higher Education Act.

Librarian for African studies at Indiana University, Marion Frank-Wilson, is carrying out a digitization project to archive African studies field notes. The project is a pilot study and initially digitizes linguistic field notes analyzing the Nuer language. Goal of the project is to preserve and provide access to these unique materials. It is funded as a project in the U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant for a National Resource Center in Africa at Indiana University. The group of Title VI librarians meets twice a year at the spring and fall meetings of the Africana Librarians Council.