Classical Readings in African Library Development

Citation

Limb, P. (2005), "Classical Readings in African Library Development", Library Review, Vol. 54 No. 5, pp. 330-331. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530510600615

This compilation of essays focuses on the history and development of African libraries and library science in Africa from 1958 to 1989. All articles were published previously (many of them in the International Library Review) except the concluding essay, which does not grapple with post‐1990 developments and hence does not really work as a bibliographic essay – and should perhaps have been placed at the front of the book to serve as an introduction, which is sorely lacking. (The reader only discovers the sources of the chapters from the bibliographic essay). Of the 31 essays only 5 were published after 1985 and fully 19 were published before 1980; 13 are on Nigeria. There is no index. The editor undertook work on the volume in 1989‐1990 and he, or the publisher, took 13 years to bring it to press.

One redeeming feature of the book that gives it some value is that some of the articles were published in African journals that are relatively hard to locate, particularly in the West. Another feature is the fascinating article by the editor on “African Literature as a New Main Class” (1985), which challenges the euro centric bias of standard Western classification systems such as Library of Congress or Dewey, positing instead a language‐focused scheme that draws on Ranganathan and other innovative, if largely unsuccessful, writers on classification.

Much water has passed under the bridge of library science since these articles were written, such that, for instance, an article on the use of MARC in Nigeria written in 1975 will have little interest save for the most fastidious historians of libraries. On the other hand, some sections present a substantial corpus of data on different aspects of African libraries in the 1970s and 1980s, for example, on the history of library associations and public and university libraries. Also included are two significant early reports on libraries in British West Africa (1958) and Northern Nigeria (1963) that also will have some interest for historians. However, interest in the volume, even among African or Africanist information specialists will be limited.