Guide to the Africana Collection
Introduction
Note that this page is out of date and may be deleted at any time (August 20, 2007). Please refer to the current Key Resources for African Studies web site at http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/spec/africana/ for current information. Many Africana materials are dispersed among the branch libraries.
Africana at UF
This is a brief guide to the Africana Collection (perhaps 130,000 book volumes and 500 journal titles) at the University of Florida. It ranks among the best ten or so African Studies collections in the country.
The Africana Collection supports all African Studies teaching and research programs in up to seventeen colleges and forty departments at the University of Florida. We receive Department of Education Title VI funding as part of the National Resource Center for African Area Studies, so we have the further mission of supporting African Studies resource needs for the entire Southeastern region of the US.
In order to fulfill our mission we actively buy and maintain materials written in many languages, including several African languages such as Akan, Shona, Swahili, Yoruba, and Zulu. We work with all formats of information, including monographs and journals, government documents and statistics, video and audio recordings, maps, and computer files. At times we decide that our patrons needs can be best met (within the constraints of our budget) through our borrowing privileges as members of certain consortia, such as the Research Libraries Group (now incorporated within the OCLC organization) or the Center for Research Libraries (CRL).
An example of our service to the broader community is the assistance we provide to visiting scholars. We have recently hosted a number of scholars from universities in Senegal, Uganda, Nigeria and Tanzania as well as other southeastern US institutions. We host a number of regular visitors to our collection from within this country. Visits from scholars at other institutions are common. The needs of all of visiting scholars are regularly considered in purchasing decisions, as this broader research community figures prominently in our mission.
We provide orientation tours for new faculty and students, and to visitors to our campus from regional universities and from foreign institutions. Visiting faculty often need assistance locating particular research materials as well, which we do our best to find and make available to them. Our Library Catalog and Africana Collection web pages also provide information on our collection to any user who has access to them through the Internet.
Our mission is to fulfill the information needs of a community of library users. An understanding of who these users are provides us with some sense of what the collection itself contains. This brief description of some of our users illustrates the variety and breadth of needs that we are called upon to meet. As has been noted, we collect and maintain material in any number of formats and in many languages. At times we suggest access to research materials through the Interlibrary Loan (ILL) office as the best option to fulfill user needs. We contribute to a number of library consortia in order to maintain our access to certain very rare or expensive collections. We take care to keep current on program needs by meeting with patrons regularly, by reading ILL and other circulation reports, by maintaining contacts with graduate students and faculty, and by staying in touch with the projects and activities at the Center for African Studies. If we can do anything to meet your information needs in this area, please contact us to let us know of them.
Important sub-collections
Specialized collections previously available only at a single research library in the world at one time forced many scholars to spend long periods in residence at distant institutions. Now such collections are often filmed in microform for distribution to other libraries. Some examples of such collections held at UF in the area of African Studies are listed below.
Missionary archives
The various organizations that have sponsored religious missions to Africa since the 19th century have produced a number of documents especially useful to historians of Africa. Our library has actively collected a number of important archives that have been made available on microfilm or fiche. The following sets are representative, although users should check the Library Catalog for updates as our collection expands:
Church Missionary Society (CMS). Records, 1799-1920. Committee of Correspondence records, 1799-1880. 226 reels. West Africa Mission (reels 1-52); Yoruba Mission (reels 52-82); East Africa Mission (reels 91-99); Nyanza Mission (reels 82, 99-103); Foreign Group Committee records, 1881-1920; Yoruba Mission (reels 133-152).
Joint International Missionary Council and Conference of British Missionary Societies (IMC/CBMS) Archives. 2,517 fiches. Covering the period 1910 to 1945, for Africa covering areas primarily under British control in East Africa but also including material for colonial areas under Belgian, Portuguese, and French authority.
Methodist Missionary Society archives. These archives include material dating back 200 years from the Overseas Division of the Methodist Church, and refer to the Work of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society in Africa, as well as other world regions. Our microform set is filmed from the original, housed at the Library of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London.
African government documents and publications
Government publications relating to Kenya and the East Africa High Commission, 1897-1963 microform. East Ardsley, Eng. : EP Microform, c1976. Description: 134 microfilm reels ; 35 mm. Series: <Government publications relating to Africa in microform> Accompanied by guide: Government publications relating to Kenya (including those relating to the East Africa High Commission and the East Africa Common Services Organisation), 1897-1963. 1 v. (unpaged) ; 22 cm.
Government publications relating to Nigeria, 1862-1960 <microform>. East Ardsley, England : EP Microform, 1974. Description: 177 microfilm reels ; 35 mm. Series: <Government publications relating to Africa in microform> Notes: Accompanied by bibliographic guide of the same title. "This four part series of microfilms consists of the complete runs of British colonial government periodical publications ... as well as selected Command Papers": guide, p. <1>.
Government publications relating to Southern Rhodesia, 1889-1963 <microform>. East Ardsley, West Yorkshire : Microform Ltd., 1982. Description: 113 microfilm reels ; 35 mm. Series: Government publications relating to Africa in microform. Accompanied by reel guide: Government publications relating to Southern Rhodesia, 1890-1963, and to the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, 1953-1963. East Ardsley, Wakefield, Yorkshire : Microform Ltd., 1983. 11 p. ; 21 cm. (Government publications relating to Africa in microform) ISBN: 0715850911 (guide)
Government publications relating to Tanganyika, 1919-1961 microform. East Ardsley, Yorkshire : EP Microform Ltd. ; New York, N.Y. : Distributed by Clearwater Publishing Co., 1977. Description: 78 microfilm reels ; 35 mm. Series: <Government publications relating to Africa in microform> Notes: Title on label on container: Tanganyika govt. pub.
Government publications relating to Uganda, 1900-1962 microform. East Ardsley, West Yorkshire : EP Microform Ltd. in conjunction with the African Studies Association of the United Kingdom, <1973> Description: 62 microfilm reels ; 35 mm. Series: <Government publications relating to Africa in microform>
Government publications relating to Zanzibar, 1860-1963 microform. Wakefield, Eng. : EP Microform Ltd., c1976. Description: 80 microfilm reels ; 35 mm. + guide (27 p. ; 21 cm.) Series: <Government publications relating to Africa in microform>. ISBN: 0715852205 (guide)
The Yoruba collection of William and Berta Bascom.
This microform set, filmed from materials at the Bancroft Library (UC Berkeley), is
currently held at UF and is fully cataloged in the Library Catalog.
It includes primarily 20th century
culture and history material on the Yoruba ethnic group collected from the 1930's to the
1970s, representing novels, literary criticism, poetry, 36 works on religion, 30 volumes
of folklore, local town histories, as well as many other areas.
The Sahel collection (from the Sahel Documentation Center at MSU).
The Sahel collection produced by University Microfilms International (UMI) consists of
over 900 documents from the Sahel Documentation Center. It includes 100 American doctoral
dissertations drawn from UMI, and documents from numerous other public, quasi-public, and
private organizations.
Special Collections (rare books, manuscripts, etc.)
For rare book and manuscript resources relating to Africa, please direct all inquiries to the Africana Collection curators or see: Finding Aids to Manuscript and Archival Collections.
Budget and Vendors
The Africana Bibliographer coordinates an annual budget of about $80k from the State of Florida, through the library's materials (books and journals) funds, and a regular grant from the Center for African Studies. Dr. Madelyn Lockhart established the Book Fund in African Studies through the UF Foundation for special purchases.
Continuing cooperative relationships with other selectors (who control budgets elsewhere in the library system) benefit the Africana collection by "leveraging" our purchasing power. For example, matching funds for African maps are provided by the Map and Imagery Library curator. Through similar cooperative and coordinating relationships, the Africana collection continues to grow in many areas of interest to African Studies faculty, including Music, Art, Health, and Law.
Gifts and exchanges also make up a substantial part of our holdings. For example, professors sometimes donate office collections, which are particularly useful because they often contain heavily used out-of-print items, replace worn books on our shelves, and broaden the scope of our collection in the areas of their own research interests. Parts of office collections are sometimes donated by active professors who are making room for new projects, while at other times retiring professors donate their entire office collections. Exchange programs with research institutions and other libraries throughout the world round out the scope of our acquisitions.
Institutional affiliations
In addition to our membership in the Library of Congress Cooperative Acquisitions Project, our association with several academic library organizations helps us to provide researchers with access to materials currently unavailable on campus. Our membership in the Research Library Information Network (RLIN) provides access to a database of the library holdings of every important African Studies Center in the US via its Eureka database. It is searchable through the web for UF patrons, via our online databases page.
Membership in the Center for Research Libraries and Cooperative Africana Microform Project (CAMP) is a critical part of providing researchers with access to the materials they need. For example, a list of print and microform African newspapers held at CAMP is available through the CRL catalog. Microform sets often cost thousands (and sometimes tens of thousands) of dollars. With CRL holdings searchable through the CRL Catalog, library users can identify materials held by CRL and initiate an Interlibrary Loan with the Africana Bibliographer, who coordinates and assists with these special materials. The Bibliographer also sits on the CAMP board, deciding on its acquisitions along with the representatives of other member libraries.
The Africana Bibliographer maintains active membership in the Africana Librarians Council of the African Studies Association. This network of librarians representing Title VI and other African Studies Centers nationwide acts as another means of sharing information and resources, and continuing cooperative relationships developed among its members are a critical means of solving difficult problems of access to research materials. The Council also has been active in an advocacy role for African libraries.
In this regard as well, the Africana Collection has been quite active. In 1993 we assisted in a grant awarded to UF's Center for African Studies Uganda's Makerere University by purchasing a library collection for the Center for Peace and Human Rights. Training in the use of electronic indexes on CD-ROM at Makerere University. Assisted in the training of African librarians, including Olivia Mutibwa from Uganda and (current Tanzanian librarian). Book donation grant from ASA.
Grant activities
University of Makerere Human Rights and Peace Center library. Through a USAID grant awarded to the Center for African Studies, the library's Africana unit purchased more than $11,000 worth of new academic and reference books in the field of human rights. Two large microfiche collections, one from Amnesty International (country reports and dossiers) and the other from Harvard Law School's Human Rights Internet (a depository-like collection of NGO documents), along with three microfiche readers and spare parts were also shipped to the Center's library in Kampala, Uganda. Peter Malanchuk and Colleen Seale each travelled to Makerere at different times to help train local users (faculty and students) in search stategies and techniques using various CD-ROM indexes and databases that were also provided to the Makerere University Library as a part of this project.
Preservation microfilming grant. The library's preservation department was awarded a grant by NEH to film brittle materials from the Fortune collection. The work has now been completed, and all titles filmed are now available for use.
The African Studies Association awarded us a small book donation grant to ship 30 years of Dissertation Abstracts International to Makerere University.
Our Africana unit was awarded a small UF Department of Sponsored Research grant to compile a bibliography of the Carter collection. Martin Ingram, a former Graduate Assistant, completed this work.
