bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Dilemma of the Expatriate Librarian in Africa
Authors: Ogundipe O.O.
Published: April 2022

A report in this Journal on the 1983 Annual General Meeting of the Library Association's International and Comparative Librarianship Group touched on experts and expatriates and reported as follows:

“One participant believed greater care should be taken in the selection of ‘experts’ to advise on the development of library services, while another emphasised that the major role of such people should be to retouch the proposals of local librarians in a language that should be more acceptable to the politicians, rather than to impose Western-Style Systems on African Communities. Several people thought that governments were too ready to listen to expatriates and ‘experts’ and tended to ignore the views of local librarians.”
The Collection and Bibliographic Control of Grey Literature of Lesotho
Authors: Ambrose David P.
Published: April 2022

Lesotho originated as an independent African kingdom whose 19th-century monarch, King Moshoeshoe, suffered the humiliation of seeing his people's lands diminished as a result of confrontations with white settlers on the High Veld.

Not long after the creation of the Orange Free State Republic in 1854, the process of encroachment escalated, and at one point it seemed likely to lead to the extinction of Lesotho as an independent policy. King Moshoeshoe, however, astutely invited British intervention, and Lesotho survived, though it had by then lost much of its best agricultural land. The country remained under British rule for the period 1868 to 1966, a period during which it was known as Basutoland.
A Crowded Conference Calendar
Authors: Kirk-Greene A.H.M.
Published: April 2022

It has been my good fortune to take part in half a dozen conferences focussed on African Studies - half of them international, half of them essentially yet in no way exclusively domestic - during the past twelve months. No less than three of these involved an anniversary input, not necessarily in the celebratory sense so much as in the straightforward chronological one. Having gained so much from this apparent ‘Have Paper, Will Travel’ commuter's circumjetification, I could hardly reject the Editor's invitition to contribute a personal account of the African Studies Conference landmarks of 1984/85 as viewed by merely one British participant.
A Unique African Journalistic Achievement: four decades of “Coast Causeries”
Authors: Matson A.T.
Published: April 2022

In 1943 there appeared in the Mombasa Times a column which, with the exception of Sir Arthur Bryant's ‘Our Note Book’ in the Illustrated London News, became probably the longest-running feature of its kind by. a single writer in African, Imperial or global journalism. The author, Edward Rodwell, was born at Sittingbourne, Kent, on 28.7.1907, and educated at Herne Bay, where he showed an aptitude for imaginative composition and edited the school magazine. In 1921 he was indentured for five years to a jobbing printer and, having mastered his craft, was promoted to manager of the firm in 1928. In this capacity, he gained some experience of writing, editing and publishing. After completing a course at the London School of Journalism, he applied for a post with the East African Standard group, which appointed him Managing Director of the daily newspaper, the Mombasa Times.
A proposed southern African studies information database
Authors: Henley Jane
Published: April 2022

I am going to talk quite specifically and exclusively about York’s proposed inhouse Southern African Studies Information Database, its history so far, how we hope to set it up and how it might be used. I suppose it could be regarded as an object lesson in the creation of an economically viable regionally orientated multidisciplinary bibliographical database! In best library tradition, although it is only so far a proposed system, it is already known by its acronym SASID and that is how I shall refer to it throughout this talk.

Although there is obviously a number of existing databases which do serve African research there is a minimal number which have specifically African coverage and certainly none which directly meets our needs in Southern African Studies, especially as most databases are subject rather than country/region orientated.
Current Research at the Centre of West African Studies, University of Birmingham
Authors: Rimmer Douglas
Published: April 2022

The Centre of West African Studies was established at Birmingham in 1963 as an interdisciplinary department of area studies primarily engaged in research and postgraduate teaching. Academic appointments have been made ito the Centre in the social sciences and the humanities. A few members of other departments who are closely concerned with African studies have become Associates of the Centre.

To date nearly 80 research theses have been completed in the Centre (a list is obtainable from Mrs. E. de Veer, CWAS, University of Birmingham, P.O. Box 363, Birmingham B15 2TT). Those submitted and approved in the last year (1984-85) were on the history of the cocoa industry in the Amansie district of Asante (G.M. Austin), the political transformation and ethnic unification of the Tarok (Yergam) from the 19th Century toe. 1954 (Stephen Banfa), Nigerian clerical workers (a sociological study by Victor Omogbehin), Nigeria, the West and Southern Africa, 1960-83 (Adaye Orugbani), and the economy and society of St. Louis du Senegal, 1659-1809, with special reference to the influence of Eurafricans (S.O.M. Zilombo).
Three Special Collections
Authors: Goddard Stephen
Published: April 2022

The British Library of Political and Economic Science, at present housed in the London School of Economics and Political Science's main building in Houghton Street, was founded by public subscription in 1896. In 1967 E. C. Blake described the Library's holdings in Library Materials on Africa (Vol. 5 No. 1). He surveyed at some length the books, periodicals, pamphlets and government publications held by the Library that are of special concern to the student of African affairs. However, in the years that have elapsed since the Library's foundation, as well as building up a very fine collection of printed material on the social sciences, it has managed to attract a considerable number of important special collections, of both printed and manuscript material, in its field. The Library's List of the More Important or Interesting Manuscript and other collections in the British Library of Political and Economic Science, published in February 1971 and which may be consulted in the Library, enumerates over seventy such collections.
Beasts, birds and bees: visual resources for Africa in the Libraries of the British Museum (Natural History)
Authors: Datta Ann
Published: April 2022

Original drawings and photographs of the natural history of Africa in the libraries of the British Museum (Natural History) are described, and a brief history of the libraries is given. The different kinds of natural history drawings and their purposes, and the importance of original drawings are considered A catalogue of the holdings of original drawings and photographs of Africa concludes the paper.
The book chain: African books collective & UK book buyers
Authors: Jay Mary
Published: April 2022

I am very pleased to have this opportunity to explain what African Books Collective (ABC) is, our place in the so-called “book chain”, and what services we offer to librarians. The aim of the seminar, as I understand it, is to bring African publishers and UK librarians together to focus on practical issues.

ABC is a unique organization. It is not a conventional commercial distributor. It was founded in 1989 by 17 African publishers who established and own the company. They were responding to the perceived gap in the book chain: on the one hand the lack of effective distribution networks, the inability of individual publishers to afford overseas promotion, and the lack of access to foreign exchange from overseas sales; and on the other, the difficulties of librarians and other book buyers in the North in acquiring African publications, even when they knew of their existence.
Development of libraries in Zaire: inventory and review of the literature 1888–Part Two
Authors: Mutaboba J. Wasonga
Published: April 2022

Some academic libraries in Zaire were established and sustained during the colonial period, mainly by missionaries. Before Zaire was granted independence in 1960, three important academic institutions of higher education were known and had libraries. These were: Grand Seminaire de Majidi, Université Lovanium and Université Officielle du Congo.

This school trained candidates for priesthood in the Catholic Church. In 1953, its library had 19,500 volumes for teachers and 4,500 for students reading philosophy and theology. Access to the teachers’ collection was restricted unless particular students had special permission to enter the library. (Tete Wersey 1983) mentioned that the library had a general catalogue on fiches with 4 clear sections: (a) Africa; (b) Sciences; (c) Biographies and (d) Africans’ Biographies.
Malawi’s hidden bibliographies: a preliminary survey of some earlier texts
Authors: Msiska Augustine W.C.
Published: April 2022

In his article, in the Zambia Library Association Journal in 1973, the late Rigg referred to bibliographies appearing at the end of a book or article as ‘hidden’. Thus, he wrote:

One type of bibliography which is invariably most elusive to hunt down is the so-called “hidden bibliography” at the end of a book or article. These may be anything from a few lines to the length of a chapter and vary enormously in their usefulness, but should not be ignored.

It is Rigg’s article that has inspired the present writer to carry out a similar investigation on Malawi as Rigg’s on Zambia. It is only fair to stress the usefulness of such bibliographies as Rigg had earlier pointed out. A researcher may find a single bibliography on his subject, but is bound to discover more information if he turns to the hidden bibliographies.
South African literature in Russia
Authors: Saratovskaya Larisa
Published: April 2022

The African continent and South Africa in particular have always interested Russians. It may be interesting to note that as early as the 18th century the Russian tzar and reformist Peter 1st, ordered the compilation of a description of Africa, which was made in 1710 in Moscow. In the 18th and especially in the 19th centuries there were many Russian sailors and explorers who went as far as the Cape of Good Hope. Among them was a famous Russian writer and sailor Ivan Goncharov who spent two months in South Africa in 1853 and devoted more than 150 pages of his travelling book “Frigate Pallada” to the description of the lives of different racial groups there. This progressive Russian writer paid special attention to the fight of African people against the European colonisers. Another Russian explorer and art-critic A. Visheslavzev was also in South Africa in the 1850s and in his diary expressed his sympathy with the African chiefs, who led the black tribes against the conquerors.
Africa And The New World Information Order Monopolisation of Information and Implications for Finance Capital; Strategies for the Indigenisation of Information and Knowledge
Authors: Nyahoda Philip
Published: April 2022

This paper sets out a research agenda for the analytical study of the monopolisation of information and the implications for finance capital, by examining the processes and strategies that can be implemented to democratise information . through the use of information technologies such as compact disk read only memory, desk top publishing, scanners, modems and computers in order to collect African based information and knowledge in the form of databases that can be net-worked across the continent. The main idea is to develop Africa’s information capacity by building upon its existing socio-political, economic, cultural, scientific and technological base, in a manner that makes it possible for African knowledge to be developed further.
Colonial Office Confidential Print: an underutilised resource for African Studies
Authors: Hannam Harry
Published: April 2022

The purpose of this article is to throw some light on the origin, arrangement, content, indexing and availability of Colonial Office Confidential Print and to suggest that for students of British imperialism, especially as it developed in Africa, CO Print deserves more attention than it currently receives. Admittedly there are difficulties in discovering precisely what was issued in Print format, particularly for the period from 1920 up to the demise of the Colonial Office in 1966, but with the assistance of the guides and indexes, some unpublished, to which reference will be made, access can be gained to this valuable resource.

Confidential Print first appeared within the Colonial Office in the mid nineteenth century, principally for reasons of administrative convenience. At a time when correspondence with the colonies was conducted by the exchange between individual Governors and the Secretary of State, of handwritten despatches – typewriters were not introduced into the colonial Office until 1893 – the production of printed volumes of correspondence on the more important issues of the day was necessary in order that the main papers on a subject could be widely circulated within the office without constant reference to the original despatches.
African and African-related sources in St. Petersburg, Russia
Authors: Dobronravin Nikolai
Published: April 2022

African and Africa-related collections in St. Petersburg can be found in a number of museums, archives, libraries and other institutions. Unfortunately, there is no joint catalogue or detailed description of the collections in either Russian or any other language. Therefore not all St. Petersburg African sources can be covered here. For example, until recently not much was written about Russian expeditions to East Africa in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The diary of a zoological expedition from Mombasa to Entebbe in 1914 including some interesting ethnographic material is currently in press at St. Petersburg University Press (ed. by Prof. Andrei Zhukov, African Studies Department, St. Petersburg University).

The only exception is Ethiopia. Most Ethiopian manuscripts in St. Petersburg have been described in two catalogues: Boris A. Turaev. Ethiopian manuscripts in St. Petersburg. St Petersburg, 1906, and Vyacheslav M. Platonov. Ethiopian manuscripts in St. Petersburg collections. St Petersburg, Russian National Library, 1996.
Setting up the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory and Commemoration
Authors: Josias Anthea
Published: April 2022

Nelson Mandela is one of history's most extraordinary individuals. He has many identities and roles: a son of the Eastern Cape; a South African citizen; elder in a large family; the longest-serving political prisoner on Robben Island and in other apartheid prisons; former leader of the ANC; former President of South Africa; international statesperson; and the most powerful symbol of dedication to human liberation in the world. Establishing an institution of memory to honour him, to document his life, and promote his legacy is imperative.

From the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory Project Statement
Archives in Oxford Relating to the South African War
Authors: Pinfold John
Published: April 2022

It seems appropriate for there to be a paper at this conference on archives in Oxford relating to the Anglo-Boer War, for it was, at least in part, an imperialist war, and, as Richard Symonds has so ably chronicled in his book Oxford and Empire, the links between the two were very strong. Not so strong that there was much inclination amongst Oxonians for military service, however. Symonds draws attention to an article in the 23 May 1900 issue of the Oxford Magazine which whilst lamenting that Cambridge was providing more volunteers than Oxford took consolation in the fact that Cambridge also had more men fighting on the other side, including Generals Reitz, De Wet, Smuts and Villiers.
Reading Love Stories by Women from Ghana
Authors: Opoku-Agyemang Naana Jane
Published: April 2022

This paper forms part of a larger thematic exploration of literature by women from Ghana. The discussion focuses on the handling of personal relationships in love stories by women. It will draw specifically on those narratives which appear in the women's magazine, Obaa Sima, from Ghana. It will determine a number of issues including the general definition of love in these stories, women's priorities and how they envision themselves when they create the space to make public their hearts’ desires. It will also probe the relationship between the reading public and the writing, as well as the overall vision emanating from these love stories. Other major interests of this paper are to examine the narrative point of view, the structure of the narratives and the concerns the writers raise about the inexhaustible subject of love in this popular outlet for Ghanaian women writers and readers.
New Directions in Reference and Collections Development in Africana Collections in the United States
Authors: Page Laverne
Published: April 2022

Africana resources and collections: three decades of development and achievement, edited by Julian W. Witherell, and published by Scarecrow Press in 1989, is a festschrift honouring Hans Panofsky, a pioneer in Africana librarianship. It was, and continues to be, a fitting tribute to a man who was a leading figure in the promotion of co-ordinated co-operative programmes for acquisitions and bibliographic control of Africana from 1959 to 1989. This one volume with contributing articles by Hans’ Africana colleagues contains a wealth of historical information about librarianship, cataloguing, and the acquisitions of Africana for that time period. An update of this volume is now due.

Within the last two decades, there have been many significant developments in American libraries. This short presentation will not attempt to bridge that distance. Instead, it will offer a brief accounting of fairly recent Africana activity in selected American libraries.
Railway records as sources of information for the study of Kenya history
Authors: Mnjama Nathan M.
Published: April 2022

The history of Kenya is closely linked to the history of the railways. Although the reasons for the construction of this line were varied, one result of its construction was the rapid socio-economic development of Kenya which followed its completion in 1901. The railway's role in the socio-economic development of Kenya was perhaps best summed up by Sir Edward Grigg, the Governor of Kenya, in a speech to mark the official opening of the Uganda extension when he remarked:

The results of this railway project of thirty years ago have exceeded the wildest dreams of its originators. By accident the railway revealed the lovely highlands of Kenya and enabled us to plant there an outpost of the British race, which has in my belief a great part to play in the history of the European contact with Africa. It has been responsible also for the fact that we have been able to improve and establish economic crops over a rich and fertile country which until its advent had absolute no external trade. Cotton, coffee, sisal, wheat – all these things have been brought here by European pioneers and these things have been established simply because the railway has been built. Without the railway none of these valuable crops could have been established here for a day.
Filming South Africa: a personal quest
Authors: Davis Peter
Published: April 2022

Villon Films (http://www.villonfilms.com) is a former production company that is now largely devoted to the distribution and collection of films, videos and photos on a variety of subjects. Most of these are related to my work when I was more active in production, and consist mainly of social and political subjects ranging from 1960s Britain to the USA, Central America, the Middle East, and Africa. Of interest to current readers would be my African collection, which is based on my anti-apartheid work which began in 1975 and ended during the last years of the old regime. It includes some work done after the ending of apartheid, and extends to some other parts of Africa.
A Calender of Kwame Nkrumah papers in the Documentation Centre of the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, 1935-1948
Authors: Akussah Harry
Published: April 2022

The potential of private papers as primary sources for research cannot be overemphasised. Unlike other archives, private papers can give researchers closer contact with their subjects since such papers frequently reflect natural human prejudices and emotions.

The National Archives of Ghana (NAG), in accordance with article 5 of the Public Archives Ordinance No. 35 of 1955 in realising the immense value of private papers instituted a special programme in 1961 to systematically acquire and process papers relating to the Ghanaian president, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah from all over the world. This laudable effort succeeded in enriching the stock of the Archives with Nkrumah's papers acquired from both the USA and Britain. In addition to papers there are his books and other documentary materials, which constitute his entire personal library during the period of his studies abroad.
A Glimpse Over the Land and Peoples of Mozambique: The Collections Assembled During the Colonial Period and their Importance for the Rebuilding of the History of Mozambique
Authors: Roque Ana Cristina , Ferrão Livia
Published: April 2022

Museums as well as other public and private institutions in Portugal and abroad, have collections of a diversified nature assembled during the 20th century in the former Portuguese colonies. Several important collections of archaeological and ethnological objects as well as photographs and documents from Mozambique are known today through scientific papers, publications and exhibitions promoted either by public or private initiatives. However, there are still a number of unknown collections that not only are important vehicles of information regarding the regions and peoples of Mozambique but also provide an important contribution for a better understanding of its history.

The Collection of the Anthropological Mission of Mozambique (AMM), gathered between 1936 and 1956, is an example of the importance of these collections.
Copyright and literary piracy in Ghana
Authors: Alemna A.A. , Dodoo V.
Published: April 2022

This paper discusses the issue of copyright, especially as it pertains in Ghana. It also examines the extent of literary piracy and its impact on authors and the book industry in Ghana. Remedies proposed to curb this activity include resourcing of the Copyright Office; creation of copyright awareness; and strict prosecution of offenders.
Cheetah Racing Remembered: an exploration through the sources
Authors: Pinfold John
Published: April 2022

On the last four pages of Nigel Pavitt's photographic history of Kenya: a country in the making (reviewed in ARD , pp.55-56) are a series of pictures of Kenyan settler Raymond Hook catching and training cheetahs before bringing them to England in 1937 to race against greyhounds at the White City track in London. Never having come across this story before (although I subsequently discovered it briefly featured in a recent edition of the BBC television programme Inside Out), my curiosity was aroused, and what follows is my attempt to reconstruct the full story behind those remarkable images in Pavitt's book.
A Comparative Study of Availability and Access to Alternative Format by Visually Impaired Adults and Students in Nigeria
Authors: Adetoro Niran
Published: April 2022

Alternative formats present the visually impaired with the opportunity to read and communicate like sighted persons. These materials are usually not available in quantities desirable to persons with visual impairment. Sighted persons can naturally read and communicate using the types of information materials available such as books, reference sources, serials, internet etc. But for persons with visual impairment, reading and communication comes in alternative formats such as Braille, talking books and large prints. Without alternative formats, persons with visual impairment cannot read and function well as members of the society. This is why it is crucial for every country to have a well organised arrangement for the production and utilisation of information materials by its visually impaired citizens.
Research Pathways in African Studies: An Interpretation of Selected Photographs Depicting Traditional Economic Activities in the Willis Eugene Bell Photo Archive
Authors: Laryea Korklu A.
Published: April 2022

Photographs do not seem to have received the attention they deserve as primary sources of information for academic study in Ghana. Reasons for this could be that they are not seen as documents in their own right that merit the same scrutiny as that given to the printed word and archival sources. They are usually not included in the collection development policies of libraries and archives (at least in Ghana), and the existence of such collections locally is virtually unknown. They are not recognised as primary sources for academic inquiry and therefore have no place in libraries or archives; and are not considered worth preserving for posterity. Yet their value is well documented and western academic institutions devote financial resources to their collection, documentation and preservation to make their collections accessible to users (Laryea, 1997).
An Eagle Eye: Africa in the 20th Century as viewed through the archives of Barclays Bank
Authors: Sienkiewicz Maria , Frank Billy
Published: April 2022

Barclays’ international business was founded in 1925 as Barclays Bank (Dominion, Colonial and Overseas). The roots of the business lay in three 19th century banks: the Anglo-Egyptian, the Colonial, and the National Bank of South Africa. It had long been the dream of Barclays Chairman, Frederick Goodenough, to create an ‘Empire Bank’, and, by buying these three and merging them, that is precisely what he achieved. This article sets out to provide an overview of the collection and suggest avenues of future research.
The Particular and the Work of Retrospection in Isaac Fadoyebo's ‘A Stroke of Unbelievable Luck’
Authors: Coates Oliver
Published: April 2022

Isaac Fadoyebo's Second World War memoirA Stroke of Unbelievable Luckis an unusual and compelling memoir of a West African soldier's Second World War service. Although much of Fadoyebo's narrative centres on the Second World War, the memoir as a whole has much more to offer. Fadoyebo uses his military service to structure a narrative that covers much of his life until the 1980s. Although this coverage is not systematic, it leaves the reader with a vivid impression of Fadoyebo's upbringing, education, post-war career, and his positioning of the past from the vantage point of old-age. This article will focus on the role of travel, showing how the constraints of military service and wartime shaped a distinct descriptive language. It will argue that this language is characterised by attention to the particular. More specifically, it will show how the particular becomes especially important when the ‘bigger picture’ of movements, motivations and landscapes remains unknown to the soldiers.
Swaziana: an assessment
Authors: Muswazi Paiki
Published: April 2022

Special collections are library items that deserve or demand a kind of special treatment that the general stack area is unable to supply. Depending on the environment in which they exist, special collections provide unique and invaluable secondary and primary information resources that support research in many areas of human endeavour, provide the means for nurturing cultural diversity, and serve as mementos of national achievements and failures, which, cumulatively, provide the building blocks of human civilisation. In these important respects, special collections have wide national and international appeal to academics, students, officials, and the public at large. In Swaziland, a large proportion of special collections materials generally mirror the country's documentary heritage, though not exclusively so.
Digitisation at the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies: A consideration of processes and outcomes
Authors: Guittar Michelle , Easterbrook David L.
Published: April 2022

From its inception, the goal of the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University has been to collect as comprehensively as possible materials from and related to Africa, regardless of subject. Due to this comprehensive collection policy, the library contains many materials that are not readily available at other institutions in the United States, Europe or Africa, as was made evident by last year's SCOLMA presentation on materials on sport at the Herskovits Library.

Starting in the mid-1990s, the Herskovits Library began to consider digitising portions of its unique resources, not only to better serve its local community of researchers on the Northwestern University campus but remote users as well, regardless of location. Along with increased availability, such digitisation would support broader access to primary resources in African studies, leading to expanded research as well as enhanced teaching and curriculum enrichment, especially for undergraduate students.
Soldiers of the Queen: photographs of Africa, 1867-1902 in the National Army Museum
Authors: Harding Marion
Published: April 2022

By way of introduction, and to put the body of this paper in context, it may be helpful to say a few words about the National Army Museum and its Collections.

The Museum received its Royal Charter in 1960 when it was established at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and moved to its present location in Royal Hospital Road, Chelsea, where it opened to the public in 1971. Under the terms of its Charter, the Museum is responsible for collecting, preserving and interpreting items relating to the the history of the British Army from 1485 to the present day, the Indian Army until 1947, and the land forces of Britain's overseas possessions until their respective dates of independence.
The zoology of Africa in art
Authors: Datta Ann
Published: April 2022

For the majority of Europeans not fortunate to be bom and raised in Africa the ‘discovery’ of the extraordinary fauna of that distant continent frequently occurs, nevertheless, remarkably early in their lives. In recent times it may be acquired in part through the medium of television. In Britain this began around the middle of the present century when natural history programmes shot in monochrome in exotic locations across the world were first shown. The success of these programmes coincided with an embryonic awakening in the scientific community to the depletion of some of the world's natural resources, and none more so than in Africa.
Images of Africa: television's eye
Authors: Malden Sue
Published: April 2022

Obviously by the very nature of the output of BBC Television, we hold a very wide range of programmes and are by no means a specialist Africa collection. Our specialism is the media. This paper covers the range of material we hold - age; subject; production source and formats and then looks briefly at the professional problems this material poses in terms of intake, storage and subject cataloguing and indexing. Finally, it gives you a brief introduction to the use made of the library.

The Library's prime responsibility is to store and document BBC produced and transmitted programmes and any other footage that may be of reuse or archival value. However, the library is very closely involved in the production process, assisting production staff by documenting all their recordings as they are made and edited in the post production process right up to transmission.
An eye to the future: iconography in post-apartheid South Africa
Authors: Loos Jackie
Published: April 2022

The South African Library is the oldest such institution in South Africa, having been founded in Cape Town in 1818, but its Iconographic Section was not officially established until 1986. Demand for research and copying services has increased steadily since 1990, and we are now receiving a gratifying number of enquiries from overseas picture researchers and specialists.

I have been Iconographic Librarian for about four years, which is not nearly long enough for me to pose as an expert, but in our country there are so few specialists in picture research that those of us who work with pictures soon achieve specialist status, whether warranted or not.

Our collection consists of some 100,000 images, mainly photographs, limited to Southern Africa and covering subjects of socio-cultural interest. It is a reference and research collection intended primarily to provide visual information, and it therefore includes copies of material held by other institutions.
Dialectical Construction and Deconstruction of Contemporary African Medicine
Authors: Mulemi Benson A.
Published: April 2022

African medicine is an important component of the cultural adaptive system. The system has been evolving interminably in response to changing environmental vulnerabilities and health care needs since primordial times. Flexibility of indigenous African ethnomedicine and its associated customs has since time immemorial incorporated new techniques and knowledge. The resulting textual and discourse heritage on African medicine has often depicted its dialectical interrelationship with western biomedicine and other medical systems. The oral and documentary records on the authenticity of African medicine either conceal or condescend to its contributions to overall healthseeking and illness behaviour. Tensions in conceptualisation of African medicine relate to its pragmatic borrowing from non-African medical systems that are compatible with local pluralistic systems and indigenous ontology. The advent of colonial and post-colonial health care paradigms further define the emergence of dialectics in the documentation and appraisal of African medicine against western standards of science and health care practices.
The Activist Archive and Social Justice Agendas: Considering the Role of the Ken Saro-Wiwa Archive in Micro-Minority Identity in the Niger Delta
Authors: Platt Vanessa
Published: April 2022

Between 1990 and 1995, Ken Saro-Wiwa led a prominent peaceful campaign for the recognition and just treatment of his community by the military dictatorship of General Abacha. As author and activist, he wrote - and generally self-published - across a huge range of genres: novels, plays, short stories, children's tales, poetry, histories, political tracts, diaries, satires, and newspaper columns. He used the versatility of the written medium to speak out internationally about the abuses suffered by his small Niger Delta minority community, the Ogoni. Meanwhile, his efforts at home as leader of MOSOP, the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, helped to mobilise a mass protest, 300,000-strong, against Shell Oil in January 1993, following which the company withdrew from the area. He was hanged on 10th November 1995 on trumped-up murder charges along with eight fellow Ogoni activists.
The Archivist, the Scholar and the Possibilities of Decolonising Archives in Zimbabwe
Authors: Muchefa Livingstone
Published: April 2022

The well-worn routes of colonial history leading to London, Paris, Lisbon, and elsewhere may remain fruitful for historians of the post-colonial period. Since former colonial powers remained involved, or at least interested, in what was going on in their former colonies, intelligence reports and diplomatic materials from the last fifty years may be of value to social scientists of the present. Historians also have turned to records from the United States, the former USSR, and other states with extensive involvement in African politics. The archives of humanitarian groups, non-governmental organizations, newspapers, and other institutions also contain materials produced by African governments. Some intentionally gathered materials, while others accreted them indirectly over the course of their work. (Samuel Fury Childs Daly 2017).

Although Daly's quotation was focused on the post-independence period in Biafra, the sentiments resonate precisely with circumstances elsewhere in understanding African history through the archives.
Hospital records as source material for African historical studies: C.M.S. Mengo Hospital case notes and admission register
Authors: Kuhanen Jan
Published: April 2022

For a historian interested in African medical and social history it is difficult to imagine a more interesting and exciting source material than authentic hospital documents and records. Sources such as these are not always available or readily accessible to researchers. Hospital records dating from the nineteenth century are quite rare in Africa, and the use of more modern and contemporary records, because of their intimacy, is often restricted by legislation. For these reasons the documentary material stored at hospitals has rarely been used as source material by social, medical and demographic historians. Nevertheless, one collection of hospital documents with relatively easy access for researchers is the C.M.S. Mengo Hospital Case Notes and Admission Registers located in the Sir Albert Cook Medical Library at Mulago, Kampala, Uganda.
The Visibility and Accessibility of Literary Archives of Writers and Publishers of African Descent in Britain
Authors: George Kadija
Published: April 2022

Book publishers New Beacon Books and Bogle-L'Ouverture Press that were established in the UK in 1966 and 1968 respectively, have recently become more familiar to the public due to the gallery exhibitions ‘No Colour Bar’ at London's Guildhall Gallery andjhe ‘Dream to change the world: the life and legacy of John La Rose’ atlslington Museum, in 2015. Not only have the exhibitions, accompanied by events, opened the windows to the work of these radical Black publishers and their campaigning activities, equally important is that, in the same mode of their ethos of inclusion and community sharing, other Black independent publishing outfits and writers have since benefited from the increased awareness of the work which was produced and the organisations behind them.
African Street Literature and the Future of Literary Form
Authors: Laajala Kalle , Åkesson Mattias , Hållén Nicklas
Published: April 2022

This text is about an ongoing research project on contemporary African literature that circulates outside the infrastructures of the global book market. The researchers involved in the project are based at Uppsala University, Sweden, and collaborate closely with librarians at the Nordic Africa Institute where a small collection of ephemeral, often self-published texts is being established. This collection is a part of the book collection at the Nordic Africa Institute's library, but can be accessed as a sub-collection in the library catalogue. The article is co-authored by one of the researchers and two of the librarians and is organised into two main sections: one is written from the perspective of the researchers who collect and study the material. This section outlines the project, its scope, general research questions and how texts have been collected.
Bridging The Gap Between Ghanaian Elite And Popular Fictions: Ayi Kwei Armah's The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born And The Episteme Of Post-Independence Popular Literature
Authors: Guendouzi Amar
Published: April 2022

If the recent research in African popular culture has succeeded in dismissing the traditional “binary paradigm” (Barber 1997, p. 2) that keeps compartmentalising the continent's culture into two strands, the literate/elite vs. the oral/traditional, and in asserting the domain of the popular productions as a “third space” of creative production, little has been done so far to study a possible artistic continuity between the genre of the popular and the other two genres. Indeed, while the interplay between traditional verbal arts and the modern development in the novel is extensively investigated by scholars and critics alike, little has been done until now to explore the interactions between popular and elite fictions.
V. A Publisher's perspective
Authors: Zell Hans
Published: April 2022

In your interesting series of articles “Reviewing reviews” in ARD (no. 102, 2007) you invite further contributions to this debate, and so may I be permitted to add some observations from the perspective of a publisher or, more particularly, a publisher of African studies reference works.

In his article in the Journal of Scholarly Publishing David Henige states “unfortunately, most reference works are never reviewed outside the library literature, if there.” This is not our experience, even though we now make it a practise not to send out unsolicited review copies of our reference works to African studies or any other journals unless editors specifically request a copy, and provide some indication when a review might appear. We invite journal editors to request review copies by mailings of press releases, and email notifications of new books when published.
British Empire & Commonwealth Collection: Exploring Our Online Catalogue
Authors: Pucknell Jayne
Published: April 2022

We have recently launched a new online catalogue to display information about some of the 1,000s of archives and objects held within the British Empire & Commonwealth (BEC) Collection. Following the process of development and consultation, we are now providing access to a significant part of the Collection. We're also planning further phases of work to improve the visibility of material, especially about people who lived under the confines of the former empire. Our prime motivation is to enable access to material so that it can be explored globally and from multiple perspectives.

The BEC Collection is based in Bristol Archives, an appropriate place in that Bristol played a key role in the history of the empire for several centuries, specifically for its part in the transatlantic slave trade.
The Decline of Indigenous Language in African Literature: A Model of the Yoruba Language
Authors: Alabi Adesanya M.
Published: April 2022

“African literature has presented a lot of problems especially what is to be considered African literature, in which language it should be written, what it should be about, and who should be considered an African writer“(Ndede, 2016:2). This article discusses the linguistic hegemony of the colonial languages with particular reference to Yoruba. “The Yoruba country lies roughly between latitudes 6° and 9°N and longitudes 2° 30’ and 6° 30’ East. The area spreads across the republics of Benin and Togo. The Yoruba are also found in such places as Sierra Leone, Gambia and across the Atlantic in the Caribbean and South America especially in Brazil” (Atanda, 1996; cited in Salawu, 2004).

According to Arifalo and Ogen, Yoruba people are forty million worldwide and they further assert that the Yoruba ethnic group is one of the biggest in West Africa (Arifalo and Ogen, 2003; cited in Salawu, 2004).
Validation of a clinical and genetic model for predicting severe COVID-19
Authors: Dite Gillian S. , Murphy Nicholas M. , Spaeth Erika , Allman Richard ,   Lifelines Corona Research Initiative
Published: April 2022

Using nested case–control data from the Lifelines COVID-19 cohort, we undertook a validation study of a clinical and genetic model to predict the risk of severe COVID-19 in people with confirmed COVID-19 and in people with confirmed or self-reported COVID-19. The model performed well in terms of discrimination of cases and controls for all ages (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) = 0.680 for confirmed COVID-19 and AUC = 0.689 for confirmed and self-reported COVID-19) and in the age group in which the model was developed (50 years and older; AUC = 0.658 for confirmed COVID-19 and AUC = 0.651 for confirmed and self-reported COVID-19). There was no evidence of over- or under-dispersion of risk scores but there was evidence of overall over-estimation of risk in all analyses (all P < 0.0001). In the light of large numbers of people worldwide remaining unvaccinated and continuing uncertainty regarding vaccine efficacy over time and against variants of concern, identification of people at high risk of severe COVID-19 may encourage the uptake of vaccinations (including boosters) and the use of non-pharmaceutical inventions.
Has Political Theory Become More Political? Evidence and Stakes for Future Theory
Authors: Mohorčich J.
Published: April 2022

This article presents evidence for a secular increase in political engagement in political theory from 1974 to 2019 and analyzes the implications of this growth. Analysis of 385 theory articles published across three periods (i.e., 1974–1976, 2005–2007, and 2017–2019) found a near doubling in topicality among theory articles published in Polity, American Political Science Review, and Political Theory since the 1970s. This change has been substantial, statistically significant, and previously unnoted in the literature. I suggest that the shift toward topicality entails and is entailed by the production of “real events” amenable to and consistent with the theoretical approaches in which successive generations of theorists have been trained. Finally, I explain this shift toward topicality with respect to theory’s responsiveness to real events and to rising levels of professionalization within the field.
Characterisation of meat consumption across socio-demographic, lifestyle and anthropometric groups in Switzerland: results from the National Nutrition Survey menuCH
Authors: Tschanz Linda , Kaelin Ivo , Wróbel Anna , Rohrmann Sabine , Sych Janice
Published: April 2022

Objective:

Characterising meat consumption in Switzerland across socio-demographic, lifestyle and anthropometric groups.

Design:

Representative national data from the menuCH survey (two 24-hour dietary recalls, anthropometric measurements and a lifestyle questionnaire) were used to analyse the total average daily intake of meat and main meat categories. Energy-standardised average intake (g/1000 kcal) was calculated and its association with 12 socio-demographic, lifestyle and anthropometric variables was investigated using multivariable linear regression.

Setting:

Switzerland.

Participants:

Totally, 2057 participants aged 18–75 years.

Results:

Average total meat intake was 109 g/d, which included 43 g/d of processed meat, 37 g/d of red meat and 27 g/d of white meat. Energy-standardised meat intake was highest for men, the Italian-language region and the youngest age group (18–29 years). Regression results showed significantly lower total meat and red meat consumption (g/1000 kcal) for women than men. However, there were no sex-specific differences for white meat. Total meat and white meat consumption were positively associated with the 18–29 age group, compared with 30–44 years, non-Swiss compared with Swiss participants and one-parent families with children compared with couples without children. Consumption of all categories of meat showed positive associations for BMI > 25 kg/m2 compared with BMI 18·5–25 kg/m2 and for French- and Italian-language regions compared with German-language region.

Conclusion:

The current study reveals that there are significant differences in the amounts and types of meat consumed in Switzerland, suggesting that evidence-based risks and benefits of these categories need to be emphasised more in meat consumption recommendations.