College and Research Libraries


BOOK REVIEWS 

International Conference on African Bib-
liography, Nairobi, 1967. The bibliogra-
phy of Africa; proceedings and papers. 
J. D. Pearson and Ruth Jones, eds. New 
York, Africana Pub. Corp., 1970. 362p. 
$17.50. 
Organized by the International African 

Institute (London), the International Con-
ference on African Bibliography brought 
together a distinguished group of librar-
ians, documentalists, and scholars concerned 
with the problems of coordination and 
standardization of current African biblio-
graphical services. Over twenty-five papers 
on a variety of topics were presented. The 
participants, coming from African coun-
tries, Europe, Britain, and the United States 
made a number of recommendations. The 
development of standardized national bib-
liographies is of primary importance for 
the bibliographical control of African 
books, periodicals, and government publi-
cations. Several countries have, with vary-
ing degrees of success, made serious ef-
forts in this direction. In separate papers 
the state of the art is described for Nigeria, 
Uganda, Tanzania, South Africa, Senegal, 
Mali, and Madagascar. Closely connected 
with the subject of standardization are the 
problems of cataloging and classification. 
Jean Fontvieille of the Institut Fonda-
mental d'Afrique Noire in Dakar illustrates 
these problems clearly in his outstanding 
paper, "Le Nom des Ecrivains d'Afrique 
Noire,'' which, as the conference recom-
mended, should be made available in En-
glish. 

Another important dimension of African 
bibliography is the control of the litera-
ture dealing with Africa. Such materials 
are published all over the world and bib-
liographical access remains a serious prob-

Recent Publications 

lem. A number of existing services are de-
scribed and special attention should be 
called to the discussion of available bib-
liographical card services in the article of 
Rene Bureau and the extensive listing of 
periodicals containing bibliographical data 
on articles relating to Africa which was pub-
lished as an appendix to Julian Witherell's 
contribution, "Bibliographic Control of Peri-
odical Literature on Africa." Other note-
worthy papers deal with the problems of 
procurement of African materials-includ-
ing a description of the efforts of the Li-
brary of Congress-the need for the orga-
nization of African archival collections, and 
the problems concerning African ephemera, 
microforms, and nonbook materials. The 
most significant contribution, however, is 
the "Survey of Bibliographical Services 
Covering Current Publications on Africa" 
by Ruth Jones, librarian at the Internation-
al African Institute and coeditor of these 
proceedings. 

Although the results and recommenda-
tions of the conference were widely pub-
licized immediately afterwards, it is un-
fortunate that it took three years to pub-
lish the proceedings. A few contributions 
have been slightly updated, but a review 
of the progress in African bibliography 
since the conference would have greatly 
increased the usefulness of this volume. 
Seven of the contributions are in French; 
the others are in English. The introduc-
tion and the conference recommendations 
have been printed in both languages. 
There is no index.-H endrik Edelman, 
]oint University Libraries. 

Problems in University Library Manage-
ment. Association of Research Libraries, 
Washington, D.C., 1970. 63p. 
This little pamphlet is the first product 

of an effort mounted by the Joint Commit-
tee on University Library Management of 

I 229