This is a book produced by librarians for librarians or, more specifically, librarians in institutions where Africa is a topic of study or research. LaFond is Reference Librarian and Social Science Bibliographer for African Studies at the University of Albany, State University of New York. Walsh has a long track record in Africana librarianship, including published books and periodical articles, and is head of the prestigious African Studies Library at Boston University. The book is co‐published as a combined issue of the Haworth Press serial The Reference Librarian. This title, which began publication in 1982, appears in about four issues annually with numbers frequently combined and released simultaneously as monograph “separates”.
As befits a book that is really a periodical issue in another guise, this source is primarily a collection of fairly disparate articles. There are eight of these arranged in two parts: African Studies in the United States, comprising three articles and taking just over half the total pages; and Collaboration and Innovation in Africa and the United States covering most of the remainder of the book except for the 27 closing pages, which are devoted to a useful index.
After a few introductory pages, Walsh kicks off the African Studies in the United States section with a wide‐ranging survey of reference librarianship with an Africana focus under the unfortunately contrived title Can We Get There From Here? Negotiating the Wash‐Outs, Cave‐Ins, Dead Ends and Other Hazards on the Road. This is followed by a short piece from Marion Frank‐Wilson on Teaching African Studies Bibliography, based largely on practice at Indiana University and apparently adding little of reference or research value to the book. The more practical and longer Africa Business and Economic Resource Index: Selected Internet Resources from Angel D. Batiste is primarily a listing of websites. Not all of these, however, appear to be live and in some cases URLs are not given. Moreover, descriptions are generally terse or non‐existent, and overall organization appears somewhat haphazard. As elsewhere in the book, there seems to be a bias to Anglophone Africa with comparatively little information on Francophone or other states.
The five chapters in the Collaboration and Innovation in Africa and the United States section cover a variety of diverse topics but do not generally, apart from the occasional appended listing or notes, offer much information on reference sources. However, for African Studies librarians articles such as Reading African Women's Writing: The Role of Librarians in Expanding the Canon or the strangely entitled (read the article for an explanation) Frog Voices, Whispers and Silences: Problems and Issues in Collecting for an African Studies Library in Africa will be both topical and valuable.
African Studies as a subject area often left in the shade. This collection of essays, some of which offer unique perspectives, will stimulate debate and possibly revised and innovative practice amongst that small circle of librarians serving those studying or researching Africa. Because of the heavy US focus it will be most useful to Africana librarians in North America. Librarians elsewhere and reference librarians more generally, even those serving institutions where Africa is studied to some degree, should approach this book with more caution. Despite the title it provides only limited information on research and reference sources for the study of the continent. Those needing in‐depth coverage of information sources for African Studies should look to the far more comprehensive The African Studies Companion (Zell, 2003).
