This is the twenty‐fourth volume of the annual Africa Bibliography. First issued in 1985 for works published during 1984, the bibliography is produced under the auspices of the respected London‐based International African Institute. The Institute is responsible for a number of Africa‐related publications including the well regarded and long established quarterly journal Africa to which Africa Bibliography is effectively a supplement (Africa Bibliography can be taken as part of a subscription to Africa or separately, for further details see www.eupjournals.com/page/abib/subscribe?cookieSet=1). The editor of Africa Bibliography is T. A Barringer, formerly custodian of the Royal Commonwealth Society Collections and currently editor of African Research and Documentation produced by the Standing Conference on Library Materials on Africa. Publication is now with Edinburgh University Press (previously Manchester University Press) and volumes are available both in print and online. The publisher's web site appears to indicate that purchase of Africa Bibliography 2007 as an online journal includes electronic access to volumes from 2000 forward.
Africa Bibliography “records publications on Africa of interest to students of Africa, principally in the social and environmental sciences, development studies, humanities and arts. Some items from the medical, biological and natural sciences are included. The criterion used is potential relevance to a reader from a social sciences/arts background” (p. xix). Geographic scope encompasses the entire continent, including North Africa and islands such as Cape Verde and Mauritius. Materials covered include monographs, chapters in edited volumes, pamphlets and journal articles. Journals from which articles are drawn are helpfully listed in the opening pages and run to an impressive c. 750 titles. It is significant that subject specialist titles feature strongly with perhaps less than half the journals having an African studies focus. As much as 90 per cent of the material is in English, but French is reasonably well represented and there are a smattering of items in Portuguese, German, Spanish and Italian. A few Swahili and Afrikaans items are also included, but there is no material in other African languages or Arabic. Compilation is stated to be based on the holdings of Cambridge University Library, Centre of African Studies (Cambridge), School of Oriental and African Studies (London), Afrika Studiecentrum (Leiden) and material received by the International African Institute. This gives the content a distinctly British tinge; accentuated by supplementary use of the UK research libraries union catalogue COPAC, although the South African based African Journals Online http://www.ajol.info/ is an additional source.
The 2007 volume contains 5,243 entries, a similar number to that for preceding years. Probably more than half of the entries are for items published in 2007, but there are also many for publications from 2006 or earlier. Entry arrangement is by region then country, with a preliminary section for the continent as a whole (1,019 entries). Regional sections are North Africa (a mere 333 entries), Horn of Africa, East Africa, West Africa, West Central Africa, Central Africa, Southern Africa and Islands. Southern Africa, unsurprisingly, is the region with the most entries (1,338), the bulk of which are for South Africa (859). Within country listings, entries are subdivided according to 60 plus subject headings ranging from Agriculture, Current Affairs and Finance, through to Literature, Politics and Social Welfare. Under subject headings arrangement is by author. Entries provide basic bibliographical detail only: those for books do not include ISBNs or pricing/availability information. Annotations are not provided. Where a book contains chapters on a wide range of African topics separate entries are helpfully made in the relevant country/subject sections, but with a shortened citation and a reference to the main entry for the book. See entries are occasionally employed where an item deals with several topics. Entries are numbered sequentially and the whole is generously set out in a two‐column format. Overall, the volume is an excellent example of a well‐planned and presented bibliographic listing, with basic but adequate detail on the items cited and a geographical/subject arrangement that will serve the needs of most users, many of whom will find browsing the most effective means of locating material.
Because of the relative precision offered by the 60 plus subject headings available under each country listing, the Subject Index (pp. 389‐406) sensibly excludes entries “where an item is sufficiently described by a subject heading”. This avoids clutter and the long sequences under major subjects with extensive subdivisions that so frequently turn indexes of print works such as this into an unhelpful parade of entry or page numbers. The subject indexing that is offered is in‐depth and analytic; it is not machine generated from title words and appears to have been based on the editor's inspection of much of the material. Alongside the Subject Index is an Author Index (pp. 331‐88). This usefully includes second and third authors, but does appear to contain a number of duplicated entries (e.g. Issa Daouda repeated (p. 354) for no apparent reason). The only other supporting material apart from the aforementioned Periodicals List is a two page Guide to African Bibliography and an essay entitled Serving the Bibliographic Needs of Scholars in Tanzania: A Case Study of the Tanzania Library Board (pp. vii‐xvii) which, while a useful piece of work in itself, might have been better placed in a library and information science journal.
There are several other sources for bibliographical information on Africa, of which International African Bibliography is probably the most comparable alternative (see www.degruyter.de/journals/iab/detailEn.cfm). Published by K. G. Saur (now an arm of Walter de Gruyter), an imprint that also produces related works such as African Books in Print, this has the advantage of quarterly publication while also giving coverage to the African Diaspora, a topic largely excluded from Africa Bibliography. It is also available in an online format but differs on price being considerably more expensive, with a print and online subscription currently listed at €401. Another source of bibliographical information on Africa which has the advantage of being free, if not directly comparable to Africa Bibliography or International African Bibliography in scope, is the web site AfricaBib (www.africabib.org). This mainly comprises two databases, originally begun as print bibliographies, African Periodical Literature Bibliographic Database and African Women Bibliographic Database. The site currently lists 95,000 items (60,000 in African Periodical Literature Bibliographic Database) drawn from 500 periodicals and is likely to be developed and enhanced further as responsibility for maintenance has recently passed to the Afrika Studiecnetrum at Leiden in Holland, also used as a source of material for Africa Bibliography.
Africa Bibliography is a relatively long established tool in the field of African studies and will have a loyal band of devotees in libraries serving scholars where the continent is the subject of advanced study. However, despite its impressive coverage and presentation it is a niche product that will be of limited use in general libraries or even those serving institutions where there is some interest in or study of Africa. The sad truth is that undergraduate students and other non‐research users are reluctant to consult sources such as this, either in print or electronic journal format. An easily searchable online source, preferably with canned full text or full text links, is expected and demanded. It is hard to see how specialist works such as Africa Bibliography will remain commercially viable in the long term. Perhaps the future is for the International African Institute to consider its transformation into a gratis web site, on the model of AfricaBib.
