Library Support for Africana Studies
November 29, 2000

» Return to Cluster Review Index

The Library welcomes the proposal for the Program in Afro-American Studies to become a Department of Africana Studies. While such a change presents challenges for the Library in terms of the ability of its existing collections to meet the needs of such a department and program, it also presents an opportunity to reorient the way we collect in this important area.

The Opportunity

Currently, the Library materials allocations are divided according to existing programs (which, for our purposes, includes departments and centers), and the Library has a staff member assigned to select material for each program. While there is certainly much interest in the subjects outlined in the proposal at hand throughout the University, that interest is currently divided among many different programs. Though we have known the Program in Afro-American Studies to be interested in Africa, our support for the program is based mainly on their interest in African Americans (and that being in the United States only). Again, this does not mean that we do not collect more widely, just that the support has been spread out among other programs, e.g.: History, American Civilization, Race & Ethnicity, Anthropology, Music, Theatre, English, French, Latin-American Studies, Portuguese & Brazilian Studies, Comparative Literature, Religious Studies, History of Art, etc.

Selection of resources for Afro-American Studies has been the responsibility of Stephen L. Thompson, who also currently selects for the programs in English, Comparative Literature, Theatre, Modern Culture & Media, American Civilization, and Race & Ethnicity (only recently). We believe that our collecting efforts would be improved if we could unite all the Africana interest under the same umbrella, and have one person doing that selection. It would, however, be too much for Stephen to take on in addition to his other responsibilities. This means that we would need to find someone else to take on this subject. We do not mean a new position (that would be too much to hope for), but more likely someone already on our staff who has the interest and the knowledge to do this well, and who is not already overburdened with other selection responsibilities. In short, it means treating African Studies as an area studies program, as we do with Latin American Studies, East Asian Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, and Portuguese & Brazilian Studies, where we have a subject specialist who is responsible for selection of all resources on this subject, including the history, literature, social sciences, etc, and in both English and other languages. This person would be at home in the recently organized Humanities and History & Area Studies discipline groups.

The challenge is presented by the status of our existing collections, and is especially keen for our coverage of Africa itself. As may be evident, the Library targets its support toward the curricular and research interests of existing programs, and the programs of the University have, until very recently, shown only a limited and scattered interest in Africa. (There has surely been a more intense interest on the part of individual students and faculty members, but it was not programmatic.) It was only a few years ago that the History department appointed a historian specializing in African history. Because the Library has a very limited budget, we tend to collect only at a minimal level for subjects in which the University has no programs. So, it is not surprising to find that we have only about 69% of the titles listed in the section on "Sub-Saharan Africa" in the latest edition (1995) of the AHA Guide to Historical Literature. This compares to 92% of the titles for France and 87% for Italy. At the same time, we checked the bibliography of a recent book by Molefi Kete Asante, The Painful Demise of Eurocentrism: An Afrocentric Response to Critics (1999). We had 33 of the 47 books cited by Asante, or 70%. We should also note that some of the books we own included some classic European authors, such as Aristotle and Diodorus Siculus. Even for support of an undergraduate curriculum, we would hope to be more in the 80-90% range.

Since the arrival of Nancy Jacobs in the History Department, we have been paying more attention to Africa, and we have purchased more books and reinstated at least one journal title that had been cancelled in previous years. We also collect more heavily on the former Portuguese colonies of Africa, in support of Portuguese & Brazilian Studies. For the Department of French Studies we collect Francophone literature produced outside of France itself, some of which obviously comes from its former colonies in Africa. We also purchase the occasional book in French on the history of these former colonies. Despite the fact that we have had no one teaching African art, our collections there are probably good enough to support undergraduate teaching, though we would probably need to add considerably to the slide collection.

Still, most of our collecting on Africa is the standard output of U.S. and British academic and trade presses, and no particular effort is made to go beyond this. Such an effort would be necessary, even to build an adequate undergraduate collection. This would only be possible if we have a staff member to devote the attention needed to the subject, and some additional funds, for even the current efforts have made with the existing budgets for History and any other relevant subjects. Without any additional funds, an expansion of the allocation from Afro-American Studies to Africana Studies would simply mean moving some of the current funds for History, Anthropology, English, and other programs.

We are also challenged by the inadequacy of even our collections on Afro-Americana. Not that our collections are bad. In fact, we have some outstanding research collections in the John Hay Library, and we have recently added some major electronic resources, such as Afro-American Poetry (1750-1900), and Ethnic NewsWatch. We also have some strong microfilm collections, including FBI files on Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, and the papers of W.E.B DuBois and Carter Woodson. Here, our problem is not that we do not have the titles, but that we do not have enough copies for the amount of use. Our actual holdings of key titles ranges from good to mediocre. Of the books listed in the proposal, we have 100 of the 117 (85%). And most of the titles we do not have are, indeed, in our catalog but the books are lost or missing! We also do pretty well on the general canonical texts and the "theoretical, literary, and social critical texts". But, of the "influential texts in African historical and social scientific approaches", we have on 16 of 21 (76%). Since this is a relatively small list of major works, we should expect to have all of them. Moreover, of the journal titles listed we have only 32 of 49 (65%). Here, too, it was surprising to find that we do not have two of the journals titles cited that are (or were) edited by our own faculty!

Checking these titles in our catalog revealed several "canonical" texts that are lost or missing in our Library, but it revealed more, for we can see how much these titles have circulated. And these titles circulate a lot! We have one copy of Anthony Appiah’s In My Father’s House, and it has circulated 42 times in the past four years! We have four copies of Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark (1992) -- two of them purchased in 1998. Among these four copies we record 82 circulations! Even more telling is the use of original language texts. We have sometimes compared the use of books in original languages (French, German, Italian, etc.) with their English translations, and find that even when the English translation circulates heavily, the original has circulated once or twice. But looking at two titles on these lists by Franz Fanon , for which we have the original French (Les Damnés de la terre, and Peau noire, masques blancs), we see that each has circulated 11 times in the past four years.

While our evaluation of the existing collections points to some deficiencies, it also illustrates the importance of these collections to our students and faculty. This is certainly an area that merits closer attention and more resources than we have given it, whether or not this departmentalization takes place. It makes much sense for us to appoint one person to cover this subject in a more coherent way as an area study. It is also obvious that we need more funds devoted to it. In recent years, we have been spending an average of $10,000 a year in support of Afro-American Studies. We would estimate that we need to spend at least twice that amount to fill gaps and to cover the subject adequately. As we said above, some of this money could reasonably be moved out of the existing allocations for other programs (where we are already spending it for this purpose), but it would be better if the Library could get new funding, since many of these other programs are already underfunded. We should also point out that this additional amount ($10,000) is a minimum, and that it will only serve to alleviate deficiencies in our collections for support of the undergraduate curriculum, as covered in this proposal. Support of faculty research and graduate study would require much more.

A discussion with Lewis Gordon, the current Chair of Afro-American Studies, indicates that he agrees with this assessment. He points out that the collections seem to be adequate for most areas that would be covered by this proposal, with Africa itself being the area that needs most attention, especially for materials in the social sciences. He suggests that the "Africa Group", a number of faculty who focus their attention on Africa, appoint a committee to work with the Library to identify gaps and priorities for filling them. This would be a most welcome approach.

» William S. Monroe, Head, Collection Development
» Stephen_L_Thompson@brown.edu, Librarian for Afro-American Studies