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Sub-Saharan Africa
Scope
This overview focuses on Library of Congress holdings of material issued in or about the area covered by the 49 countries of sub-Saharan Africa, including the Indian Ocean Islands. Although most Africa-related material is dispersed in the general book and periodical collections, impressive works of Africana may also be found in special collections of legal publications, manuscripts, maps, microforms, music, newspapers, prints, photographs, and films in the various custodial divisions of the Library. Collectively, these collections encompass every major field of study except technical agriculture and clinical medicine and cover the entire spectrum of African studies from anthropology to zoology.
Size
An overall piece count has been maintained by geographic source or content for additions to the collections. However, a shelflist count shows that the DT classification exceeds 40,000 titles. It is the largest single block of publications on Africa, consisting of histories, general descriptive works, yearbooks, and surveys. A 16,000-piece pamphlet collection, which contains a variety of material on social, political, and economic topics, is housed in the African Section. 150 sub-Saharan African newspapers titles are received currently. The MARC Serial file contains approximately 20,000 African periodical titles.
General Research Strengths
The Library has a longstanding role in acquiring and providing access to material about Africa. Beginning with the Thomas Jefferson collection, which included several books on Africa, the Library has developed one of the world's most outstanding collections of Africana.
The collections are especially strong in areas such as history, linguistics, and literature. Description and travel accounts by travelers, explorers, missionaries, and basic government documents provide useful primary research data. All of the approximately 50 major African languages are represented in the collections in the form of biblical translations, dictionaries, readers, as well as general fiction and nonfiction. There are ongoing efforts to maintain the outstanding quality of the African literature holdings in fiction, drama, poetry, and literary criticism.
African government documents holdings are also noteworthy. Particularly impressive are government publications issued by the respective colonial governments and subsequently issued by the African states, particularly in the years immediately following independence.
Areas of Distinction
The Library's collection of modern Eastern African titles is one of the finest in the world. Most of this material, works in a variety of languages and formats, was acquired during the past twenty-five years by the Nairobi field office. Established in 1966, the Nairobi office now acquires material from 22 eastern and southern African countries. In FY 1992, 36,018 pieces were acquired for the Library of Congress. These acquisitions are cited in Accessions List: Eastern Africa.
The American Colonization Society (ACS) collection has long been a key research source for scholars of Liberian history and related topics. It provides primary data on the society and its work in founding the country. Particularly important are the ACS manuscript records, housed in the Manuscript Division. The division has other collections which, although not centered entirely on Africa, contain Africa-related material. They include the papers of Thurgood Marshall, A. Philip Randolph, the NAACP, and the Naval Historical Foundation.
Some 150,000 maps of Africa and its administrative and geographic divisions are available in the Geography and Map Division. Included are maps dating back to the 16th century, as well as detailed and up-to-date maps based upon modern aerial surveys.
A number of African recordings are found in the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division's Archive of World Literature on Tape. The Voice of America's series "Conversations with African Writers" (such as Ezekiel Mphahlele, Gabriel Okara, and Grace Ogot) as well as Library of Congress recordings of individual authors are included in the archive.
Weaknesses/Exclusions
Despite ongoing and in-depth acquisitions efforts, the absence of an established book trade in most sub-Saharan African countries has resulted in gaps in our holdings. It is difficult to identify and to actually obtain African government documents and noncommercial publications, many of which are issued in limited quantity and quickly go out of print.
Another category of lacunae is serial publications. Many serial sets are incomplete due to factors as the disorganized book trade, difficulty of communication and transportation in the wide area covered by the Section, and political unrest.