Bibliography on Africa.
Compiled by R.P. Sood.
Delhi: Department of African Studies, University of Delhi, 1989. 359 pp. Documentation Series IV. Price not given.
To facilitate bibliographic searches in his department, the compiler has produced an unannotated classified bibliography of 4,724 items drawing mainly from the bibliographic notes contained in the works of the Africanist scholars of the department and in the journals and periodicals available to him. This gives the volume its peculiar character of in–house aid. However, the fact that it includes all of the African continent and at least some of the Indian scholarly works about Africa makes this bibliography a practical as well as a valuable one. Indeed we are left with the desire for a fuller coverage of Indian titles and of those dealing with the Indian communities, particularly in East and South Africa.
The volume is limited to entries in English and French. It includes a subject and author index. Entries include books, journals, and, occasionally, newspaper articles. The arrangement is basically by national African states, subdivided in broad subjects.
No doubt because of the unavailability of new material, we find some fairly old and superseded titles and too few of the new ones, especially valuable bibliographies which recently have appeared. We also lament the failure to update the names of countries such as Upper Volta which became Burkina Faso in 1984, and Dahomey which became Benin even earlier. Nevertheless, the bibliography under review remains useful, for rarely has so much material on Africa been referred to in a single volume.
Hans Panofsky retired in 1991 from the post of Curator of the Africana Library, Northwestern University. He holds degrees from the London School of Economics, Columbia University, and Cornell University. In 1989 his colleagues in African studies honored him with a festschrift, Africana Resources and Collections: Three Decades of Development and Achievement, reviewed in the first issue of Third World Libraries (see http://www.worlib.org/vol01no1/anderson_v01n1.shtml).
© 1991 Hans Panofsky.