Pub Date : 2010-01-01DOI: 10.1017/s0305862x00020938
D. Killingray
Serendipity and surprise occasionally contribute to the work of the historian. A chance discovery of crucial documents, a word from an informant, or a brief text helping to resolve a puzzle from the past, can set the adrenalin pulsing. Despite the apparent dull, desk-bound procedures of historical research it can at times be a rather exciting venture with eureka moments. There is another dimension that never ceases to thrill me: bringing to life an insignificant voice from the past, recovering the words of those supposedly 'without history', giving flesh and being to a forgotten 'common person', and contributing a further piece of evidence to history 'from below'.
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Pub Date : 2010-01-01DOI: 10.1017/s0305862x00021075
F. Gubry
Introduction The North-South cooperation presented here does not only concern libraries and librarians. It concerns cooperation within a network of institutions in which librarians are working and whose main objective is to promote the adoption of information and communication technologies by demographers in French-speaking Africa. 1. History (a) Centres involved and origins of the network This cooperation was implemented between six demographic research centres of which five are located in French-speaking sub-Saharan Africa and the other in Paris. Their activities are quite similar. Affiliated to national universities, they develop research activities in the area of population-development and train students in demography; most of them have a library managed by a professional. They are relatively small, with less than fifty employees (teachers, researchers and administrative staff) and welcome PhD students. Most of the French-speaking African centres were created in the 1970s, with CEPED the most recent in 1988. These centres include: - Benin: Centre de Formation et de Recherche en matiere de Population (CEFORP) in Cotonou - Burkina Faso: Institut Superieur des Sciences de la Population (ISSP) in Ouagadougou - Cameroon: Institut de Formation et de Recherche Demographique (IFORD) in Yaounde - Cote d'Ivoire: Ecole Nationale Superieure de Statistique et d'Economie Appliquee (ENSEA) in Abidjan - France: Centre Population et Developpement (CEPED) in Paris - Togo: Unite de Recherche Demographique (URD) in Lome Cooperation between the different centres has been in existence for a long time. Research centres in French-speaking Sub-Saharan Africa are few and their researchers often attended the same training centres in France, Belgium, Quebec or IFORD (Cameroon). One of the missions of CEPED, in addition to research projects jointly carried out with partners from the South, was provision of library support if necessary. Ever since the creation of CEPED, there were regular contacts between myself and the librarians of each of these centres for exchange of documents, training, audits or the implementation of computerisation of bibliographical catalogues, but all were bilateral arrangements between CEPED and a specific centre. The expansion of internet use transformed this collaboration some twelve years ago. Although the commercial use of the Internet was not so well developed and the Internet had not yet transformed our every day life, it was already clear that using the Internet in our work changed ways of retrieving scientific information, accessing databases and transformed communications through email. Contact with African researchers showed that without reliable connections, it was impossible for them to have proper access to this environment and that the so-called "digital divide" was getting wider. International organisations have quickly realised the magnitude of this problem and have undertaken various initiatives to try to remedy it. The most pub
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Pub Date : 2010-01-01DOI: 10.1017/s0305862x0002094x
Marion Frank-Wilson
Indiana University (IU) owns several collections of Africana personal papers. In this presentation, I will discuss this conference's theme, that is the research potential of such papers, from a librarian's perspective, based on my work with those collections, and based on research which resulted from this work. First, a brief overview of IU's collections of personal papers:2 While IU's Africana collection in the Wells Library (i.e., the main library) is primarily a working collection, it also includes several collections of personal papers. Probably the most notable among them is the * H.K. Banda Archive: this archive, dating mostly from the 1950s to the 1990s, was given to us by Dr. Don Brody, the late President Banda's official biographer. It includes published and unpublished correspondence, speeches, manuscripts, diaries, and extensive background information about Southern and Central Africa (including Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa) as well as videos, audio cassettes, photographs, and fabrics. We have a finding aid for the archive on the African Studies Collection's website: http:/ /www.libraries.iub.edu /index. php?pageld=1000481 We are currently in the process of digitising a small set of the collection (mainly correspondence and photographs) as a pilot project which hopefully will lead to a grant proposal to digitise the complete archive. * Nuer Field Notes (http:/ /www.dlib.indiana.edu/collections/nuer/ ): This collection was given to us by a former missionary to South Sudan, Ms. Eleanor Vandevort. Ms. Vandevort was in South Sudan between 1949 and 1963. The collection is comprised of linguistic field notes on the Nuer language, correspondence, slides, as well as a scanned copy of her ethnographic monograph, A Leopard Tamed: the Story of an African Pastor, his People, and his Problems (New York: Harper & Row, 1968). It turned out that the field notes, which had never been published or developed into a publication by Ms. Vandevort, were a unique contribution to the field of Nuer linguistics, and I was able to obtain grant money to digitise the whole collection. A colleague of mine, Dr. Edward Miner (who is now the International Studies bibliographer at the University of Iowa) and I worked on the project together, and, in addition to digitising the collection, we also included an essay on the missionary and linguistic history of South Sudan (by Dr. Miner); and I wrote a biographical essay which was based on a three-month long series of interviews I conducted with Ms. Vandevort. * We have recently received another collection of papers by another missionary to South Sudan, a former colleague of Eleanor Vandevort, Robb McLaughlin. This collection is as yet unprocessed, but we know that it includes published materials on Nuer linguistics, Christian tracts and translations, hymnals, Nuer study materials developed by McLaughlin, his linguistic studies, hand written notes, etc. These collections are part of the Wells Library's Africana
印第安纳大学(Indiana University)收藏了一些非洲人的个人论文。在这次演讲中，我将讨论这次会议的主题，即从图书管理员的角度，基于我对这些藏品的研究，以及基于这项工作所产生的研究，这类论文的研究潜力。首先，简要介绍一下印第安纳大学的个人论文收藏:2虽然印第安纳大学在威尔斯图书馆(即主图书馆)的非洲文献收藏主要是一个工作收藏，但它也包括一些个人论文收藏。其中最引人注目的可能是h·k·班达档案:这份档案的时间主要从20世纪50年代到90年代，是由已故班达总统的官方传记作者唐·布罗迪博士提供给我们的。它包括已发表和未发表的信件、演讲、手稿、日记和有关南部和中部非洲(包括马拉维、赞比亚、津巴布韦和南非)的广泛背景信息，以及视频、录音带、照片和织物。我们在非洲研究收藏的网站上有一个档案查找工具:http://www.libraries.iub.edu /index。php吗?我们目前正在将一小部分藏品(主要是信件和照片)数字化，作为一个试点项目，希望能获得一份将整个档案数字化的拨款提案。* Nuer Field Notes(网址:www.dlib.indiana.edu/collections/nuer/):这个收藏是前南苏丹传教士埃莉诺·范德沃特女士给我们的。凡德沃特1949年至1963年在南苏丹。该作品集包括努尔语的语言学现场笔记、通信、幻灯片，以及她的民族志专著《驯服的豹子:一个非洲牧师、他的人民和他的问题的故事》(纽约:Harper & Row出版社，1968年)的扫描副本。事实证明，Vandevort女士从未出版或发展成出版物的实地笔记，是对努尔语言学领域的独特贡献，我能够获得赠款，将整个收藏数字化。我的一位同事爱德华·迈纳(Edward Miner)博士(他现在是爱荷华大学(University of Iowa)的国际研究书目编纂者)和我一起参与了这个项目，除了将这些藏品数字化之外，我们还收录了一篇关于南苏丹传教和语言历史的文章(迈纳博士写的);我写了一篇传记文章，这是基于我对范德沃特女士长达三个月的一系列采访。*我们最近收到了另一位南苏丹传教士的文件，他是埃莉诺·范德沃特的前同事罗布·麦克劳克林。这个收藏还没有经过处理，但我们知道它包括关于努尔语言学的出版材料，基督教小册子和翻译，赞美诗，麦克劳克林开发的努尔研究材料，他的语言学研究，手写笔记等。这些藏品是威尔斯图书馆非洲藏品的一部分因此也是我的职责之一。自从我在印第安纳大学读书以来，它们就作为礼物送给了我们。印第安纳大学的珍本图书馆礼来图书馆也收藏了非洲人的个人文件。其中两份是购买的(纳丁·戈迪默的论文;纳丁·戈迪默论文:最初，戈迪默收藏了大约6700件从1934年到2001年的物品，包括信件、短篇小说、小说、文章、讲座和演讲、童年日记、笔记本和研究材料。还包括剧本，许多改编自戈迪默的短篇故事和小说。她与同事、文学经纪人和出版商有广泛的通信往来，包括《纽约客》等杂志，她的许多短篇小说和文章都是在《纽约客》等杂志上首次发表的(见http://www.indiana.edu/-liblilly/guides/gordimer/gord2)。．．．
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Pub Date : 2010-01-01DOI: 10.1017/s0305862x00021099
R. Kgosiemang
University of Botswana (UB) Library Policy on Collection Development The 1998 University of Botswana Collection Development Policy compiled by J.O. Asamani, the then Acquisitions Coordinator, is explicit on materials generated through purchase. It is also clear on acceptance of gifts and donations. The policy was not specific on the collection of private archives even though it did not sanction the function. The whole process of collection development has since been narrowly confined to published collections and papers that are either published in journals or those that have been presented at workshops and conferences. It is the view of the present paper that for the sake of the interested user it is important for the collection development policy to stretch beyond published material. Brief History of UB Library The University of Botswana library has been in existence since 1971. The UB Library system consists of the main library on the Gaborone Campus and three branch libraries. These are the Faculty of Engineering and Technology located in Gaborone; the Centre of Continuing Education (CCE, North) located in Francistown, in the Northern part of Botswana and the Harry Oppenheimer Okavango Research Centre (HOORC), located in Maun, Ngamiland (North-western Botswana). The paper will focus on the Main Library and HOORC Library. The current UB main Library building was occupied in 2001 as an extension of an old building which was occupied in 1986. The old building comprised of a Ground floor which housed Technical Services, Automation, Circulation and Management offices; First floor which housed Education and Social Science collections and Second floor on which there were the Humanities and Science faculty collections, Periodicals and Botswana Collection. The current building has the following floors representing units and service points: Ground floor with Customer Services, Reference collection and Fiction Collection; the Upper Ground Floor which houses the Science faculty collections; First floor with Social Sciences and Business faculties' collections; Law Collection in a separate wing of the same floor; the Mezzanine floor which houses current periodicals; Second Floor for the Humanities faculty collection; Third floor for the Education Faculty collection; then, the Lower Ground for Botswana Documentation and Special Collections, and Archives unit. UB Main Library Archival Unit and its archives This paper will examine all the archives currently available at both the University of Botswana Main Library and HOORC's Library showing how they were acquired. The unit was established in January 2005. The UB Library archives are the official repository for institutional records of University of Botswana. The purpose of establishing the unit was for it to acquire and preserve archives related to the university, its faculties, staff, students and alumni, and to make them accessible to researchers. UBL Archives Policy The policy limits collection activities
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Pub Date : 2010-01-01DOI: 10.1017/s0305862x00021154
T. Barringer
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Pub Date : 2010-01-01DOI: 10.1017/s0305862x00019579
Amzat Boukari-Yabara
Introduction: Walter Rodney Walter Rodney1 was born in Georgetown, Guyana on March 23, 1942. Raised in a middle class family, he won a scholarship to enter the most prestigious local school, Queen's College in Georgetown. In 1960, he went to the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI) in Jamaica. After his undergraduate degree, he attended the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London where, at the age of 24, he received his PhD with honours in African History. Rodney's thesis, A History of the Upper Guinea Coast 15451800, was published by Oxford University Press in 1970. During his studies at SOAS, he travelled to Spain, Italy and Portugal in order to access archives about Guinea coast. In these countries, he made contact with anticolonialist movements, especially the Portuguese one headed by Amilcar Cabrai. Rodney spent his weekends at Hyde Park Speakers' Corner arguing about struggling against apartheid, racism and colonialism. Close to the London Jamaican community, he was engaged in progressive movements. He also read Marx, Trotsky and Lenin, and formed his own version of Marxism during meetings with West Indian students at the house of CLR and Selma James. After his PhD, he joined Terence Ranger teaching at Dar-es-Salaam University, Tanzania, as an assistant lecturer in history. In 1968, he went back to Mona campus as a professor in African history. Influenced by the Black Power movement that was rising in the U.S., Third World revolutionaries and Marxist theory, Rodney began to engage in a radical left activism and he actively challenged the status quo. He decided to link scholarship with activism, and to write a kind of history from below which distinguished him from his academic colleagues. His engagement led him outside university walls, to the suburbs of Kingston, where he used to get involved with Rastafari and working people. His radical criticism of the Jamaican government, especially the first black Prime Minister Hugh Shearer, gave birth to a popular movement in Jamaica. It burst into riots on October 1968, when Rodney was unable to re-enter Jamaica after his intervention on Black Power at the Black Writers' Conference in Montreal, Canada. Groundings with my Brothers (Bogle L'Ouverture Press, 1969) describes his Jamaican experience. Rodney spent several months writing in Cuba and finally returned to Tanzania in March 1969 where he engaged in debates about race, class, underdevelopment and African Liberation movements. In 1972, he published his greatest book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa with Bogle L'Ouverture. He also wrote some papers on socialism in Tanzania that remained unknown because he refused to publish them outside Tanzania. In 1974, Rodney returned to Guyana but his appointment as Professor of History at the University of Guyana was blocked by the government. However, he remained in Guyana, researching the history of working peoples, and getting involved in political life, becaming a co-le
{"title":"Looking at the Walter Rodney Papers: Atlanta, Georgetown and London","authors":"Amzat Boukari-Yabara","doi":"10.1017/s0305862x00019579","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305862x00019579","url":null,"abstract":"Introduction: Walter Rodney Walter Rodney1 was born in Georgetown, Guyana on March 23, 1942. Raised in a middle class family, he won a scholarship to enter the most prestigious local school, Queen's College in Georgetown. In 1960, he went to the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI) in Jamaica. After his undergraduate degree, he attended the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London where, at the age of 24, he received his PhD with honours in African History. Rodney's thesis, A History of the Upper Guinea Coast 15451800, was published by Oxford University Press in 1970. During his studies at SOAS, he travelled to Spain, Italy and Portugal in order to access archives about Guinea coast. In these countries, he made contact with anticolonialist movements, especially the Portuguese one headed by Amilcar Cabrai. Rodney spent his weekends at Hyde Park Speakers' Corner arguing about struggling against apartheid, racism and colonialism. Close to the London Jamaican community, he was engaged in progressive movements. He also read Marx, Trotsky and Lenin, and formed his own version of Marxism during meetings with West Indian students at the house of CLR and Selma James. After his PhD, he joined Terence Ranger teaching at Dar-es-Salaam University, Tanzania, as an assistant lecturer in history. In 1968, he went back to Mona campus as a professor in African history. Influenced by the Black Power movement that was rising in the U.S., Third World revolutionaries and Marxist theory, Rodney began to engage in a radical left activism and he actively challenged the status quo. He decided to link scholarship with activism, and to write a kind of history from below which distinguished him from his academic colleagues. His engagement led him outside university walls, to the suburbs of Kingston, where he used to get involved with Rastafari and working people. His radical criticism of the Jamaican government, especially the first black Prime Minister Hugh Shearer, gave birth to a popular movement in Jamaica. It burst into riots on October 1968, when Rodney was unable to re-enter Jamaica after his intervention on Black Power at the Black Writers' Conference in Montreal, Canada. Groundings with my Brothers (Bogle L'Ouverture Press, 1969) describes his Jamaican experience. Rodney spent several months writing in Cuba and finally returned to Tanzania in March 1969 where he engaged in debates about race, class, underdevelopment and African Liberation movements. In 1972, he published his greatest book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa with Bogle L'Ouverture. He also wrote some papers on socialism in Tanzania that remained unknown because he refused to publish them outside Tanzania. In 1974, Rodney returned to Guyana but his appointment as Professor of History at the University of Guyana was blocked by the government. However, he remained in Guyana, researching the history of working peoples, and getting involved in political life, becaming a co-le","PeriodicalId":89063,"journal":{"name":"African research & documentation","volume":"1 1","pages":"3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56841688","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2010-01-01DOI: 10.1017/s0305862x00019609
L. Stanley, Helen Dampier
Introduction The Olive Schreiner Letters Project (OSLP) is making use of 'personal papers' associated with, amongst a number of other important concerns, the history of Southern Africa, and doing so in an innovative way.1 The OSLP is transcribing and analysing all of the extant letters of the feminist, social theorist and writer Olive Schreiner (1855-1920), and will contribute theoretically and methodologically to the use of letters and other epistolary materials in social science and humanities research. In addition, the project will publish in digital format transcripts of the complete Schreiner letters, which will be free access. The project is funded by the ESRC (RES-062-231286), and is multi-site, led by principal investigator Professor Liz Stanley, and with research and technical teams based at the universities of Edinburgh, Leeds Metropolitan and Sheffield. Significance of the project The OSLP is one the largest qualitative projects funded in the UK, and also one of the biggest sociologically-orientated projects to make use of letters on a very large scale since Thomas and Znaniecki's pioneering study The Polish Peasant in Europe and America in 1920. The project is multi-disciplinary, drawing on aspects of social history, literary studies, social geography but within a sociological framework and combining this with the use of software technologies in our analysis. The project has several areas of focus: the research project itself, involving detailed analysis of Schreiner's letters, preparation of 'the complete Olive Schreiner Letters' for electronic publication, as well as knowledge transfer around the user interface for a range of international users, and also via a series of Virtual Research Environment (VRE) workshops. These areas are explored below, after a brief contextualisation of Schreiner and the importance of her letters. Significance of Schreiner's letters Crucially, Schreiner's letters open up and allow for a radical rethinking of the social history of late 19th and early 20th century Britain and South Africa, and do so in a number of ways. First, Schreiner's letters provide insightful and often startlingly prescient social and political commentary and analysis on the events and changes that took place over the period of her epistolarly life (from the early 1870s until 1920). Secondly, her letters are a part of that social history itself; they are not simply a resource to be plundered for 'what they can show about the past', but form a fascinating topic of study in and of themselves. And lastly, Schreiner's letters provide a large and complex dataset for theorising letters and epistolarity. Schreiner's epistolarly life spanned a period of massive social change and momentous events, both in Britain and South Africa. As a young woman Schreiner lived for a time at the Diamond Fields in Kimberley and later on in Johannesburg on the brink of the 1899-1902 South African War, and in both places she was witness to the birth of a very
{"title":"Towards the epistolarium: issues in researching and publishing the Olive Schreiner letters","authors":"L. Stanley, Helen Dampier","doi":"10.1017/s0305862x00019609","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305862x00019609","url":null,"abstract":"Introduction The Olive Schreiner Letters Project (OSLP) is making use of 'personal papers' associated with, amongst a number of other important concerns, the history of Southern Africa, and doing so in an innovative way.1 The OSLP is transcribing and analysing all of the extant letters of the feminist, social theorist and writer Olive Schreiner (1855-1920), and will contribute theoretically and methodologically to the use of letters and other epistolary materials in social science and humanities research. In addition, the project will publish in digital format transcripts of the complete Schreiner letters, which will be free access. The project is funded by the ESRC (RES-062-231286), and is multi-site, led by principal investigator Professor Liz Stanley, and with research and technical teams based at the universities of Edinburgh, Leeds Metropolitan and Sheffield. Significance of the project The OSLP is one the largest qualitative projects funded in the UK, and also one of the biggest sociologically-orientated projects to make use of letters on a very large scale since Thomas and Znaniecki's pioneering study The Polish Peasant in Europe and America in 1920. The project is multi-disciplinary, drawing on aspects of social history, literary studies, social geography but within a sociological framework and combining this with the use of software technologies in our analysis. The project has several areas of focus: the research project itself, involving detailed analysis of Schreiner's letters, preparation of 'the complete Olive Schreiner Letters' for electronic publication, as well as knowledge transfer around the user interface for a range of international users, and also via a series of Virtual Research Environment (VRE) workshops. These areas are explored below, after a brief contextualisation of Schreiner and the importance of her letters. Significance of Schreiner's letters Crucially, Schreiner's letters open up and allow for a radical rethinking of the social history of late 19th and early 20th century Britain and South Africa, and do so in a number of ways. First, Schreiner's letters provide insightful and often startlingly prescient social and political commentary and analysis on the events and changes that took place over the period of her epistolarly life (from the early 1870s until 1920). Secondly, her letters are a part of that social history itself; they are not simply a resource to be plundered for 'what they can show about the past', but form a fascinating topic of study in and of themselves. And lastly, Schreiner's letters provide a large and complex dataset for theorising letters and epistolarity. Schreiner's epistolarly life spanned a period of massive social change and momentous events, both in Britain and South Africa. As a young woman Schreiner lived for a time at the Diamond Fields in Kimberley and later on in Johannesburg on the brink of the 1899-1902 South African War, and in both places she was witness to the birth of a very ","PeriodicalId":89063,"journal":{"name":"African research & documentation","volume":"1 1","pages":"27"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56842227","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Zulu identities: being Zulu, past and present; edited by Benedict Carton, John Laband and Jabulani Sithole. London: Hurst, 2009. xxv + 633 pp. ISBN 978-185065-952-5. £25. "What does it mean to be Zulu today? Is this different from what it has meant in the past?" To answer these questions - as posed on the back cover of this book - the editors assembled a team of fifty scholars, based mainly in North America and South Africa, with a scattering from Britain, and gave them the task of showing how "the characteristic traditions of a pre-industrial people have evolved into different cultural expressions of 'Zulu-ness' in modern South Africa". Moreover, with the defeat of apartheid and the emergence of democracy in South Africa, the editors hoped that the project would play a part in freeing South African history from its past constraints and prejudices. The result is quite simply a tour de force, a collection of fifty-two distinct chapters, none more than twenty pages long, each of which explores in a stimulating and accessible way its chosen theme. And although written by academics for academics, it deserves a far wider audience, especially for those chapters which debunk some of the myths which, for example, surround the nature of Shaka's rule, Zulu militarism, or the relationship between Mangosuthu Buthelezi and ANC leader Albert Luthuli. In a brief review, it is possible to do no more than refer to a few of the themes running through this monumental book. On Shaka, for example, Dan Wylie returns to some of the arguments he has made at greater length in his book Myth of Iron: Shaka in history} In doing so, he makes the important point that "all we have as historians is text [original emphasis], writing, a crafted literature, subject to all the limitations and wiles of language" (p.82). Thus the European witnesses to Shaka's rule, notably Isaacs and Fynn, depicted themselves as "morally upright citizens carrying the light of European civilisation into the heart of darkness", whereas "they were, actually, frontier ruffians grubbing for a quick buck" (p. 83). Moreover, their original writings were rewritten by editors with their own agendas before being published, and mythology gradually replaced history. Wylie points out that this was by no means only a nineteenth century phenomenon. He draws attention to E. A Ritter's influential Shaka Zulu. In this, Ritter gave a detailed and dramatic account of the battle of Qokli Hill which has been copied by many writers since (including, Wylie notes, present-day authors of business strategies). However, Wylie says, "there is no evidence whatsoever that such a battle happened" (p.85). Similarly, John Wright's chapter on Shaka revisits the vexed question of the mfecane, and whether it actually existed outside the minds of earlier writers on Zulu history. He takes particular issue with AT Bryant's influential Olden Times in Zululand and Natal (1929), describing it as "dramatised and hyperbolic" and "inherited dire
{"title":"Zulu Identities: Being Zulu, Past and Present","authors":"J. Pinfold","doi":"10.5860/choice.47-1012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.47-1012","url":null,"abstract":"Zulu identities: being Zulu, past and present; edited by Benedict Carton, John Laband and Jabulani Sithole. London: Hurst, 2009. xxv + 633 pp. ISBN 978-185065-952-5. £25. \"What does it mean to be Zulu today? Is this different from what it has meant in the past?\" To answer these questions - as posed on the back cover of this book - the editors assembled a team of fifty scholars, based mainly in North America and South Africa, with a scattering from Britain, and gave them the task of showing how \"the characteristic traditions of a pre-industrial people have evolved into different cultural expressions of 'Zulu-ness' in modern South Africa\". Moreover, with the defeat of apartheid and the emergence of democracy in South Africa, the editors hoped that the project would play a part in freeing South African history from its past constraints and prejudices. The result is quite simply a tour de force, a collection of fifty-two distinct chapters, none more than twenty pages long, each of which explores in a stimulating and accessible way its chosen theme. And although written by academics for academics, it deserves a far wider audience, especially for those chapters which debunk some of the myths which, for example, surround the nature of Shaka's rule, Zulu militarism, or the relationship between Mangosuthu Buthelezi and ANC leader Albert Luthuli. In a brief review, it is possible to do no more than refer to a few of the themes running through this monumental book. On Shaka, for example, Dan Wylie returns to some of the arguments he has made at greater length in his book Myth of Iron: Shaka in history} In doing so, he makes the important point that \"all we have as historians is text [original emphasis], writing, a crafted literature, subject to all the limitations and wiles of language\" (p.82). Thus the European witnesses to Shaka's rule, notably Isaacs and Fynn, depicted themselves as \"morally upright citizens carrying the light of European civilisation into the heart of darkness\", whereas \"they were, actually, frontier ruffians grubbing for a quick buck\" (p. 83). Moreover, their original writings were rewritten by editors with their own agendas before being published, and mythology gradually replaced history. Wylie points out that this was by no means only a nineteenth century phenomenon. He draws attention to E. A Ritter's influential Shaka Zulu. In this, Ritter gave a detailed and dramatic account of the battle of Qokli Hill which has been copied by many writers since (including, Wylie notes, present-day authors of business strategies). However, Wylie says, \"there is no evidence whatsoever that such a battle happened\" (p.85). Similarly, John Wright's chapter on Shaka revisits the vexed question of the mfecane, and whether it actually existed outside the minds of earlier writers on Zulu history. He takes particular issue with AT Bryant's influential Olden Times in Zululand and Natal (1929), describing it as \"dramatised and hyperbolic\" and \"inherited dire","PeriodicalId":89063,"journal":{"name":"African research & documentation","volume":"1 1","pages":"67"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71126361","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2010-01-01DOI: 10.1017/s0305862x00021117
N. Adetoro
Introduction Persons with visual impairment have been known to experience functional loss of vision or visual incapability which cannot be rectified by refractive corrections, medications or surgery (Adetoro, 2009). Visually impaired persons experience eye disorders which include retina degeneration, albinism, cataracts, glaucoma, muscular problems that result in visual disturbances, cornea disorders, diabetic retinopathy, congenital disorders and infection (Arditi and Rosenthal, 1998). They contend with visual system defects which affect their individual ability to perform activities of daily living. These conditions include partial sightedness, low vision and total blindness. The visually impaired rely on alternative formats such as Braille, large prints and talking book or audio recordings to meet their reading needs. In Nigeria, the population of the visually impaired is estimated at 3 million (Atinmo, 2002). Very few of these have received formal education and are capable of reading or writing Braille. The majority resort to begging on the streets as a means of livelihood (Adetoro, 2009). Those who are educated depend on the goodness of charities, non-governmental organisations, (NGOs) or philanthropists to provide them with information materials. Many are provided with information materials via libraries in schools, public libraries and institutions servicing the visually impaired in Nigeria. Relative to the population of the visually impaired in Nigeria, those who use information materials via libraries (private or government owned) are very few. This study is therefore focused on the visually impaired who are educated and capable of using information materials in libraries. Libraries providing information materials for the visually impaired in Nigeria are public libraries, NGO libraries and libraries in educational institutions (primary, secondary and tertiary institutions). Libraries servicing the visually impaired in Nigeria are faced with problems of meeting the high demand for information materials in alternative formats. They are perceived to have inadequate alternative formats, and obsolete facilities for the transcription and provision of information material for use. The consequence is that visually impaired people who seek information are provided with what is available and not what they want to read (Adetoro, 2009). To put the situation of the visually impaired information users into proper perspective, it is pertinent to dig into some relevant characteristics of the visually impaired themselves. This could lead to a more realistic understanding of visually impaired people in Nigeria. Statement of the problem Persons with visual impairment are faced with the challenges of inclusion and the perception of society with regard to their personal characteristics, which has not been encouraging. Indeed, these perceptions have led to their exclusion from all forms of social participation including, to a great extent, the use of informat
{"title":"Characteristics of Visually Impaired Information Users in Nigeria","authors":"N. Adetoro","doi":"10.1017/s0305862x00021117","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305862x00021117","url":null,"abstract":"Introduction Persons with visual impairment have been known to experience functional loss of vision or visual incapability which cannot be rectified by refractive corrections, medications or surgery (Adetoro, 2009). Visually impaired persons experience eye disorders which include retina degeneration, albinism, cataracts, glaucoma, muscular problems that result in visual disturbances, cornea disorders, diabetic retinopathy, congenital disorders and infection (Arditi and Rosenthal, 1998). They contend with visual system defects which affect their individual ability to perform activities of daily living. These conditions include partial sightedness, low vision and total blindness. The visually impaired rely on alternative formats such as Braille, large prints and talking book or audio recordings to meet their reading needs. In Nigeria, the population of the visually impaired is estimated at 3 million (Atinmo, 2002). Very few of these have received formal education and are capable of reading or writing Braille. The majority resort to begging on the streets as a means of livelihood (Adetoro, 2009). Those who are educated depend on the goodness of charities, non-governmental organisations, (NGOs) or philanthropists to provide them with information materials. Many are provided with information materials via libraries in schools, public libraries and institutions servicing the visually impaired in Nigeria. Relative to the population of the visually impaired in Nigeria, those who use information materials via libraries (private or government owned) are very few. This study is therefore focused on the visually impaired who are educated and capable of using information materials in libraries. Libraries providing information materials for the visually impaired in Nigeria are public libraries, NGO libraries and libraries in educational institutions (primary, secondary and tertiary institutions). Libraries servicing the visually impaired in Nigeria are faced with problems of meeting the high demand for information materials in alternative formats. They are perceived to have inadequate alternative formats, and obsolete facilities for the transcription and provision of information material for use. The consequence is that visually impaired people who seek information are provided with what is available and not what they want to read (Adetoro, 2009). To put the situation of the visually impaired information users into proper perspective, it is pertinent to dig into some relevant characteristics of the visually impaired themselves. This could lead to a more realistic understanding of visually impaired people in Nigeria. Statement of the problem Persons with visual impairment are faced with the challenges of inclusion and the perception of society with regard to their personal characteristics, which has not been encouraging. Indeed, these perceptions have led to their exclusion from all forms of social participation including, to a great extent, the use of informat","PeriodicalId":89063,"journal":{"name":"African research & documentation","volume":"1 1","pages":"47-58"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56842826","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2010-01-01DOI: 10.1017/s0305862x00021129
Yetunde Zaid, A. Abioye
Preservation of heritage materials constitutes a big challenge to heritage institutions in Africa. The challenge of heritage preservation in the tropics seems to be overwhelming due to a number of factors which include the harsh tropical environment, absence of a preservation policy and general lack of preservation awareness and appreciation of the importance and sensitivity of heritage materials. The strategic role of preservation to the survival of and long term access to heritage materials cannot be over-emphasised. It not only prevents or delays deterioration but also ensures access. “Without preservation, access becomes impossible and collections will decay and disintegrate” (Drijfhout, 2001). The greatest obstacle to access is deterioration or loss of collection.National heritage institutions such as the National Library, the National Archives and the National Museums are in the forefront in the preservation of heritage materials in Nigeria.
{"title":"Museums, Libraries and Archives: Collaborating for the Preservation of Heritage Materials in Nigeria","authors":"Yetunde Zaid, A. Abioye","doi":"10.1017/s0305862x00021129","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305862x00021129","url":null,"abstract":"Preservation of heritage materials constitutes a big challenge to heritage institutions in Africa. The challenge of heritage preservation in the tropics seems to be overwhelming due to a number of factors which include the harsh tropical environment, absence of a preservation policy and general lack of preservation awareness and appreciation of the importance and sensitivity of heritage materials. The strategic role of preservation to the survival of and long term access to heritage materials cannot be over-emphasised. It not only prevents or delays deterioration but also ensures access. “Without preservation, access becomes impossible and collections will decay and disintegrate” (Drijfhout, 2001). The greatest obstacle to access is deterioration or loss of collection.National heritage institutions such as the National Library, the National Archives and the National Museums are in the forefront in the preservation of heritage materials in Nigeria.","PeriodicalId":89063,"journal":{"name":"African research & documentation","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56842837","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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