Cataloguing principles and the rules that evolve from them have not been devised in a cognitive vacuum. The evolution took place in a Western cultural context and inevitably presents the problem of biases. When these cataloguing rules are applied to materials originating from non-Western cultures such biases surface and often constitute serious difficulties. This is the case with Africana materials that have caused and are still causing numerous problems to many a cataloguer. For example, many authors (Iwuji 1989, Aderibidge and Udo 1990) have pointed out the inadequacy of Library of Congress (LC) and Dewey Decimal (DD) classification schemes with regard to Africana materials claiming that they are restrictive, inhospitable, unfair, and biased.

In 1970, the editorial of the South African Archives Journal - mouthpiece of the Southern African Society of Archivists, expressed the view that previous attempts towards a national register of manuscripts had not materialised. It noted however, that the South African Government Archives Service was considering this undertaking, and suggested that whenever this register came about, in whatever form, the “key requirement should remain its suitability for complete publication”.

In 1977 the first initiative towards the register came from the Bibliographical Committee of the South African Library Society, when it requested the South African Library to draw up a register of manuscripts and other material in South African libraries. Circulars were sent out to prospective participants and the South African Library produced a guide to its own collection in Cape Town.

The Centre for Overseas Pest Research (COPR) exists to help overseas territories, particularly the developing countries, solve pest problems in the field of agriculture and public health. It concentrates on pest species which are of international or regional significance either because they migrate between countries, for example, locusts and weaver birds (Quelea), or because they are widespread and endemic, for example, termites and mosquitoes. COPR undertake laboratory research and overseas field investigations into the biology, ecology and pest status of pre-harvest pests of agriculture and certain public health pests. It is also concerned with the development and application of modern pest control techniques, as well as the long-term environmental effects of the use of pesticides in the tropics. It is a new organization in name only, since it has the experience and knowledge gained from over 30 years of pest research and control in overseas territories, as it was formed in June 1971 from already existing scientific units of the British Government's Overseas Development Administration.

The focus of my discussion will be on Sub-Saharan Africa, since this has been the scope of my work. I will discuss issues related to compiling bibliographies and filrhographies in the past and present – from the 1960s to 1990s. The focus will be on a few of the major challenges which I often think about, but do not know how to resolve.

What is a Sub-Saharan African film, and who is a Sub-Saharan African filmmaker? There is no more agreement on a definition of African film than of a definition of African literature. However, there is much less discussion of definitions of African film than of African literature.

Bibliographies and filmographies are compiled and many generalizations are made about African film without definitions being provided. Compilers and authors seem to assume that others understand their point of reference.

From its inception, the goal of the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University has been to collect as comprehensively as possible materials from and related to Africa, regardless of subject. Due to this comprehensive collection policy, the library contains many materials that are not readily available at other institutions in the United States, Europe or Africa, as was made evident by last year's SCOLMA presentation on materials on sport at the Herskovits Library.

Starting in the mid-1990s, the Herskovits Library began to consider digitising portions of its unique resources, not only to better serve its local community of researchers on the Northwestern University campus but remote users as well, regardless of location. Along with increased availability, such digitisation would support broader access to primary resources in African studies, leading to expanded research as well as enhanced teaching and curriculum enrichment, especially for undergraduate students.

Missionary periodicals are like librarians. They have an image problem. People think they are boring. Like librarians, they spent a lot of time agonising over their image. Their editorials were full of complaints that even regular church and chapel goers are ill-informed and indifferent to foreign missions and regard missionary magazines as uninteresting. They were constantly exhorting their readers to go out and sign up more subscribers. If the missionary magazines had a problem in their own time, it was a long time before scholars took them seriously as source material. Scholars tended to think of them, if they thought of them at all, covered in a pietistic haze, of interest only to committed missionary antiquarians. All this is changing. I do not have to convince readers of ARD that librarians are not boring; I hope to convince you that missionary periodicals are not boring either.

On 15 November 1902, Asian entrepreneur Alibhai MuUa Jeevanjee launched the African Standard in Mombasa with the support of editor and reporter W.H. Tiller (Kahaso, 1995). As a contractor for railway supplies, Jeevanjee had become wealthy through the construction of the Kenya-Uganda Railway (Patel, 1997). According to one account, “Ever an enterprising man.. Jeevanjee conceived of the idea of starting a newspaper in Mombasa. In due course, the African Standard was born” (Kahaso, 1995).

The newspaper continued to publish weekly reports despite changing its headquarters, ownership and title within its first ten years as a press. Jeevanjee, who had little experience as a journalist, soon sold his paper to two British businessmen. New owners Meyer and Anderson then in 1905 renamed the paper the East African Standard (Odonde, 1995). Five years later, after the seat of government moved from Mombasa to Nairobi, the newspaper's headquarters followed.

It is now almost 30 years since Dame Margery Perham, the internationally acknowledged academic expert on British colonial administration and a widely respected figure at Oxford University (Research Lecturer in Colonial Administration, 1935 and Reader 1939-48, Fellow in Imperial Government at Nuffield College, as well as being its first female Fellow, Director of the Institute of Colonial Studies and founding Director of the Oxford Colonial Records Project), died in 1982. Her work as research consultant to Lord Hailey and his team on the African Survey project (1938), her record of co-operation with the Colonial Office as a leading member of several of its committees including that set up to plan the post-war training of Colonial Service cadets (the Devonshire Courses) and her close links with a number of the new university colleges in the overseas territories, notably Makerere led to the award of the CBE in 1948.

During the first two decades of the twentieth century, research documents into the historical development of the Jewish community in South Africa were largely the work of individuals. The most notable of these were those of Rabbi Dr J H Hertz, of the Witwatersrand Hebrew Congregation who presented an address on the Jews of South Africa to the first South African Zionist Congress (1905), various papers by the amateur historians S J Judelowitz and S A Rochlin, Louis Hermann's History of the Jews in South Africa, covering the period to 1890 and S A Rochlin and Muriel Alexander's researches into newspaper files, the former covering Transvaal papers from 1892 to 1924 and the latter, Cape papers until the end of 1918.

The aim of this paper is to show how the development of colonial rule in Africa was reflected in the production of published documents by the colonial power. Its scope is restricted to British colonies in Africa - in the time available it really wouldn't be, possible to deal additionally with French, German, Spanish and Portuguese Africa, particularly as I know remarkably little about the publications produced in non-Anglophone African territories. I propose to run through the main categories of publications issued in British African colonies, with specimen copies mostly from Sierra Leone, whose colonial status was established early in the nineteenth century. I shall also have something to say about British official publications dealing with African territories.

Several years ago I described the collection of the papers of James Phipps in the Public Record Office. This was based on a preliminary arrangement of these materials. Since that time these papers have been calendared and somewhat re-arranged. In addition they have been foliated, allowing for a greater understanding of the bulk of this collection, and for easier access and more exact description of specific kinds of data. Finally, my own use of the Phipps papers makes it possible to add some commentary that was not possible before. All of this makes it advisable - even imperative - to describe these materials once more, particularly since relying on my earlier account could mislead interested parties, especially those who may have recourse to the post.

This article describes the work of the Jalada Translation Project in promoting translation into and between African languages through networking, social media, print and digital publishing and in confronting issues of orthography and editorial process. The terms of debate have changed and multilingual publication is becoming more commonplace. The author asks where responsibility lies for African language publishing and raises questions for government policy and African philanthropy.

It is a commonplace of discussions in this U.N. Population Year that in many developing countries the rate of increase of food supplies is barely keeping up with increase in population, let alone exceeding it to allow a higher standard of nutrition. Crop yields per hectare in many of these countries remain low to very low, yet in nearly all the heavily populated areas of sub-Saharan Africa, for example, crop yields on Government-financed agricultural experiment stations are appreciably higher than on farmers’ fields just outside their boundaries. There are, in fact, a number of examples of experiment station yields being up to 10 times as high under conditions where adequate farm inputs are used, such as improved seed, adequate fertiliser and pest control, and adequate farm machinery to ensure all farm operations are done on time.