The power of definition executed by scholars relates to the terms of ownership within the sphere of knowledge production. In Africa(n) Studies this is exacerbated by the fact that Western scholars continue to dominate the field. But identity and concepts (and ideology, shaped by values and norms not least internalised through personal and academic socialisation) as integral parts of scholarly knowledge production are important ingredients. As contributing factors they provide options and not pre-determinations. Hence the definition of Africa and Africa(n) Studies is a relational matter and open to contestation. This article presents perspectives and reflections, which to some extent abstract from material realities and engage in scholarly debates on the discipline and its orientation(s). It thereby further explores ‘disciplinary control and theoretical fractures’ – in the words of Deborah Bryceson - within Africa(n) Studies, through investigations into the meanings of Africa and Africa(n) Studies based on a variety of arguments. It invites examining our concepts and (self-)understanding as well as definitions as scholars in Africa(n) Studies.

From the earliest period of the production of printed Roman script books in the north of Nigeria, a primary concern was the economics of book production. The conundrum was how to break out of the ‘chicken and egg situation’ whereby it was not possible to ‘create’ a reading public unless there were sufficient, affordable, and readable books that a potential reader would want to read; on the other hand, without an existing commercial market for books, how could any publisher continue to publish? (East 1943). The main government-funded agency, the Northern Region Literature Agency (NORLA), that undertook the publication of the overwhelming majority of Hausa language books in the 1950s (Skinner 1970), was forced to close when its losses became unsustainable.

An archive of ephemera seems almost a contradiction in terms. If archives come into being because governments and individuals preserve papers they consider to be worth keeping, then an archive should be a crystallisation of past and present values concerning texts. Most of Nigeria's archives are in fact that kind of crystallisation, whether they are local government records, newspaper collections, Arabic-language chronicles, or little-known collections of personal letters and diaries, preserved because the individuals concerned, and subsequently their heirs, had a sense of their value.

Institutional repositories are an increasingly significant component in the provision of academic publication and information resources. They are being developed throughout the world as a consequence of the availability of scholarly resources in digital formats, and in response to Open Access policies and mandates.

I had originally thought of calling this piece, with a startlinglack of originality, ‘Forty years on’. It is after all exactly forty years since my own existing interests in African bibliography became formalised when I followed the option ‘Oriental and African bibliography’ at the School of Library Studies, University College London, taught by J.D. Pearson, the Librarian of the School of Oriental and African Studies. I later came to teach thisoption myself, from 1965 onwards, and indeed to follow Pearson by becoming the second to hold a chair entitled ‘Professor of the Bibliography of Asia and Africa in the University of London’. And in 2002 it will be forty years since SCOLMA (Standing Committee on Library Materials on Africa) was founded, the body that has done most in the U.K. to respond to the perceived needs of African bibliography, and one with which I have been associated for many years.