The starting point for this paper is the circular written by Mary Jay of African Books Collective shortly after the seminar held at the 1995 London International Book Fair. In this she said ‘We do not really know how much is spent by librarians on purchasing books from Africa, nor do we have a clear idea of how they find out what is available’. This paper is an attempt by one librarian working in an academic library to start the process of finding the answers to those questions, but it should be stressed that what follows represents the experience of one, possibly atypical library, and that to know the full picture, we shall have to wait for the results of the research project currently being undertaken by Doris Matovelo at Loughborough University.