This paper is based on a talk given at the British Library in October 2005 to an audience of African publishers and writers. It discusses the crucial role that publishers can play in helping to develop the new, democratic South Africa. My remarks were given from the perspective of the National Heritage Council (NHC) - a statutory, arms-length organisation formed by the National Heritage Council Act passed by the South African parliament in 1999.

In the context of post-apartheid South Africa, the Act mandates the NHC to assist in redressing the racial and ethnic fragmentation of the past. The core function of the NHC is to coordinate all heritage sectors in an interdisciplinary manner. Members of the Council include chairpersons of national heritage institutions as well as representatives of heritage from each of the nine provinces.

The establishment of functional records management systems in Ghana to manage the records of some traditional authorities is a recent development. After independence some parastatals, financial institutions, corporations and private business firms began to recognize the importance of recorded information as a vital organizational resource. With this realization came the recognition that a system for managing this resource is essential. This awareness led to the establishment of what is usually referred to as special archives.

In the case of the traditional authorities the archives were set up with the aim of preserving the cultural and historical heritage of their traditional areas. As noted by Adams (2005) in a study on the management of chieftaincy records in Ghana, the chiefs perform administrative, judicial and advisory roles to government on traditional issues.

The National Archives of France opened its first building at Aix in 1966; at that time the Archives d’Outre-Mer (AOM) located there co-existed alongside the Section Outre-Mer of the National Archives (SOM) housed at the Rue Oudinot address in Paris. Following the abolition of the ‘Ministry of France Overseas’, it was decided in 1962 to bring together all the archives of the former French colonies, except for those of French West Africa which were all retained in Dakar. The archives transferred to Paris were only those of French government; those of administration, i.e. public works, health, education, local government, all stayed in their respective countries.

Initially at Aix 900 tonnes of archives arrived in the first ten months. In 1986 the SOM in Paris was closed and 17 linear km of documents, far from completely processed, were transferred to Aix.

Africa will not easily shed its sensitivity to its past. It is therefore not surprising that there is a high degree of dissatisfaction with the treatment of the continent in the major library classification schemes. Both the LC and the DDC have gone through far reaching revisions which still fall short of what Africa expects for itself. Given that Africa is trying to keep pace with the rest of the world of information, this article argues that rather than continue to whine about neglect, Africa can take its fate into its own hands and in the process make its own contribution to classification by endowing the library world with a home-grown, Africa-based scheme which can help the revisers of the major schemes to integrate properly the continent into the mainstream.

Nigerian societies treat many aspects of their cultures with reverence. Names and naming are just two of these. It is for this reason that Nigerian names deserve more than just a passing interest by cataloguers. Although long contact with the West has resulted in the adoption of family names, the issue of surnames, as a whole, is more complex. It is not in all Nigerian societies that surnames fit into the standard definition. For accurate identification and choice of names as access points, the cataloguer needs to have a deeper knowledge of the peculiarities that exist in various cultures. Cataloguing rules have made provision for a similar peculiarity in Asiatic names. It would be over simplistic to assume that Nigeria, or Africa for that matter, fits snugly into the Western mode.

The electronic library revolution is not the hurricane some feared it would be. It might have changed the face of the landscape, but some edifices with very strong foundations have survived and are still standing. One of such survivors is cataloguing - at least many aspects of it. Information Technology has changed traditional library chores; we cannot as yet burn our codebooks. I have yet to come across a library software that has completely done away with access points. I would rather think that digitization has actually created more of them. Even if some have been de-emphasised, the good old name entry appears still to stand on solid ground.