One of the key elements in the maintenance of freedom of information and comprehensive documentation lies in the strength of civil society. This may be defined as that part of the nation which is critically and historically conscious, articulate and non-deferential, and independent of the state. South Africa has a long and proud tradition of strong institutions and individuals that have underpinned a durable civil society. Its tenacity, as well as its links to the international community, may be seen as one of the major reasons for the ultimate failure of apartheid ideology. From 1960 to 1980, the main contribution of civil society was to document and circulate information that contested the legitimacy of the state. The work of academics, clerics, journalists, lawyers and trade unionists became a (and at certain times the) major form of opposition and resistance to the government.

It is widely accepted that the development of recording technology played an important role in the development of ethnomusicology as a discipline. For the first time, from late last century, music could be recorded for use in scientific comparison and analysis. Jaap Kunst once wrote that ‘ethnomusicology could never have grown into an independent science if the gramophone had not been invented’ (quoted in Seeger 1986:261). But the significance of recorded performance - the most objective way of capturing oral tradition - for the understanding of all aspects of culture must not be underestimated, particularly, but not exclusively, for non-literate societies. ‘Oral tradition should be central to students of culture, of ideology, of society, of psychology, of art, and…of history’ (Vansina 1985:xi). And sound archives should be perceived as essential to research, ‘equivalent to libraries in other disciplines insofar as their importance in research is concerned’ (Nettl in Seeger 1986:262).

In retrospect there was a certain inevitability that the Oxford Centre for Publishing Studies and Oxford Brookes University Library should establish a special collection on publishing in Africa, the first of its kind in Britain and perhaps anywhere in the northern hemisphere. There was the pre-existence in Oxford of powerful African publishing connections, represented on the one hand by two of the great houses which had helped to shape and develop and profit from publishing for and in Africa: Oxford University Press and Heinemann, and on the other by the parallel and equally important presence of specialist publishing operations and individuals with a focussed interest in publishing in the region: Bellagio and ABC, Hans Zell and Code Europe, James Currey Publishers and INASET.