The Teaching of African Bibliography

Extract

For obvious reasons I shall confine my comments almost entirely to the courses at the School of Library, Archive & Information Studies at University College London, of which alone I have first-hand knowledge. Equally, I shall be concerned very largely with discussing the situation at the level of the Diplomas, the first professional qualifications, in both Librarianship and Archives. It is only at this level that one can talk of “teaching” African Bibliography at the School. There are a number of ways in which an interest in African bibliography & librarianship can be followed at the higher degree level, for the M.A., M.Phil., or Ph.D., but for higher degree work, even for the M.A. which has an element of written examinations, there are normally no specific courses taught. Indeed at the M.A. level a regional interest can be pursued within a number of the stated options; not merely in “Regional studies” but also in “Comparative studies”, “Historical & Social Studies”, even in “Management” or “Classification & Cataloguing”.