Relevant Library Research Articles

West African archives at the Main Library, University of Birmingham

Collections of African material at the University of Birmingham in part reflect links with Cadbury's whose gifts of land helped to establish the University on its Edgbaston site, and whose involvement in the early West African cocoa track is well-known; the Library's collections of Africana have however been particularly developed over the last thirty years or so, since the establishment of the Centre of West African Studies here in 1963. All relevant library and archive materials are kept in the Main Library not at the Centre.The most notable archive is that of the Church Missionary Society (CMS), which is on deposit at the University Library. This archive is in three sections: early papers up to 1880; 1881-1934; and 1935-49. Later material has been retained at CMS. The archives cover many African countries, including Nigeria, and all other countries in which the CMS has worked.

STAFF DEVELOPMENT OF LIBRARIANS: THE CASE OF THE ABUBAKAR TAFAWA BALEWA UNIVERSITY LIBRARY, NIGERIA

A brief historical background of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University (ATBU) and its library is given. This article then provides a brief overview of the concept of staff development and discusses in detail the various staff development efforts of librarians by ATBU Library, Bauchi. These include staff orientation, staff meetings, in‐service training, academic library staff seminars and representation on Schools Boards of Studies. Other relevant activities include professional activities, library use instructions, sabbatical leave, personnel training and outreach as well as library research. Finally, the article advocates that staff development should also aim at staff retention through the provision of incentives for staff.

Educational Objectives, Libraries and Reading in Nigeria

Libraries as social institutions are indispensable to the realization of the educational aims and objectives of Nigeria. Previous studies of the constraints affecting Nigerian readers suggest that the provision of relevant library services providing a wide variety of reading materials, especially by Nigerian authors and at prices that all can afford, will help remove the constraints and further promote recreational reading, which in turn encourages self-development.

Vocational training in general practice: is action against North East Thames justified?

The committee is responsible for issuing certificates showing satisfactory completion of a course of approved study to doctors wishing to become general practitioners. It advises professional and educational bodies on the standards required in the postgraduate education of trainees and takes action to ensure that these are maintained. The recommended minimum criteria for recognition of a practice for training include fifing of all records by date order, easy identification of all drugs being taken by patients having long term treatment, audit of prescribing habits within the practice, and provision of a relevant library. The committee sends visitors to each region on alternate years, and their reports are received at quarterly meetings. When a region fails to maintain the required standards the regional adviser and representatives from the regional general practice education com? mittee are invited to meet the officers to discuss the problems and identify ways of rectifying them. Any further action depends on the outcome of this meeting.

Online Collection Evaluation, Course by Course

In view of the fact that evaluating library collections is so valuable in learning to what degree they lend support to all phases of curricula, it is surprising that so little attention is paid to evaluation techniques based on library support for individual courses of instruction. Surveying relevant library materials for specific courses is much superior to merely analyzing collection support for academic departments or programs. The first step in the process usually involves assigning call numbers to courses in order to measure the library shelflist and count the number of relevant materials. This is a laborious and sometimes frustrating experience, but not without significant advantages for librarians pursuing such quantitative evaluations.

Relevant Library Services in Developing Countries

Importance de la collecte de la litterature grise locale dans les pays en voie de developpement: les difficultes rencontrees dans l'acquisition et le traitement de ce type de document doivent etre surmontees dans la mesure ou un service est reellement efficace pour de nombreux membres de la communaute

INTERLIBRARY LENDING IN THE GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC: PROBLEMS OF CENTRALIZATION IN A DECENTRALIZED SYSTEM

The main national libraries are the Deutsche Bücherei, Leipzig, and the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, Berlin, but collection building, including legal deposit copies, and interlibrary lending is based on regional principles, with the addition of special subject networks. There are regional union catalogues and a national union catalogue of foreign material in two parts, serials and monographs. Requests must be satisfied if possible within the interlending regions, but those for highly specialized literature may be sent direct to the relevant special subject library. The Deutsche Bücherei and the Staatsbibliothek are libraries of last resort only. There is a national centre for co‐ordinating all outgoing international requests, though foreign requests may be sent direct to libraries in the GDR. Statistics show that 370,226 requests were made in 1980, and 71.4% satisfied. 75,810 requests were received from abroad, of which 16.3% were supplied. Supply times for items that cannot be supplied direct are about 6–8 weeks. On‐line computerized union catalogues and further centralization within the basically decentralized national system will bring improvements.

Principles of Conservation and Restauration in Libraries

The text of these Principles has been compiled and agreed by the members of the Standing Committee of the IFLA Section on Conservation. It is published in the IFLA Journal in this form as a means of presenting the text to the widest Library community. It is intended that translations of the text in French, German and Russian should appear in relevant library journals. The purpose of these Principles is to establish a responsible attitude to conserva tion and restoration in libraries and to encourage those entrusted with the care of library and archive collections, old and new, to formulate a positive policy on the future of these collections. The Standing Committee invites comments upon these Principles and these should be sent to the Secretary of the IFLA Section on Conservation, Mr. Peter Brown, Librarian of Trinity College, College Street, Dublin 2, Ireland.

REPORT OF A 1979 VISIT TO CHINA WITH THE MING-QING DELEGATION

I was a member of the Ming-Qing Delegation of American historians that visited the People's Republic of China during almost the entire month of June 1979, under joint auspices of the National Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The group also included Philip Kuhn of Harvard, John Langlois of Bowdoin, Susan Naquin of Pennsylvania, Willard J. Peterson of Princeton, Evelyn Rawski of Pittsburgh, Lynn Struve of Indiana, Wang Yeh-chien of Kent State, John E. Wills of Southern California, and Frederic Wakeman of Berkeley, our chairman. Our purpose was to learn about the current status of Ming-Qing historical work in China, specially relevant libraries, museums, and sites, and opportunities for research that American Ming-Qing historians might expect to have in China in the near future. The delegation's official report of its findings, expected to be published in the winter of 1979–80 under auspices of the NAS Committee on Scholarly Communication with the People's Republic of China (CSC-PRC), deals with the two Mingrelated subjects that PRC historians are currently most absorbed in: the sprouts of capitalism (the majority view seems to be that the Jiajing and Wanli eras are especially important in this regard) and late Ming peasant wars (Li Zicheng is still very much esteemed as a peasant hero). Other things we noted that might be of special interest to MING STUDIES readers are briefly summarized here. I speak for myself rather than for the delegation, and I use the present tense in reference to things as we found them during our visit

Resources on International Affairs in London Libraries

LT HIS paper is written in the belief that special libraries are created, maintained, and improved by the constant collaboration of their users and their librarians. It is addressed to research-workers rather than to librarians, and to the readers of this Journal in particular because the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the leading specialist research centre for international affairs in the United Kingdom, is a particularly fertile ground for such collaboration. The national public library service aims, and to a great extent succeeds, at providing for any student anywhere by means of the system of interlibrary loans any book, pamphlet, document, or periodical, both for reference and where necessary for home-reading, for which he asks. But the specialist requires the principal sources and material for his studies to be gathered together in one place and arranged for his use so that, to quote Arnold Toynbee, he can get a synoptic view of his subject and enjoy the added value which material acquires when organized in a particular context with other relevant items. This accounts for the establishment of special libraries. No attempt is made here either to list a large number of libraries and describe their stock, or to make union lists of the holdings of libraries. Both these activities are adequately performed elsewhere. My purpose is to identify myself with the researcher in current international affairs, to choose some typical categories of material which he will need, and to test and evaluate the relevant libraries from his point of view. Finally I hope to indicate some of the difficulties which he may encounter, in the hope that by co-operative planning improvement may be achieved. If the required material is satisfactorily located in a few relevant libraries no account will be taken of the fact that it may also be available elsewhere. Indeed whenever it is found that the specialist needs to use more than two or three libraries this will be held to indicate a degree of inadequacy. Before concentrating on the relevant special libraries something must be said about subject specialization within the public library system. This is a fairly recent development dating officially from i April I948 when the Metropolitan Public Libraries Special Collections came into being.' In this scheme it was agreed among other things that the twenty-eight