- Library profile and target groups
- User satisfaction and feedback
- Professional relations and cooperation
- Policy plans and evaluation reports
- Background
Library profile and target groups
The Library, Documentation and Information Department of the ASC in Leiden
is a research library. It fulfils a national task by meeting the information
needs of scholars and students affiliated to universities and research
schools in the Netherlands. The library is also open to the general public
and aims to facilitate the spread of knowledge and understanding of African
societies and cultures among a wider audience.
The ASC library’s target groups include:
- researchers and academics working on Africa;
- students and lecturers in the field of African Studies; and
- anyone interested in Africa from journalists, policy makers,
diplomats, NGO staff to businessmen, tourists, artists and lovers of
Africa.
The user group distribution shows that students are by far the largest
group among the library’s registered visitors (about 70%).
In addition to those visiting to the library, increasing numbers of
Internet users are making good use of the library’s online products, such as
the catalogue, the abstracts journal and the web dossiers.
User satisfaction
The library has a prominent place amongst African Studies libraries in the
world. This was determined during a 1996 study of users and has since been
regularly confirmed by word of mouth. Visitors to the library, researchers
at international conferences and fellow librarians repeatedly stress the
unique features of the ASC library:
- Its online
catalogue is available for free via the Internet. Other, similarly
dedicated Africana catalogues, are usually only accessible onsite. The
catalogues of most other African Studies libraries are incorporated in
university library catalogues, making it difficult to retrieve the
relevant Africana titles buried amongst hundreds of other titles. As a
result, lecturers and librarians from the US, Africa and elsewhere refer
their students to the ASC catalogue when assembling their literature
lists.
- Its journal article abstracts, made by subject specialists, are
useful for searching the catalogue. As a spin-off product, the
quarterly abstracting journal, which is available online, is a
valuable signaling tool for researchers and has a proven track record.
- Its collection is extensive and caters to a wide variety of research
needs, from historical primary sources and rare books to modern African
literature and scientific publications. Researchers are often surprised
by what they can find in the
collection.
- A major part of the library collection is freely accessible (open
shelves) and the library user can select items from the shelves
him/herself. The library is open to the general public and anyone can
purchase a
library card.
- The personal service provided by the friendly service-desk staff has
been mentioned in numerous forewords to publications by researchers who
have used the library.
User feedback
Your feedback as an ASC library user is very important to us. We encourage
users to fill in their comments and suggestions in the
library
visitors’ book.
Professional relations and cooperation
National Inquiry Services
Centre (NISC)
In 1999 the ASC library signed agreements with NISC in South Africa on
incorporating the ASC library catalogue entries for monographs, periodicals,
journal articles and chapters of edited works into the NISC African Studies
Database. NISC African Studies is an anthology of Africana databases
produced by various organizations in Africa and the West. It is published on
CD-ROM and is available via the Internet.
Brill Academic Publishers
The ASC library and Brill Academic Publishers agreed in 2004 to experiment
with a new alerting column in the Journal of Religion in Africa. The ASC
provides regular feeds of selected abstracts in the field of religion. The
first issue featuring the new column appeared in volume 35 (2005).
OCLC
The ASC library joined the PICA shared cataloguing system in 1988. All ASC
catalogue titles are available in the Dutch Union Catalogue and the
interlibrary loan system (NCC/IBL), and also in OCLC-PICA’s integrated
database PiCarta, with access to online recourses and e-journal listings.
The library uses the OCLC-PICA’s local library management system (LBS4) for
its circulation and acquisition processes and its online public access
catalogue (OPC4).
AEGIS
The ASC library has regular contacts with other AEGIS libraries in Europe
and maintains a discussion list on library and documentation matters with
regards to African Studies
AEGIS-LIB.
L'Association des Chercheurs de Politique Africaine
In 1999, the editors of the journal
Politique
Africaine invited one of the ASC library’s documentalists to contribute
to the section called ‘La Revue des Revues’, by drawing attention to special
issues of journals published recently on Africanist themes. The good working
relationship between the journal’s editorial board and the ASC library is
ongoing.
ISS,
KIT,
NIZA.
ZAH
The ASC library has well-established contacts with several university
libraries, specialized libraries and documentation centres in the
Netherlands. This is particularly the case with the Institute of Social
Studies (ISS) in The Hague, the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT), the
Netherlands Institute for Southern Africa (NiZA) and the Zuid-Afrikahuis,
both in Amsterdam.
CODESRIA/CODICE
Professional contacts were established in 2004 with the CODESRIA
Documentation and Information Centre (CODICE) in Dakar, Senegal. A programme
of exchanges and possible joint projects has been defined in the framework
of the strategic agreement for cooperation between the two institutions.
Leiden University
Library
The ASC library entertains close working relations with Leiden University
library and shares automation facilities and collection access privileges.
Both libraries are collaborating in the
DARC projects and
Open Access
Leiden.
Policy plans and evaluation reports
1998-2000
Beleidsplan Bibliotheek en Documentatie Afrika-Studiecentrum 1998-2000
The main objective formulated in this medium-term plan was to safeguard the
quality of existing products and services while still keeping up with new
technologies, new information sources and shifts in user demands. The need
to cooperate at institutional, national and international levels and reach
out to a wider public were also formulated as important strategic goals.
2001-2004
Beleidsplan Bibliotheek, Documentatie en Informatie Afrika-Studiecentrum
2001-2004 (in Dutch)
The policy plan for 2001-2004 built on the previous plan and on
recommendations made by the 1999 Evaluation Committee concerning improved
collaboration between the library and the ASC’s research department, the
development of digital information products and services, and the production
of abstracts in collaboration with other producers of bibliographic
publications.
2005-2008
In 2004 the ASC library was evaluated by an external committee as part of
the overall evaluation of the African Studies Centre by the Royal
Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. The library expert appointed to
this committee was Dr David Easterbrook, Curator of the Melville J.
Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University in
Evanston, Illinois, United States. One of the committee’s conclusions was
that ‘the library, documentation and information activities are considered
to be excellent’. The Evaluation Committee’s recommendations included:
- making the library’s subscriptions to e-journals accessible online to its
target groups;
- better cross-referencing between partner library collections;
- improved cross-referencing between the library collection and the ASC’s
research programme;
- solving bottlenecks in archiving and shelving space; and
- tackling archival and preservation concerns and exploring the application
of digital technologies in these areas.
2009-2012
In 2009 the ASC library was evaluated by an external committee as part of
the overall self-evaluation of the African Studies Centre. The library
expert appointed to this committee was mr. Jeroen Vervliet, director of the
Peace Palace Library in The Hague. From the evaluation: "The ASC library has
been instrumental in the realization of the institute’s mission. As a
research library specialized in Africana materials it fulfils a national
task by meeting the information needs of researchers, students and scholars
across the Netherlands. As a library open to the general public, it aims to
facilitate the spread of knowledge and an understanding of African societies
and cultures among a wider audience. The digital library facilitates this."
The recommendations included:
- to connect the differentiated online services of the ASC library and
develop an integrated search method;
- to extend the digital library;
- to review ASAO (African Studies Abstracts Online);
- to improve the visibility of the ASC’s scientific publications;
- to improve the ASC’s news service about Africa;
- to find enough shelving space for the paper library;
- to improve the ASC website.
Background
In 1958, the newly founded African Studies Centre in Leiden was just a small
documentation centre. It was established by the African Institute in
Rotterdam (now The
Netherlands African Business Council in The Hague), which was formed
back in 1945 to ‘look after the interests of all Netherlands companies which
operate in or have commercial links with Africa’. Initially, the
documentation centre collected economic and business-related information
about Africa to support the information needs of Dutch companies developing
trade relations in Africa. When the ASC was officially set up in Leiden in
1958 as an independent research institute, the focus of the documentation
department shifted to cultural, political, social and economic developments
in Africa. The documentation department changed into a professional library
in 1963 and the collection grew quickly. The library staff is dedicated and
committed, and most staff members have been working at the centre for many
years, ensuring continuity and stability. The library has had six different
head librarians:
- Drs E. Nix (1958-1974)
- Drs. Ph.A. Emanuel (1974-1977)
- Drs J. van der Meulen (1977-1996)
- Drs P.C.J.M. de Rijk (1996-2002)
- Drs T. van der Werf (2002-2006)
- Drs. J.C.M. Damen (2006-...)
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