Implications of government publishing in the third world for library collections and services

Government Publications Review, Vol. 19, pp. I I-22, 1992 Printed in the USA. All rights reserved.

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Copyright 0 1992 Pergamon Press plc

IMPLICATIONS OF GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING IN THE THIRD WORLD FOR LIBRARY COLLECTIONS AND SERVICES JOHN BRUCE HOWELL* International Studies Bibliographer, The University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA

Abstract - This paper discusses the acquisition of and access to government publications from selected African and Asian sources. It is primarily based on the experiences of an exchange visit to England, Nigeria, Kenya, India, Singapore, and Indonesia during May-June 1988; on 10 yearsofacquisition, bibliographic, and reference work in the African Section of the Library of Congress; and on five years acquiring research and government documents from Third World countries at the University of Iowa Libraries. The publication and distribution of government documents in Singapore is contrasted with similar activities in a number ofAfrican states, namely Ethiopia; South Africa; and Nigeria, including the book famine there. Access to limited runs of reports, their preservation on microforms, and their availability are discussed.

THE NUMBERED WORLDS What countries are referred to when the terms Third World or developing countries or least developed countries (LDCs) are used? Is there a fourth world? In his study of culture and development entitled No Life Without Roots, Thierry G. Verhelst notes that “one ought to speak of ‘Third Worlds,’ so diverse are the countries of the southern hemisphere in terms of geographic location, economic conditions and specific socio-cultural characters. To this diversity between countries must be added the fundamental difference that exists between their citizens.” He also comments that the “lumping together everything that is different from ourselves is a particularly Euorcentric trait” [ 11. Verhelst discusses an international network that he calls the “South-North Network on Cultures and Development,” [2] which introduces the concept of North-South and also the relationship South-South. To an American this may initially sound like something from the U.S. Civil War, but it is not. Verhelst defines the South as all of the tropical Third World countries; South-South indicates communication and other ties between parts of the South, or tropical nations-for example, between the countries of Latin America and Asia (except Japan)-whereas, the word North includes all of the developed countries of Europe, North America, and also Japan. These two terms, North and South, are used frequently in United Nations documents and publications and also in regional United Nations offices in the South or southern hemisphere. *John Bruce Howell is the International Studies Bibliographer at the University of Iowa Libraries and Chair of the Cooperative Afiicana Microform Project located at the Center for Research Libraries, Chicago. Many of the observations in this paper are based on the experiences of an exchange trip to Africa and Asia in 1988 and published in the author’s Exchange Trip to Africa (Nigeria and Kenya) andAsia (India, Singapore and Indonesia), May 1%June 21, 1988 (Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Libraries; Center for International and Comparative Studies; Midwest University Consortium for International Activities, 1988. 30 copies published; OP).

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J. B. HOWELL

The acronym LDC for “least developed countries,” was used for a time to refer to those Third World countries having the lowest per capita GNP. These are the 20 poorest countries, e.g., Bangladesh, Vietnam, Ethiopia, that were grouped together by aid donor countries of the North in order to insure that the LDC group received equal if not special attention from world agencies. In the popular media of some countries, the LDCs have been designated as Fourth World countries, that is, those having poor economies with no potential for growth and no natural resources. Many people find the term Fourth World pejorative, and its use appears to be waning. The North is also defined as the First World, but this designation is never used. Likewise, the non-market economy countries of eastern Europe were the Second World, but this term is rarely used in the literature. If one examines the same groups by using World Bank indicators in the latest edition of the authoritative World Development Report, 1990, which ranks 42 countries as “lowincome economies,” that is, those countries having between $100 and $480 gross national product per capita (eight more countries than in 1983), one finds that these countries are predominantly sub-Saharan African, but also include both China and India, which account for two-thirds of the people in this class, and two-thirds of the world’s total population. Fiftythree countries are rated as “middle-income economies” and are divided into “lower middle income” with 36 countries that have a per capita GNP from $460 to $1,570 and the 17 “upper middle-income” countries that have a GNP per capita of $ I ,8 10 to $7,4 10 with Bolivia and the Philippines on the low end and Iraq (before the Gulf War) and Romania at the high end. The other so-called developed countries are called “high-income economies OECD members” with exceptions and consist of the western European countries, Japan, Canada, and the United States with incomes ranging from $6,200 for Saudi Arabia to $27,500 for Switzerland. The United States ranks fourth behind Switzerland, Japan, and Norway with $19,840, a loss of three notches from 1988 [3]. THE GOLDEN PACIFIC RIM Some of these rankings do not really indicate the current strength of individual nations and their economies. For instance, from 1983 to 1988 Singapore’s per capita GNP has risen from $5,240 to $9,070 putting it well ahead of Spain, Ireland, and Israel, and just below Hong Kong’s $9,220 and New Zealand’s $10,000 [4]. Clearly, the Pacific rim is rapidly becoming the center of world trade in the 1990s anchored at one end by Canada, the United States, Mexico, Chile, Peru, and the nations of Central America, and on the other end by Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, Australia, and, to a lesser degree, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and New Zealand. Many of the government publications of these countries will be of crucial importance as world trade moves from the Atlantic to the Pacific rim with countries having economies with continued growth and expansion. LANGUAGE

BARRIERS IN EAST AND SOUTHEAST

ASIA

A major factor unique to collecting materials from the Third World including the countries of the Pacific rim in East Asia, and those in Southeast Asia, can be described as a language barrier requiring some knowledge of Asian languages or, if there is no such language resource available, then the collecting of official publications from many of these countries is left to specialists on Asia. Outside of English, which serves as an international language, Chinese and Japanese are the two other major languages used in Asian commerce. Japanese is becoming increasingly important in Asia and is being studied widely in the Pacific rim countries including the United States, as Japan continues its economic expansion. Chinese is the first

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language of China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, and, to a lesser degree, it is both spoken and printed as one of Singapore’s four official languages, the others being English, Malay (called also Bahasa Malaysia) spoken in nearby Malaysia, and Tamil, a South Indian language. In Southeast Asia, Bahasa Indonesia is the national language of Indonesia; it is written in roman letters and accounts for 97 percent of the publishing in this the largest Muslim country in the world with its 150 million people. All government documents including the government directory are printed and published in the national language, and while English is regarded as the international language, it is not spoken or used widely, except for abstracts in scholarly journals and select titles published by Indonesia’s universities. Bahasa Malaysia, a related language, is the national language in Malaysia, although English is more widely used as an official language, perhaps because of the common colonial past Malaysia shares with Singapore. Similar situations exist in other parts of Southeast Asia. For example, Thailand has no colonial past, and Thai, with its own nonroman orthography, is used in 98 percent of the government documents. Disregarding Australia and New Zealand, which are developed Pacific rim nations, surprisingly few official publications are published in English, except those published in Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and the regional Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) located in Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital. However, ASEAN’s research and publishing center, the Institute of South East Asian Studies, is located on the campus of the University of Singapore. All of ASEAN’s published documents in English are easy to acquire at a modest price from vendors in Singapore. Thus, with the exception of Hong Kong, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, and the regional organization ASEAN, all other countries in East and Southeast Asian require the knowledge of Asian languages to identify and facilitate the use of their official publications.

Singapore The smallest of all of the Pacific rim states is Singapore, a very small island-nation of 2 17 square miles just off the Malay peninsula in the Strait of Malacca in the center of Southeast Asia. Although classed by the World Bank as an “upper middle-income” country ranked with other Third World countries, Singapore, with a population of 3 million, after Japan, has the highest per capita income in Asia, $9,070 [5]. Singapore’s relative wealth is due partly to its geographical position on the major trade route from East Asia to South Asia and Europe, and in part to the political climate, which remains stable and reassuringly predictable for overseas investors. Singapore’s official publication, Singapore Trade Statistics: Imports and Exports, is comparatively large; it contains a wealth of information not only about Singapore, but also about all the countries that ship cargo and petroleum products through Singapore. In addition, there is considerable government publishing on all facets of social and economic life in Singapore. The Singapore National Printers (note the eschewing of the word Government) headquarters is three miles south of the downtown area. The main sales room is not large, but its facility contains a considerable backfile of titles, including the annual trade reports mentioned above. The sales room is stocked with blue books, appearing exactly like those statistical abstracts and reports for the former colonies that the British government published during the colonial period in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, Singapore’s blue books contain legislation under consideration by Singapore’s current parliament on such topics as copyright law, corruption in government, company regulations, the legal profession, elections, and constitutional changes. In addition to the legislative blue books, other available government documents contain information on social and economic experiments not unlike those carried out in Scandinavian countries in past decades. As to commerce, very few other countries, even those dependent on trade, publish such detailed trade reports, including monthly and annual statistical

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J. B. HOWELL

cumulations on all sectors of the economy as does the Singapore National Printer. The vibrant economy, the highly educated population, and a world class communications system should enable Singapore, a designated Third World country, to move rapidly to First World status. Indeed, Singapore bears watching as it continues its economic growth, which is reflected in many of its government publications. AFRICA While the printing of documents continues to grow in some Asian countries such as Singapore, quite the opposite is the case in Africa, with perhaps the sole exception of South Africa. In fact, in Africa the publication of government documents is apparently a declining practice. Not only are African governments releasing fewer titles, but they are moving away from any type of legislative accountability. While some one-party states are beginning to change to more democratic governments, they are the exception rather than the rule. The military still controls most of the continent’s peoples. In addition, as debt payments come due, incurring more economic burdens, social and political upheaval seems to follow. An observer might conclude that many governments prefer not to publish statistics that are an unfavorable reflection on its administration rather than to risk public disapproval, or worse, demonstrations by publishing the truth. In Africa, these forces are increasingly combined into a policy of noninformation. However, some of the smaller states such as Botswana, Malawi, Mauritius, Zambia, and Zimbabwe continue to issue annual reports on their respective ministries. In fact, the constitution of Mauritius, a multi-ethnic state in the Indian Ocean, is unique; it requires the government printer to supply one copy of each of its government publications to the British Library, the Bibliotheque Nationale, and the Library of Congress. Nigeria Nigeria, a Third World country with a variously estimated population of 9 1.2,95, or 110.1 million people (reflecting inconsistencies from various national and international sources), is the most populous on the continent [6]. In its rush to join other members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in the 1970s Nigeria began a rapid transformation from a rural economy to one based largely on the export of oil, its most valuable natural resource. Lagos, then the capital and still the major port, is built on a series of islands and was to be connected by skyway bridges two and three stories high, constructed by European companies. When the oil boom went bust in 198 1, many planned projects, including bridges for skyways and highways, were abandoned. Today, some bridges soar into the air as giant abstract unfinished sculptures, reminders that income from oil and other natural resources must be earned in hard currencies before there is a return to economic expansion. Paper in Nigeria and the Book Famine Along with other projects that fell by the wayside after the oil bust of the 1970s the most important disruption for educators, publishers, and librarians was the loss of the domestic production of paper. On the drawing boards for Nigeria were designs for two paper factories, one for producing cardboard boxes and one for producing paper for textbooks and other publications. The mill producing cardboard was completed on time, and the one producing paper for books will soon be going into production. As a result, for more than six years, there has been little paper available inside the country for the printing and publication of books of any kind. In addition, since the per capita income has dropped from $745 to $290 for the period,

Third World government publishing and library acquisitions

15

[7] there is less local liquidity to purchase the needed foreign paper and publications, usually imported from Britain. British books are very expensive because of the unfavorable rate of exchange for the naira (Nigeria’s currency) and the British pound. The inability of Nigerian publishers to get paper combined with the very high cost of all foreign books has led to a situation commonly known as the “book famine,” a condition found not only in Nigeria, but also in many poorer African nations that cannot afford to import paper and do not produce it locally [8]. As bad as Nigeria’s situation may appear, the country remains better off than 29 other African countries. African university libraries have been unable to acquire European or North American books because of restrictive currency laws; medical libraries in Nigeria lag at least 10 years in acquiring the latest editions of texts and new titles. In 1988, to help remedy this situation, the American Association for the Advancement of Science began to distribute copies of more than 30 scientific journals at no charge to Nigerian and other African libraries simply by requesting publishers to overrun their issues by 100 copies [ 91. Gretchen Walsh notes that by 1990, 100 learned societies were supplying 19 1 titles to 250 academic and research institutions in 38 African countries [lo]. These titles are only a very small part of the research information that is needed, and members of the African Studies Association (U.S.A.) Archives Libraries Committee are publicizing the issue of need in the Africana Libraries Newsletter no. 54 (May 1988) and no. 62 (May 1990). For instance, The University of Iowa Libraries maintains an exchange program with Ibadan University, Ibadan, Nigeria, in terms of faculty, students, bibliographers, and books, including the donation of several hundred surplus duplicate titles, many in the health sciences, to Ibadan. Books published in Nigeria that are still available are very inexpensive although not plentiful. Government publications are also very reasonable, when locatable.

Statistical Publications of Nigeria In May 1988, Lagos was the largest city in Nigeria, the main port, former capital, and was still the site of most government offices, including that of the Co-ordinating Director of the Information Services Unit of the Nigerian Government. Because there is currently no parliament or congress empowered to issue statistics, the military government has delegated that power to the Co-ordinating Director. The Director publishes all statistical publications available and they are obtainable only from his small attic office on Broad Street, Lagos’ narrow but busy main thoroughfare. The Director also compiles several trade reports and orders others to be printed. While the trade statistics are available from his office, the Director has compiled a list of additional available documents that must be purchased by mail [ 111. The 25 publications from this Information Services Unit represent the entire stock of official statistical publications emanating from the federal government of Nigeria. One should keep in mind that Nigeria consists of 2 1 states with local governments, some of which issue their own state official publications. While many of these state publications provide important information, they do not necessarily use the same format for data in publishing information; nor are their publications issued regularly. Some states publish frequently, others sporadically, or not at all. In the past, some titles were available by mail, but the mails are at present unreliable. It is essential to personally contact various individual state printing offices for the few assorted titles that are available for sale. In May 1988, the Oyo State Printer, located outside Ibadan, had only one new publication, and it was the pharmacy law. Otherwise, the only titles available were mostly from the now defunct Western State, which was divided into new states during and after the Biafra civil war in 1967. Whereas 20 years ago the state publications were not thought to be worth collecting, they are now a main source of statistics because the national government is no longer publishing comprehensive statistics that are needed.

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J.B. HOWELL

A few U.S. libraries, including the Library of Congress, Stanford University and the Hoover Institution at Stanford, Columbia University, Northwestern University libraries, and the New York Public Library, collect Nigerian official publications below the national level. A national census was planned for Nigeria in 199 1; the last one in 1963 nearly caused a civil war between the Islamic northern states and the Christian-animist southern states, and the results were never published. The only other source of official publications are the courts, which still issue certain essential legal documents. Ethiopia On the African continent only Ethiopia has no history of colonialism and colonial publishing. Emperor Menelik II (1844- 19 13) defeated the Italians in the battle of Adwa in 1896, and the Ethiopian government managed to keep out all other imperialist European powers until it was occupied by Italy from 1936 until 194 1 at the beginning of World War II. Ethiopia was an empire ruled by a lineage of kings dating back more than 2,000 years and lasting until the Ethiopian Revolution of 1974. Because there was no formal parliament or system of accountability under Haile Selassie I (1892- 1975), Ethiopia’s last emperor, no system of publishing or distributing government annual reports was established as it had been in most of the rest of the continent during colonial occupation (roughly 1885-1960). During Haile Selassie’s reign from 1930 until 1974, Ethiopia published few government documents, mainly treaties and the official gazette, with a few reports on foreign affairs or education; the Statistical Abstract began only in 1963. Ethiopian government publications, as few as they are, have often been restricted in distribution even though they are not marked as such, except for those specially designed for tourists, which are sometimes free. The only other sources of economic information were the local reports of various private business companies, such as the Bata Shoe Company with main offices in Italy. Most research libraries do not collect the annual reports of individual businesses, but instead buy selected microfiche of those issued by the largest and most important U.S. or European commercial companies. While in the 1960s there was no precedent of collecting annual reports from private firms doing business in Ethiopia, to know what was occurring economically within Ethiopia during the Haile Selassie I regime, these company reports must be consulted no matter how ephemeral, sporadic, or inaccurate the information, simply because no other sources are available. An exception to this government restraint occurred when the author was in Ethiopia in 1976- 1977 as Acting Field Director (AFD) of the Library of Congress Nairobi Office. Two years after the revolution against the monarchy had begun, the AFD travelled outside Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, to the Relief and Rehabilitation Commission, which is the government agency responsible for monitoring the droughts and their resulting famines. Copies of their publications were requested, and the AFD was taken to a section of 16 shelves of mimeographed documents and permitted to take any items wanted. A very large pile was quickly accumulated of titles, many only a few pages long, detailing weather patterns, productivity of rural farming, and government relief. Later, the titles were forwarded to the Library of Congress Office in Nairobi, Kenya for preliminary cataloging; they were microfilmed and now are available on three reels of microfilm from the Library of Congress Photoduplication Service in Washington, D.C. Individually these mimeographed publications may appear to be ephemerae, but together they are an important source of information about the first drought and famine of 1974- 1976. After the revolution in 1974 some official titles were issued by the Provisional Military Government in Amharic, Ethiopia’s national language written in its own unique script. The

Third World government publishing and library acquisitions

17

Annual Report of the National Library was one of the first serials to be published after the revolution, and it is entirely in Amharic with no English or Italian abstract. A review of Ethiopian titles in the Library of Congress Nairobi Office Accessions List, Eastern Africa indicates that many government publications continue to be published only in Amharic. With the regeneration of Ethiopia in 199 1, it is hoped that a new government will be able to collect data, analyze statistics, and publish research for all of Ethiopia’s 35 million people.

UNICEF and Statistics in Africa From roughly 198 1 to 1984 the Eastern and Southern Africa Office of UNICEF, located in Nairobi, Kenya, did not have current statistics on which to base its administrative decisions. Independently, with no precedent from elsewhere in the world, the regional UNICEF Office began both to compile and publish statistical data on the economic and social development of Kenya and Malawi called Country ProJle [followed by the name of country].The title Country Projle is identical to that used by the Economist Intelligence Unit Ltd., a subsidiary of The Economist newspaper, London, in its many publications combining into one title the names of countries adjacent to one another; these expensive British titles should not be confused with their UNICEF African counterparts. This regional publishing of statistics by UNICEF in East Africa did not prove to be ongoing, nor develop elsewhere, and this brief experiment sadly seems to be over.

UNECA and other UN Sources for Statistics The Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), the regional United Nations organization for Africa located in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, is a primary source of statistical data relating to economic and social development. UNECA issued its Demographic and Related Socioeconomic Data Sheets for ECA Members in 1986, which supersedes a 1982 version. While the countries are listed alphabetically, the compilers caution that their statistics may not be accurate, particularly because censuses may take years to complete and additional years to publish. UNECA’s Survey of Economic and Social Conditions in Africa, latest available 1986-1987 published in New York in 1988, includes statistics for only 25 of Africa’s 53 states. There is a separate “Statistical Annex” published in heavily inked copies which are difficult to read. Considering that the United Nations in New York, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund are sponsors of this regional statistical abstract, it is surprisingly poor in content and format. Other alternatives are the obvious ones. The 1989 Demographic Yearbook (199 1) of the United Nations, published in New York, contains statistics for 2 16 countries, although many of the figures are estimates prepared by the UN Population Division. The 1987 Statistical Yearbook of the United Nations is the latest edition available, having been published in 1990. Whereas the 1985/86 edition had data for only 29 of Africa’s 53 countries, the 1987 edition attempts to include all of them. The time lag of three to four years is unacceptable. Such statistical source problems are apparent, for example, in obtaining the correct total of Nigeria’s current population. The answer is that there is no answer. One guess is as good as another. Caution must be exercised in using estimates without cross-checking a national statistical abstract or statistical bulletin published by a central bureau of statistics or its equivalent. Until there are more reliable sources for statistics, documentation of all sources consulted is required, regardless of number or variety. When the discrepancies are compared, there may be an obvious answer not otherwise apparent.

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J. B. HOWELL

BIBLIOGRAPHIES

OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS WORLD DOCUMENTS

AS ACCESS TO THIRD

Bibliographies are the traditional cumulative format for collecting and arranging titles of official publications of Third World countries. During the period 1959- 1978, the staff of the African and Middle Eastern Division in the Library of Congress actively pursued the manual compilation of many African bibliographies of official publications of newly constituted African governments [ 121. Most of these bibliographies, or “Guides,” relied first on the resources of LC itself. The publishing projects were gradually expanded to include all libraries contributing to the National Union Catalog (NUC), which was located in the Jefferson Building and its basement until after publication of the National Union Catalog in its present book format. The copy provided was very valuable because often the Library of Congress had not yet cataloged selected foreign official series. Once the National Union Catalog was searched, the National Library of Medicine and the National Agricultural Library were visited by the compilers for titles in agriculture or health, subjects out of scope for LC. Where it was thought helpful, compilers visited other U.S. government agencies and their libraries, such as the Library of the Department of State, the Library of the Institute of Applied Linguistics, and the Foreign Service Institute Library in Arlington, Virginia, as well as state archives such as those of Annapolis, Maryland. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Library (NOAAL), the primary U.S. weather library in Rockville, Maryland, has all of the yearly, monthly, and daily weather statistics for many Third World countries. For example, the NOAAL has an 1894 publication on weather in Kenya that apparently predates all other reports for this east African country [ 131. Many researchers find it a valuable source for both maps and data supplied from satellites, as well as published statistics for basic research. The Maryland State Archives in Annapolis also contains some of the records of the American Colonization Society concerning the African-American colonization of Liberia. Other Atlantic states’ archives and the Library of Congress contain many of the manuscripts and publications relating to the history of Liberia, which was founded by freed American slaves in 1847. In addition to compiling guides to official publications of African states, bibliographers used microfilm purchased and borrowed to identify titles not otherwise available in paper copy. For example, in London, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, once separate departments of the British government, contains a series of pamphlets arranged according to size, that is, in quart0 or in octave, common formats used by European publishers. Some of these “pamphlets” are sizable and were cataloged as monographs in the United States. These series and others such as the Great Britain, Public Record Office, Colonial Office 879/-, or PRO C.O. 879/-, were purchased by LC and other U.S. research libraries beginning in the 1960s. The Public Record Office is the British equivalent of the United States National Archives in Washington, D.C. During the colonial period it was very difficult to distinguish which documents belonged in archives and those found in libraries. At the cabinet level “confidential prints” were printed, but distributed only to the members of the Cabinet, or before that body’s existence, to a small circle of ministers of the government in power at the time. These Prints may be 500 or 600 pages long and include detailed accounts, usually arranged chronologically, of what was occuring in each of the British colonies as well as what was going on in other European colonies. At the time, sanitized or censored versions were published in the Papers by Command series issued by the House of Commons. It is really only within the last 20 years that the Chjidential Prints have been preserved on microfilm and made available for sale in the Public Record Office. These uncensored accounts ofwhat was occurring in Asia

Third World government publishing and library acquisitions

19

and Africa are primary sources for scholars, and these, too, were used in compiling guides to official publications of African countries by the Library of Congress staff. Many of these microform sets are large and may be available through the Center for Research Libraries in Chicago, or, in some cases, directly from other U.S. university libraries such as Michigan State, which has large microform collections of Public Record Office sets, including those on African countries and the slave trade.

MICROFILM

SETS OF THIRD WORLD GOVERNMENT

DOCUMENTS

There are very few locations for Third World archives in the United States, except for the large sets of microforms of printed government reports offered for sale by commercial microform companies. One alternative is offered by the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) (mentioned above), which is the primary regional organization headquartered in Jakarta, Indonesia. In 1985 the Library of Congress Office, Jakarta, issued Indonesian Microfiche: a Catalog of Selected Titles Held by the Center for Research Libraries, compiled by the Office from entries appearing in the 1978- 1983 issues of the Katalog Perpustakaan Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Landen Volkenkunde (Jakarta, Indonesia: The Office, 1985) in 584 pages. This set of microfilm contains 5,800 Indonesian and ASEAN documents. While 98 percent of the titles are in Bahasa Indonesia, there are a number of important documents issued by ASEAN in English. It is significant that the catalog to this large collection of microfiche was published as part of the Accessions List: Southeast Asia by the Library of Congress Office for Southeast Asia located in Jakarta, Indonesia. The Library of Congress has four other offices: the Eastern Africa Office in Nairobi, Kenya; the Brazilian Office in Rio de Janeiro; the Middle East Office in Cairo, Egypt; and the South Asia Office in New Delhi, India. Beginning in January 1990, the Rio Office in Brazil and later that year the Eastern Africa office expanded their programs by acquiring multiple sets of selected serials, including some government publications, for U.S. research libraries wishing to subscribe. As the subscription price is in local currency, overall cost is very low. Two additional LC offices have been proposed-one for Mexico and one for West Africa. Recently Congress has provided start-up funds for planning a West Africa Office to be located in Ghana. To date, funding for a Mexican office has not been authorized by Congress. It is hoped that the expansion of the activities of Library of Congress offices will continue to provide U.S. research libraries with titles from countries important to global peace and sustained development. While there are worldwide deposits of official publications from Third World countries acquired over many years in the Library of Congress, the British Library, and the Bibliotheque Nationale, it is really only within the last 25 years that whole series of annual reports, statistical publications, and development plans have been widely available on microform. North American libraries no longer must rely on the Library of Congress for needed materials on the colonial history of much of the world. In many cases there may be guides to official publications or microforms in other research libraries. In the Center for Research Libraries, Chicago, there are great depositories of microfilmed government documents from many Third World countries, especially those having historic ties to the United Kingdom as members of the Commonwealth. If there is a need for current information within the last five years, the large bibliographic databases such as the Research Libraries Information Network (RLIN) or OCLC Online Computer Library Center may be searched for locations of Third

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J. B. HOWELL

World government documents. In many cases there are premier libraries for area studies; for example, the Universities of Texas, Wisconsin, California at Los Angeles, and Florida collect Latin American documents comprehensively. Cornell is now the library of record for Southeast Asia, since the Library of Congress no longer collects all research materials from the region. For Africa, research libraries such as Northwestern, Indiana, Michigan State, Columbia, Boston Universities, the New York Public Library, and the Universities of Illinois, California at Berkeley, California at Los Angeles, and Wisconsin have substantial holdings. Finally, Yale University is noted for its southern Africa holdings, including a large collection of materials in Afrikaans, a language of one of the white mino~ties in South Africa. MICROFORMS

OF OFFICIAL SOUTHERN

AFRICA PUBLICATIONS

In addition to the work of the Library of Congress, librarians in other counties have compiled bibliographies or guides to their respective official publications. From 1969 until 198 1, the Library Services Branch of the Department of National Education of South Africa compiled a set of guides initially in large folios on the publications of the Department of Statistics, but soon turned to microfiche for the remainder of the series, which covers statistics, agriculture, water, education, forestry, foreign affairs and immigration, social welfare, and the information service; the latest is no. 11 on fisheries published in 198 1. Beginning in 1986, the State Library, which in effect is the national library of South Africa-it is located in Pretoria-began the publication of U~ciul P~bli~at~o~sof SmutsA.fricunStates, which refers to the so-called Homelands where blacks have been relegated to live. The documents for the 10 so-called homelands were published on 4,950 microfiche and there are copies of this important set in the Center for Research Libraries and Stanford University Library. In the 1970s the South African State Library set a plan into motion to film all of the government publications of neighboring black states, not to be confused with the homelands. The series begins with Swaziland Oficial Publications 1880-l 972 containing some 1,75 1 to 2,000 microfiche published with an extensive guide of 190 pages and is currently available from Inter Documentation Company, Zug, Switzerland. Both the Center for Research Libraries and the University of Florida Libraries have this set. CONCLUSIONS While there is rapid progress in the development of communications in many Pacific rim countries, the nations of Africa are undergoing a difficult transition from colonialism to open societies. The small nation of Singapore has a highly organized and weIl-developed government publications program, while many countries in Africa are having problems in obtaining or making paper for textbooks for their growing numbers of students at all educational levels. In particular, the book famine continues to wreak havoc with many university and research libraries so that many of them now lag some 10 years behind their counte~a~s in the First World, especially in the sciences and the social sciences. In Africa, the publication of government documents has a low priority except for new decrees, laws, and civil service regulations. While statistical publications are issued more frequently than annual reports, this does not guarantee that they will be current or comprehensive. In short, there is less publishing of both government documents and commercial books in Africa today than at any time since independence, and it will continue to decline until some way is found to beat the book famine by indigenous publishing and support from research libraries and scholarly institutions in Asia, Europe, and North America.

Third World government publishing and library acquisitions

PROPOSED

21

SOLUTIONS

In light of the difficulties discussed above, a number of recommendations

are offered:

1. More cooperation is needed between libraries in the Third and First Worlds in exchanges, gifts of surplus publications, and professional expertise where requested. 2. Current technology needs to be transferred from the First to the Third Worlds, especially in computer applicability and usage, e.g., CD-ROMs work well in the Third World because they do not require the telecommunication links to First World systems. 3. Online databases for Third World government documents should be created with the help of the international community and First World nations. Each Third World country should have its own self-standing database resident near the source of its government publications, in most cases a government printer, and new titles would be entered into this database as permanent records that might also be cited in a national bibliography or made available through a network not unlike Internet. Large numbers of official publications from African countries have been identified in guides compiled in the African and Middle Eastern Division of the Library of Congress. As these comprehensive guides are in the public domain, they could be scanned into an online system and collectively form a pool of citations to constitute a basic core of Third World government documents. Financial support from international, regional, and local sources in the Third and First Worlds must be obtained to create these “government publications databases” (GPDs). Priorities must be made as to which literature is the most important. Then the selected citations, with or without additional enrichment, would be entered and abstracted into printed copies for distribution in the Third World. Because of the small number of computers available in some Third World countries, the paper version would insure the widest geographic distribution there. Of considerable interest would be the relevance of software used by government printers in Third and First World countries for the bibliographic control of their publications. A dynamic plan involving all interested parties would be the first step to begin to solve the problem of fewer and fewer government documents from many Third World countries especially those in Africa. NOTES 1. Thierry G. Verhelst, No L$ Without Roots: Culture and Development (London: Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Zed Books, 1990) 5. 2. Verhelst, 5. 3. World Development Report 1990 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990) 178-79. 4. World Development Report 1990, 179. 5. World Development Report 1990, 179. 6. Encyclopedia of the Third World, 3rd ed. (New York: Facts on File, 1987) I47 1;Statesman’s Year-book 1990199 1 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990), 943; World Development Report 1990, 178. 7. World Development Report 1985 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 174; World Development Report 1990, 178. 8. Gretchen Walsh, Notes of the Book Famine Task Force Meeting (Boston: Boston University, African Studies Library, 1990?), 3-4; “Africa’s Book Crisis,” Africana Libraries Newsletter 54 (May 1988): 1-2; “Update on Archives Libraries Committee Activities Related to the Book Famine,” Afrcana Libraries Newsletter 62 (May 1990): 5; Lisbeth A. Levey, “AAAS/ACLS Sub-Saharan Africa Journal Distribution Program” ASA News 22 (July/September 1989): 24-27. Bibliographies on the book famine are available from Gretchen Walsh, African Studies Library, Boston University, 771 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, MA 02215. The A)icana Libraries News/etter is available free of charge from Joseph J. Lauer, Editor, Afiicana Library, Michigan State University Libraries, East Lansing, MI 48824-1048. 9. In response to the book famine, the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS) has established the AAAS Subsaharan African Journal Distribution Program. This program makes arrangements with scientific and technical societies’ publishers to obtain donations of current issues of the societies’journals. Pro-

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10. I 1. 12. 13.

J. B. HOWELL gram staff members match the journals with the needs of universities and research institutes in sub-Saharan Africa, and then ship the journals to Africa. The contact person is Lisbeth A. Levey, Manager, AAAS Subsaharan African Journal Distribution Program, American Association for the Advancement ofscience, 1333 H St., NW, Washington, DC 20005 (Tel. 202-326-6634). Walsh, 3-4. John Bruce Howell, “Trip Report to Nigeria and Kenya [summary],” A&YZ~ULibraries Newsletter 56 (October 1988), 3-4. Julian W. Witherell, “Africana in the Library of Congress: The Role of the African Section,” Quarterly Journal of the Library ofcongress 27 (July 1970), 19 I-96; and John Bruce Howell, Kenya: Subject Guide to OfJicial Publications (Washington: Library of Congress, 1978) 420-2 1. Ernest G. Ravenstein, Report on Meteorological Observations in British Eust Africafor 1893 (London: George Philip, 1894). See also item 2827 in Howell, Kenya: Subject Guide to Qficiul Pubkations.