The African Studies Companion: A Guide to Information Sources (review)

This is another of Hans Zell's guides to literature on Africa. This third edition is the first to be accompanied by an online version that is included with the price of the print version. The reader will be disappointed if he or she expects to find instant and direct routes to African literature. There are no references to any African writing or criticism, yet the book is useful for anyone involved in African studies. While it is limited to general, multidisciplinary sources, in this review I will attempt to point out particular references that are of use to students of African literature, in the hope that they will then see the usefulness of the book as a whole. Numbers in parentheses represent entry numbers, not page numbers.

In chapter 1, "General Online Resources on Africa and African Studies and the Best Starting Points on the Web," Zell provides a feast of online sources. Columbia University Libraries—African Studies Internet Sources(56), http://www.columbia.edu/cu//lweb/indiv/africa/cuvl, has sections on literature, films, and video. There are other such locations, but this is the premier site.

Under chapter 2, "The Major General Reference Tools," I note Alfred Kagan and Yvette Scheven's Reference Guide to Africa: A Bibliography of Sources(Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 1998) not only for its general excellence but because it contains chapters on folklore, literature, and music.

Chapter 3 presents "Current Bibliographies, Indexing and Abstracting Sources and Review Media (Print and Online)." It is hard to find literary works under these categories. If the user is interested in books coming out of Africa, e.g., novels by Patrick Chakaipa, he or she will find it in African Books in Print5 ^thed. (London: Bowker-Saur, 2000), a unique source. Not every library will carry it, however, since it costs 820 euros.

Chapter 4, "Major Biographical Resources (Print, Microfiche and Online)" includes a small number of online biographical sources for African writers, but these come under a general postcolonial site and a French site. The best bibliography for English writers is the print only African Biographical Dictionaryby Norbert Brockman (320) (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 1994). It lists "Entries by Field of Significance," including "Novelists and Writers" (29), "Poets" (13), "Playwrights and Filmmakers" (8), and "Musicians" (15). Profiles are generally of good quality.

Chapter 5 is "Guides to African Language Resources (Print and Online)." The best resource here is "African Language Collection. Indiana University Libraries, Bloomington" (346), http://www.indiana.edu/%7Elibrcsd/afrlg. The emphasis is on recent texts. If you want to find Mazisi Kunene's most recent Zulu-language poetry, you can find it here.

Chapter 8, "Guides to Film and Video Resources (Print and Online)," is a wide-open door for literary scholars. It is hard to pick the best, but I'll hazard "California Newsreel: Library of African Cinema" (405),

Under chapter 9, "Journals and Magazines (Print and Online)," the best is "African Studies Centre, Leiden University, List of Free Online Journals" (419), http://asc.leidenuniv.nl/library/freeonlineperiodicals.htm. It lists a number of journals relevant to African literature, including Research in African Literatures.One more resource deserves mention. This is Karen Fung's "Africa South of the Sahara," http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/guide.html. It appears in various guises throughout Zell and is especially good for its coverage of literature and cinema. This pretty much exhausts the African literature sections of the book, but again, it has many more resources useful to any Africanist. Its online aspects are particularly useful, not the least of which is that the author has updated the work by a full year, publishing it first in early 2003 and updating it already to 9 January 2004.