Biko Agozino
They are called libraries because
libraries are full of lies. When next you consult your library catalog,
search for the keyword, lies, and you will get numerous hits. The biggest library lie is the
suggestion that the truth only lies in libraries waiting to be excavated, so be careful about online sources, they warn. The
knowledge society of today has exposed that lie enough for researchers to know
better but the allure of tradition still holds many brilliant minds captive and makes them skeptical
about sources of knowledge beyond the walls of libraries. Here are some tips
for scholars who do not have access to well-stocked libraries:
1. An
African colleague once asked an online forum for suggestions of books on a
topic to help a graduate student under his supervision who could not find
relevant publications on a certain topic. This is a common assumption among doctoral
students – that they are always the first to chance on an uncharted territory
even though we know that there is nothing new under the sun. I in-boxed the
colleague on Face Book and suggested that he should have the graduate student
do a Google search on the topic and then narrow down by selecting ‘More’ and
then selecting ‘Books’ to see many recent book publications on the topic. As an
example, I copied and pasted the web address for a search that I did on the
topic and the books displayed. The colleague wrote back to verify if I was
trying to spam him or infect his computer with a virus by asking him to click
on the search results that I pasted? I responded that he did not have to click
on my results, he should just replicate the steps and he will find similar
results. I reassured him that Google Books often offers previews of many
relevant books that students can read and decide if to order the book. I never
heard back from the colleague since then despite the fact that we were college
mates and friend each other on FB. Was it something that I said?
2. Another
African colleague complained recently that a university of technology where he
works has no library worth that name and that the few reference materials in
the library were not properly archived, making it impossible for his students
to find any relevant materials. Again I suggested that he should ask his
students to try Google Books search to help them. However, he said that in the
natural sciences, they value refereed journal articles more than books. In that
case, I suggested that they get their university libraries to subscribe to databases
such as Proquest, Project Muse (for the arts), or EBSCO-HOST to enable them to access full
texts of journal articles online. Individual subscriptions may also be cheaper.
He told me that he had been looking for a 1985 journal article that is crucial
for his teaching but could not find it. I Googled the title of the article and
came up with nothing...
3. So
I tried another strategy. I did a Google Scholar search on the name of the lead
author and the article came up. I clicked on it and my college library allowed
me access to the article online. In case your college library does not
subscribe to the particular journal, a Google Scholar search on the author
might throw up other articles written by the same author that may cover similar
grounds and that may be openly accessible on the internet.
4. A
simple Google web keyword search will also throw up PDF copies of complete
documents that could be downloaded and read for academic use. And many authors
place their personal copies of their articles in PDF format under their
personal websites to be found through a general Google search. Other search
engines also throw up stuff but Google stands out for me by adding specialized book
and scholar searches. Thank you Google!
5. I
have also received requests from Law Professors in Africa asking for suggestions
on journals to submit their articles for possible publication. I tell them that
almost every university with a law school in the US also has a Law Review Board
that is edited by the students but with publications by professors. For
instance, Barrack Obama was the President of the Harvard Law Review Board when
he was a student. I advise them to search online and read articles in the Law
Reviews and see if their own article could fit in.
6. More
importantly, I advise them to encourage their own students to establish their
own on-line Law Review Journals and start publishing articles through their
university websites. Such publications will have more respectability if they
regularly publish top scholars and if they do not make them seem like vanity
publishing by charging authors hefty sums the way many open access journals are
doing now. Feminist Africa is a highly respected scholarly online journal that was launched by the Nigerian scholar, Amina Mama and colleagues at the University of Cape Town. Many top journals in the medical sciences now regularly publish many articles online as well as in hard copies but commercial publishers still require subscriptions before a full access to contents.
7. Online
archives of complete books for academic uses can also be found in sites like
the Gutenberg Project and Marxism.org. A search for an author followed by
comma and then by Gutenberg Project may show whether that author has books
already archived. A search for any work by major Marxists from around the world
may indicate that the complete text or major portion is already archived online
for fair use by scholars. Marxism.org reported last year that publishers had
challenged them to take down the links because they claimed to hold the
copyrights to the complete works but many users persuaded the publishers to back off
because the online versions do not compete with the hard copies since many of
those who use the online versions may already have hard copies too.
8. With
internet technology serving as what someone called the digital talking drum,
African scholars should seek to bring the many journals they have been
struggling to publish epileptically in hard copies with limited resources online to cut costs
drastically and reach a wider audience. For example, the African Criminology
and Justice Association launched its online journal, African Journal of
Criminology and Justice Studies and I have been serving as the founding Editor
in Chief since 2005. Authors do not pay to publish in it and it is openly
accessible to readers worldwide. It is also archived by the Africa Knowledge
Project along with other Africa themed journals on philosophy, gender, arts,
and West Africa that AKP supplies to subscribers.
Although public
libraries originated in Africa more than 7,000 years ago following the invention of writing in Africa, it is unfortunate to
note that up-to-date libraries are less likely to be found in Africa today and
ancient texts that survived in Timbuktu recently ran the risk of being burnt by
fanatics due to our peculiar history of arrested development. Arise and organize discovery, do not agonize! A
mind is a terrible thing to waste and the most powerful weapon in the hands of
the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed because if you control the minds of
a people, you need not worry about what actions they may take, warned several
African ancestors.
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