For decades, the Herskovits Library of African Studies has been collecting specific genres of books that are in African languages. Some are in widely spoken languages, such as Swahili, and others, like Twi, by fewer people. Most of the books are the equivalent to Western pulp fiction novels – dramatic fiction, sometimes serialized. Others are more scholarly in nature and cover many of subjects found within the collection, such as primary school education and missionary work. African language materials have existed within the Herskovits Library since the late 1950s.
The lack of language teaching within Northwestern and expertise available to catalog the books meant they might be unavailable for an indeterminant period of time. Because they were published in many different countries of Africa over many decades, some dating from the 1940s, the Preservation Department worried the paper was acidic and would continue to deteriorate. In order to keep these items from becoming brittle, we started deacidifying them in the 1990s. The deacidification process involves permeating the paper with an alkaline buffer than halts further degradation from acid in the wood pulp paper.
The Acquisitions Department initiated an ongoing project six years ago to create provisional records for these items in the worldwide, publicly accessible OCLC catalog. That work drew on the records of the bibliography compiled by David Bade, Books in African Languages in the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies, Northwestern University: A Catalog, n.d. Starting with Hausa language books, which numbered over 4,000, this project has expanded beyond that to include Swahili, Sotho, Igbo, Yoruba, and more. Processing of African language materials has now become routine with many records originating from our vendor Library of Congress in Nairobi. Additional original cataloging can round out the records, but the books are now in OCLC’s and Northwestern Libraries’ catalogs, which is a huge accessibility boost to an incredible resource.
Gold infinity symbol on the upper left corner, designating past deacidification.
While processing, the cataloger kept a lookout for the gold infinity symbol or vendor sticker that signaled previous deacidification. She added this information to the 583 MARC field. For books without any noticeable sign or the distinctive feel of deacidification, the cataloger tested each one with an Abbey pH pen. If the pages were acidic, the book was added to our mass deacidification workflow.
Because the language books are all too small and thin to safely head to the open stacks, they came to the Preservation Department for shelf preparation directly after cataloging. We separated the books between single-signature pamphlets and those that have several signatures attached together by side-stapling.
For several reasons we opted to treat these items in-house. Though individually cataloged and shelved, amongst the open stacks of the Herskovits Library, the African Language books as a whole can be considered a distinctive collection. As with other unique materials, we avoid changing the original item as much as possible. Preservation and the Herskovits Library had long ago deemed the collection as worthy of special care with the decision to deacidify all acidic books.
We didn’t want to send the books to the commercial binder where the pamphlet sewing is much harsher than our in-house work. For the multi-section books, the only option would be an adhesive binding in a Buckram case which is too invasive and damaging to the original item. We chose to sew the single-signature items into a pamphlet binder and create a custom Tyvek pocket, attached to a binder with double-sided tape, for the side-stapled books.
Student workers creating custom housings.
Book in custom pocket.
While the cataloger was processing so many books, the Preservation Department was unfortunately short-staffed, so we built up our own backlog. Over the past year, however, we’ve been able to dedicate student workers to sewing pamphlets and making Tyvek pockets in binders for the side-stapled books. The amazing students have now put almost 1,200 books in binders in the five months before the pandemic stopped the work. The materials are now available to check out. There are still a few thousand yet to go, but we’ve created a workflow and will gather momentum again to finish this significant project.
Esmeralda Kale, George & Mary LeCron Foster Curator of the Herskovits Library, contributed to this article.
