Books and Goodwill
Large-scale book donations, over time, are raising a lot of questions as to the kind of role they play when it comes to the continent's development of reading culture in the 21st century. Africa’s dependency on solicited or unsolicited book donations largely from outside the continent is embedded in several factors such as supporting the initial set up of libraries or helping sustain underfunded public or academic libraries.
The criticism towards book charities is that they do not respect collection development guidelines—both local and international—which in the long-run has positioned Africa as a dumping ground for culturally inappropriate information material, including local publishing houses looking to market their books. For a continent that is still in the infancy stage of building its literary world, this is a recipe for disaster.
Even though documented knowledge does not go stale, in today’s literary space one could argue that information recycling has no place in the modern world where the entry of information technology tools like the internet means that there will always be a variety of content to consume online. This means that in order for traditional libraries to survive, especially in Africa, the culture of literature dumping has to be forgone unless on instances where it’s supporting small community libraries.
So how has the book aid culture affected collection development processes in Africa?
First, certain African governments and institutions have become entirely dependent on external support neglecting their mandated duty to sustain these libraries through budgeted funding.
Collectively, we have to get the first step of acquisition correctly for the process of collection development and management to succeed. Literature coming in as book aid under most circumstances does not meet the threshold because the step of evaluation oftentimes is neglected. This means that the choices of literature are not consumer-led, hence ignoring a lot of patrons' needs and rendering some of the books obsolete, even though they still find their way onto the shelves of most public and academic libraries.
There have been instances where students in institutions higher of learning are forced to spend extra in buying new books for personal use after failing to find required updated research material in their designated academic libraries.
Alice Maina, a professional librarian for over ten years, agrees that this is a problem that may not go away soon. She notes that on various occasions, under the current leadership, she has watched institutions ignore budgeting for books or do so for accountability purposes without releasing the funds in the end.
“Librarians are not consulted on restocking needs and collection development processes have been ignored entirely, affecting the quality and quantity of the books or research materials. Some years back I received a container from our donors that was filled with completely useless books even though we had communicated and outlined our specific needs prior to. It was disappointing," she states.
Alice reinforces the idea that book charities play an important role in equipping our libraries, but we cannot ignore the due process that has to be followed.
“Any library should engage a professional in the field first before sourcing for books. The attitude towards libraries as being lesser components in the workings of the overall scheme of things should be done away [with]. I am disappointed to note that in all my years as a librarian, I am yet to overhaul one. ”
Books sourced through goodwill do not provide authoritative and current resources leaving researchers and academics at a big disadvantage because the strengths and weaknesses of the collections are not known.
The way forward
A lot of information resource centers in Kenya, especially, never consider the needs of their consumers. A majority of them receive donations of books, magazines that they stock up in libraries just to fill the shelves. In the same breath, rarely are their overhauls after a period of time to refresh information materials.
The purpose of collection development and management, in particular, is to add value to specific information sources that will meet the user’s needs. The major issues with dumping are that these same needs are not met as quantity does not equate to quality.
With the digital space quickly taking over in terms of research knowledge, traditional library entities in African governments and institutions can no longer afford to continue lagging by being overly dependent on donor charities for books.