Dear colleagues,
The American Library Association (ALA) International Relations Committee (IRC) Africa Subcommittee met on 20 April 2026. Highlights:
Upcoming workshop on encoding languages in catalog records
- The Core Committee on Cataloging: Asian & African Materials (CC:AAM) is delighted to invite you to the workshop "BCP 47 Language Tags in BIBFRAME and MARC: The What, Why, and How." Wednesday, May 6, 2026 Time: 10:00 a.m. PT / 12:00 p.m. CT / 1:00 p.m. ET Presenters: Kevin Ford (Library of Congress) and Adam Schiff (University of Washington) Registration: https://ala-events.zoom.us/meeting/register/NkfBP-a_TsWKTFuFj4d_Cw This workshop will explore BCP 47 language tags and their application in both BIBFRAME and MARC environments. The tags provide more granularity when coding language, script, and country.
- Our May meeting will discuss cataloging resources from Africa, especially these tags.
Next meeting Monday 18 May 2026
6:30 a.m. Pacific / 7:30 a.m. Mountain / 8:30 a.m. Central / 2:30 p.m. West Africa / 4:30 p.m. East Africa
Note: The U.S. is back on Daylight Savings Time so the meeting is now an hour earlier in African countries.
Meeting link: https://msstate.webex.com/msstate/j.php?MTID=mcd691b4252ffeb07c7d97c6b90e4f550
Let's talk about cataloging in Africa and Africana cataloging in the United States. What questions and issues do you encounter? What tools and resources do you use? What opportunities are there for collaboration and training? We'll begin with approaches to encoding languages more accurately with the BCP 47 language tags in Bibframe and ISO639.3 language codes in MARC. We'd like to gather some conversation topics for a longer webinar. Please share with your cataloging colleagues.
Coming soon: May webinar
- Evelyne Mwandia of the Start A Library Trust in Kenya will present Scaling Literacy is a People Problem, Not a Books Problem. Q&A will follow to discuss literacy programs in the context of their communities and surrounding systems. Details to follow.
- We are planning regular webinars. We'd love to hear your proposals.
Other upcoming and recent events
- Decolonizing African Collections webinar The Mortenson Center for International Programs held a panel discussion on 25 March 2026. From Justine's notes:
- Reggie Raju emphasized the scarcity of locally published scholarship and closing of publishing houses on the continent; librarians need to tend towards access, collaboration, and resource sharing; move from collecting to disseminating (especially in the context of e-resources) and to knowledge stewardship and access architecture management; desire for epistemic independence - ownership, classification, and access must be controlled locally, on African terms
- Andwisa Mfengu echoed the idea of "persistent epistemic injustice" and the need for digitization projects to prioritize equity and access, including being multilingual and have low infrastructure
- Deborah LaFond and Jason Schultz talked about the Global Summits on Diamond OA, ways to promote diamond OA sources, and then sparked a brief conversation about AI, which Reggie Raju said has been a disaster for African scholarship, including the imposition of Global North content on the Global South
- See recommended sources at end of this email
- International Conference on Library and Information Science (ICLIS) 2026 15-16 May in Mombasa, Kenya; Africana Librarians Council meeting 2026 15-17 April; Nerisa (IAO) has an upcoming event, too; SCECSAL 2026 27 April - 1 May Livingstone, Zambia (Standing Conference of Eastern, Central, and Southern African Library and Information Associations) – feel free to share events with us
ALA Annual 2026 session
- The committee continues to plan its session at ALA Annual 2026 in Chicago, Illinois USA. The topic is local needs and emerging technology: an African perspective. Professor Arnold Mwanzu of Aga Khan University (Nairobi, Kenya) will talk about artificial intelligence in academic libraries in low-and middle-income countries and Professor Lisa Hussey of Simmons College (Boston, Massachusetts USA) will discuss working with schools in Rwanda.
- It's not too early to start thinking about 2027. The ALA Annual Conference & Exhibition will be in New Orleans, Louisiana 24-28 June 2027.
Recommended sources
- African Platform for Open Scholarship https://apos.uct.ac.za/
- Berger, M. (2024). Predatory Publishing and Global Scholarly Communications. Association of College and Research Libraries.
- https://localcontexts.org
- Buolamwini, J. (2023). Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines. Random House.
- Work of Joanneke Elliott at UNC
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill African Studies Center. (n.d.) K-5 Digital Learning of Contemporary Africa African Lesson Plans and Further Teaching Resources. https://teachingafrica.unc.edu/resources/
- SPARC Africa. (2025, October 20). Regional Perspectives on Diamond Open Access. https://youtu.be/qMoqP_mzHSg?si=5ZJITjAYalY2dia2
Justine Withers
Metadata and Resource Management Librarian
D'Angelo Law Library, University of Chicago
jmwithers@uchicago.edu
(773) 702-9620
1121 E. 60th Street, Chicago IL 60637
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