The article examines in some detail the provisions made for African subjects in the Library of Congress and Dewey Decimal Classification schemes, two schemes in general use in Africa. It notes some gross inadequacies of these schemes in classing African subjects, especially in the social sciences and humanities. It suggests extensive modifications of existing schemes rather than attempting to devise an entirely different scheme for Africana, but such modifications should be concerted, and not left to the whims and caprices of individual classifiers.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Amankwe, Nwozo.Africa in the standard classification schemes . Library Resources and Technical Services, Spring 1972, 16 (2), 178-94.
2.
Quoted by Professor O Dike, in The scientific study of Africa's history. Unesco Courier, 1967, 20 (10).
Nwamefor, Ralph.Library classification of African literature . Sierra Leone Library journal, January 1975 , 2 (1), 42-56.
5.
Irele, Abiola.The criticism of modern African literature. In Perspectives on African literatures, ed. Christopher Heywood. Hememann, 1971 (1979 repr.), 9-24.
6.
Amaeshi, Basil.The classificatiori of modern African literature . Libri, 1975, 25 (1).
7.
Shoyinkà, Patricia.Preliminary cataloguing survey of Nigerian libraries. Nigerian Libraries, August and December 1976, 12 (2/3).
8.
Krishnaswami, M.A proposal for the method of adopting Dewey Decimal Classification scheme to meet the needs of India. Library Resources and Technical Services, Fall 1965, 9 (450).
9.
Hoffman, Carl.The languages of Nigeria by language families . Partially revised March 1976. University of Ibadan, 1976. Mimeograph.
10.
Williamson, Kay.Alphabetical index to the languages of Nigeria by language families. Department of Linguistics, University of Ibadan, 1975. Mimeograph.
11.
Hansford, Keir, Bendor-Samuel , John, and Stanford, Ron.An index of Nigerian languages. Summer Institute of Linguistics, Accra , 1976.
