The Africana Librarians Council (ALC) was founded in 1957 as part of the African Studies Association (ASA) under the name Archives/Libraries Committee.

 

The ALC continues today as a coordinate organization of the ASA. Members of ASA - whether they are librarians, archivists or documentalists working with materials from and about Africa or scholars interested in the preservation of or access to Africana - may join the ALC.

 

 

For more details on the history of ALC, see the following works:

Africana Resources and Collections: a Festschrift in Honor of Hans Panofsky (Scarecrow, 1989)

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Africana librarianship in the 21st century : treasuring the past and building the future : proceedings of the 40th anniversary conference of the Africana Librarians Council. Edited by Nancy J. Schmidt (Bloomington, Ind. : African Studies Program, Indiana University, 1998)

 

Africanist Librarianship in an Era of Change (Scarecrow, 2005)​