Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-q6k6v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-14T00:05:44.547Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

African Material Culture Information Network

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Janet L. Stanley
Janet L. Stanley*
Affiliation:
National Museum of African Art
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The African material culture network—if indeed one can posit a network—is multidimensional, consisting of scholars, objects, and information. The linkage between scholars and objects of material culture that are the focus of their study is information, in particular, the ways in which that information is collected, codified, and communicated. Documentation is the process that generates and orders the information about objects, relates objects one to another, and channels appropriate information into scholarly inquiry.

The primary network is one of people: the scholars who are engaged in the study of the object—the mask, the ritual vessel, the woven textile, the dwelling. Information about the object; its use and function; its esthetic and formal qualities; the technique of its manufacture; and its social, economic, and historical context comes from many sources: from examination of the object itself; from contextual, collection, and associated data, including oral data; and from the published literature, unpublished written records, and visual images. These three kinds of data, in turn, constitute secondary networks: information which is generated, processed, and utilized by scholars or other specialists (curators, librarians, archivists, bibliographers). These secondary networks correlate roughly to the institutional settings of museums, archives, and libraries. Information does not exist in a vacuum; it serves a purpose, even if one not always apparent. Thus, the process of creating and manipulating information about African material culture objects, or simply documentation, has as its goal to match in perfect overlay the information about objects with scholarly inquiry.

Type
Sources and Resources for the Study of African Material Culture
Information
History in Africa , Volume 21 , 1994 , pp. 371 - 386
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, Monni. 1989. “African Visual Arts From an Art Historical Perspective.” African Studies Review 32:55–103.Google Scholar
Biebuyck, Daniel P. 1983. “African Art Studies Since 1957: Achievements and Directions.” African Studies Review 26:99–118.Google Scholar
Blier, Suzanne Preston. 1990. “African Art at the Crossroads: An American Perspective.” In African Art Studies: The State of the Dscipline; papers presented at a symposium organized by the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, 16 September 1987. Washington, DC, National Museum of African Art, 1990.Google Scholar
Bouazza, Abdelmajid. 1986. “Resource Sharing Among Libraries in Developing Countries: The Gulf between Hope and Reality.” International Library Review 18: 373–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chenhall, Robert. 1978. “Museum Data Standards.” Museum News 56 (6):43–48.Google Scholar
Chiduo, V. 1986. “Problems of Libraries in the Third World: The Experience of the University of Dar es Salaam.” Botswana Library Association Journal 8 (1):14–18.Google Scholar
Cronin, Blaise. 1982. “Invisible Colleges and Information Transfer: A Review and Commentary with Particular Reference to the Social Sciences.” Journal of Documentation 38:212–54.Google Scholar
Crowder, Michael. 1986. “The Book Crisis: Africa's Other Famine.” African Research and Documentation no. 41: 1-6 (also published in preface of: Africa bibliography 1985 [London, 1986]).Google Scholar
Dipeolu, J. O. 1984. “Sharing Resources Among African University Libraries: Some Problems and Solutions.” African Journal of Academic Librarianship 2:44–47.Google Scholar
Drewal, Henry John. 1990. “African Art Studies Today.” In African Art Studies: The State of the Discipline; papers presented at a symposium organized by the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, September 16, 1987. Washington, DC, National Museum of African Art, 1990.Google Scholar
Garvey, W. D. and Griffith, B. C. 1968. “Informal Channels of Communication in the Behavioral Sciences: Their Relevance in the Structuring of Formal or Bibliographic Communication.” In The Foundations of Access to Knowledge, ed. Montgomery, E. B., 129–46. Syracuse.Google Scholar
Gaskin, L. J. P. 1965. A Bibliography of African Arts. London.Google Scholar
Haagen, Claudia and McNabb, Debra. 1984. “The Use of Primary Documents as Computerized Collection Records for the Study of Material Culture.” Material History Bulletin 20:56–68.Google Scholar
Lennonier, Pierre. 1986. “The Study of Material Culture Today: Toward an Anthropology of Technical Systems.” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 5:147–86.Google Scholar
Moran, Barbara B. 1981. “Popular Culture and its Challenge to the Academic Library.” In Twentieth-Century Popular Culture in Museums and Libraries, ed. Schroeder, Fred, 179–86. Bowling Green, OH.Google Scholar
Mount, Sigrid Docken. 1988. “Evolutions in Exhibition Catalogues of African Art.” Art Libraries Journal 13(3):14–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Obiagwu, M. C. 1987. “Foreign Exchange and Library Collections in Nigeria.” Information Development 3:154–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olanlokun, S. Olajire. 1987. “Collection Development in an African Academic Library During Economic Depression: The University of Lagos Library Experience.” Library Acquisitions: Practice and Theory 11:103–11.Google Scholar
Pankhurst, Rita. 1988. “Libraries in Post-Revolutionary Ethiopia.” International Development 4:239–45.Google Scholar
Phillipson, David. 1988. “Are Africanist Publications Available in Africa?” African Archaeological Review 6:1–2.Google Scholar
Rahard, Maryse and Bourdin, Jean Francois. 1986. “FRANCIS Can Inform You on Africa.” African Research and Documentation no. 42: 8–10.Google Scholar
Roberts, D. Andrew. 1985. Planning the Documentation of Museum Collections. Duxford, UK.Google Scholar
Roberts, D. Andrew and Light, Richard B. 1986. “The Cooperative Development of Documentation in United Kingdom.” In Museum Documentation Systems: Developments and Applications, ed. Light, R. B.et al., 113–30. London.Google Scholar
Sarasan, Leonore. 1986. “A System for Analyzing Museum Documentation.” In Museum Documentation Systems: Developments and Applications, ed. Light, R. B.et al., 89–99. London.Google Scholar
Schenck-Hamlin, Donna and George, Paulette Foss. 1986. “Using Special Libraries to Interface with Developing Country Clientele.” Special libraries 77:80–89.Google Scholar
Stam, Deirdre Corcoran. 1984. “How Art Historians Look for Information.” Art Documentation 3:117–19.Google Scholar
Stam, Deirdre Corcoran. 1989. “The Quest for a Code, or a Brief History of the Computerized Cataloging of Art Objects.” Art Documentation 8:7–15.Google Scholar
Stanley, Janet L. 1984. “African Art Periodicals.” Art Documentation 3:93–95.Google Scholar
Stanley, Janet L. 1990. The Arts of Africa: an Annotated Bibliography, 1: 1986 and 1987. Atlanta.Google Scholar
Stanley, Janet L. 1989. “Documenting African Material Culture.” In Africana Resources and Collections: Three Decades of Development and Achievement: a Festschrift in Honor of Hans Panofsky, ed. Witherell, Julian and Evalds, Victoria K., 118–50. Metuchen.Google Scholar
Stevenson, Gordon. 1977. “The Wayward Scholar: Resources and Research in Popular Culture.” Library Trends 25:779–818.Google Scholar
Thuillier, Jacques. 1987. “An Opinion: Relationships Among Databases Serving the History of Art.” Art Documentation 6:108–09.Google Scholar
Vansina, Jan. 1984. Art History in Africa. London.Google Scholar
Zell, Hans. 1987. “African Scholarly Publishing in the Eighties.” Scholarly Publishing 18:97–107.Google Scholar