LCCN, September 10, 2013
ISSN 2324-6464 Overseas in Nairobi: Acquisitions Melanie Polutta Based on an interview of Pamela Howard-Reguindin, Field Director for the Nairobi Office, conducted on November 28, 2012 As I mentioned in the previous article about the Overseas Offices ( <http://listserv.loc.gov/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind1302&L=lccn&T=0&P=175> http://listserv.loc.gov/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind1302&L=lccn&T=0&P=175), one of the primary duties and the reason the Offices were established is to acquire materials from a specific geographic area that does not have a dependable supply line. Having looked at the Cairo Office previously ( <http://listserv.loc.gov/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind1305&L=lccn&T=0&P=52> http://listserv.loc.gov/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind1305&L=lccn&T=0&P=52), we can now take a look at the work of the Nairobi Office. I think you will find that there is a lot of similarity between the two, but each Office has unique qualities. The first thing to note about Nairobi is that it covers the largest number of jurisdictions of any of the Library's six Overseas Offices-29 jurisdictions in all, to be exact-yet has one of the smaller staffing levels with approximately 22 locally employed staff. These places are: Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Cameroon, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mayotte, Mozambique, Namibia, Reunion, Rwanda, Senegal, Seychelles, Somalia, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The languages covered include English, French, Afrikaans, Portuguese, German, and some 40 African languages. This makes the need to travel even greater, and still more challenging, as budget limitations have affected the Offices as they have everywhere else. The field director shares the travel duties with her employees, based on the skills of the employee and the relationships developed with vendors. Some jurisdictions among the 29 are visited every year, as they have a larger and more developed publishing industry. Other countries are visited at most every third year. This is not ideal, as it means that some potential library collection resources could get missed, but the schedule is understandable given the circumstances. These trips can be from one to two weeks worth of time, so they are expensive. The Library of Congress has bibliographic representatives in many of the countries that do local buying for us and who then ship materials to the Nairobi Office. Unfortunately, these reps cannot obtain everything we need. Sometimes they are limited in their own resources due to simple problems that would not even occur to us here in the US, e.g., they don't own a car, so they cannot travel to booksellers and transport the books they would try to obtain. Another possibility is that they cannot always pay promptly, due to the economic climate in their country. Also, buyers must be aware of their personal safety at all times. The acquisitions trips themselves can be a demanding exercise, even face to face. The buyer visits booksellers, publishers, non-government offices, and government offices, all in search of materials suitable for the Library's collections. Due to the erratic nature of the trips, it may take time simply to find the sellers' offices and track down the materials that are desired. Arrival just before closing time may require persistence and persuasion for the vendor to remain open and talk business. Even then, some of the booksellers may not want to trade with you right away; they want you to come back the next day - maybe just to find out if you are serious? Who knows why? All we do know is that it makes the job incredibly challenging. Considering these limitations, it is amazing that the Nairobi Office does so well. Just in fiscal year 2012, it obtained 97,994 total items, 36,786 for the Library of Congress collections, and 61,208 for the 31 other research libraries that participate in the cost-recovery "AfricCAP" Cooperative Acquisitions Program (http://www.loc.gov/acq/ovop/nairobi/nairobi-coop.html) from 29 different jurisdictions in 39 different languages. Indeed, according to the comments from some patrons, the Library of Congress is easier to find and use than the national libraries of their own countries. Which just goes to show that the Library of Congress is living up to its own mission of gathering a representative collection of materials from all over the world, which will "further the progress of knowledge and creativity for the benefit of the American people." ( <http://www.loc.gov/about/mission.html> http://www.loc.gov/about/mission.html)
