50th Anniversary of the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies

 

Integral to Melville Herskovits’s vision for African Studies at Northwestern University was the most comprehensive library that could possibly be built. So integral was this commitment that in the grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York in 1948 that established the Program of African Studies, one-third of the grant funds were devoted to establishing a separate library to support research and curricular programs in African studies. The University enthusiastically endorsed the plan and provided the necessary additional resources. It took until the 1954-1955 academic year for the African studies library to be officially opened in the basement of Deering Library. (When a new university library building opened in 1970, the Africana library was renamed in honor of Herskovits.) Also during 1955, on March 11 and 12, Herskovits convened in the library a conference to discuss the future of African studies and African studies library collections. It is in celebration of 50 years since the opening of the Herskovits Library and this national conference on African studies that the 2005 spring meeting of the Africana Librarians Council and the Cooperative Africana Microform Project will be held May 5-7.

Minutes of the conference of African Area Studies Centers, March 11 and 12, 1955.