This expensive little book, originally a thesis for the
University of Illinois, is an artless but sometimes perceptive account
of certain library endeavours in British East and West Africa, based
on archival and library research in Britain and the United States. It
is not a history of libraries per se so much as a study of
instances of external aid to the development of libraries beyond the
sphere of teaching institutions. In the 1930s, one such source –
as in so much of the English-speaking world – was the Carnegie
Corporation. Grants to Kenya underpinned a system of circulating
libraries, the depot for which was housed in the McMillan Memorial
Library, Nairobi; membership was confined to whites until 1958. In
Lagos, Alan Burns, as chief secretary, secured a grant to start an
unsegregated but fee-charging library: in 1934 just 43 of its 481
members were African. The grant ended in 1935, but the library was
still going forty years later.
