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Equatorial Guinea
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Directory Information
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Equatorial Guinea is a republic in West Africa, comprising Rio Muni-between Cameroon on the north and Gabon on the south and bordered by the Atlantic Ocean on the west-and the islands of Fernando Po (Bioco) and Annobon. Population (1990 est.) 348,000; area 28,051 sq.km. The official language is Spanish.
Equatorial Guinea, former Spanish Guinea, became independent in October 1968. The few libraries left by Spain were closed or had been evacuated by 1979 when Macfas Nguema's dictatorship was ended in a military coup d'etat led by his nephew, Obiang Nguema. Few were reopened during the second dictatorship, 1981-91. Few official sources documenting library scrvices in Equatorial Guinea after 1968 are available.
Oral tradition-arising out of legends-has not yet been documented in any detail. First accounts of the area go back to the 15th century. From 1827, with Protestant missions, and from 1856 with Catholic missionaries, some small libraries were started.
An American, Sanford Berman, published the first annotated bibliography of the country in 1961. Between 1974 and 1991, a Swiss Africanist, Max Liniger-Goumaz, published a seven-volume bibliography containing 13,120 entries.
National Library
The country had no National Library until 1982. In that year, the Biblioteca Ptiblica of Santa Isabel (Malabo) was transformed into the National Library. It merged with the Library of the Flispano-Guinean Cultural Center. Books were again available for loan after 1990.
Most documents published on Spanish Guinea are available in Spanish libraries. In the early 1990s, the main Equatoguinean sources could be found in libraries in Madrid, among them the Biblioteca Nacional, Biblioteca del Instituto de Estudios Africanos, Hemeroteca Nacional, Centro de Documentacion Africana, and Biblioteca de los Misioneros Claretianos; in Rome, at the Biblioteca del Vaticano; in Geneva, Switzerland, at the United Nations Library; and in the United States at Northwestern University (Evanston, Illinois), at its Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies, and at the Library of Congress.
Academic Libraries
In 1963 the Escuela de Magisteno (Teacher Training College) in Bata was created with a library for students' use only. In 1971 the library's collection numbered about 3,000 volumes, covering mostly Spanish literature, books on pedagogy, and almost all publications on Guinea of the Instituto de Estudios Africanos. In 1973 the library was absorbed by the Centro de Desarrollo de la Educacion, a teacher-training center created with Unesco's assistance (after many books had been burned by the Youth Movement of Macias Nguema). In 1974 there were 2,400 volumes. The government closed the library; it was reopened partially in 1976, but after deportation or exile of most of the students and the departure of Unesco's experts, the library was not in use from 1978 to 1982.
In Santa Isabel the Library of the Escucla Superior Indigena (later called Escuela Superior Provincial) was established in 1946 for training auxiliary primary school teachers and auxiliary administrators. In 1946 its stock numbered 1,400 volumes, for students' use only.
Shortly before independence, the Direccion General de Ensefianza y Inspeccifln began to organize a pedagogical library with the help of the Spanish Direccion General de Plazas y Provincias and the Instituto Pedagogico San Jose' de Calasanz (Madrid). Its aim was to create circulation libraries for teachers and pupils in remote districts, but they did not work.
There were also some small libraries in the four Catholic seminaries, two seminarios mayores (clerical training colleges) in Banapa and Nkuefulan, and two seminarios menores (clerical-staffed secondary schools) in Concepcion and Mikomeseng.
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