|
|
Zimbabwe
|
Directory Information
|
Zimbabwe, a republic in southern Africa, is bordered by Zambia on the north, Mozambique on the northeast and east, South Africa on the south, and Botswana on the southwest and west. Population (1990 est.)9,369,000; area 390,580 sq. km. The official language is English and the principal national languages are Shona and Ndebele.
History
Writing was introduced into what is now Zimbabwe by missionaries in the 19th century, and libraries were first established by colonists in the mid-1890s. After an initial pioneer phase, development was slow.
National Libraries
The Library of the National Archives of Zimbabwe, founded in the capital city of Salisbury (now Harare) in 1935 as a department of the Central African Archives, is the principal legal deposit library, the foremost center for research on South-Central Africa and its history, and the chief bibliographical services center. In 1987 its collections, which comprise all works published in Zimbabwe, works by Zimbabwean authors, and works on Zimbabwe published elsewhere, totaled 43,000 mono-graphs, 36,000 audiovisual materials, and 6,000 cur-rent serials in 1984. The Library publishes the Zimbabwe National Bibliography, maintains the Directory of Zimbabwean Libraries, administers the allocation of international standard book numbers, and is the Unesco deposit library for Zimbabwe.
The National Free Library of Zimbabwe, founded at Bulawayo in 1944, is the national lending library, national center for interlibrary loans, and central library for students. It maintains a national union catalogue of monographs published between1956 and 1972 and coordinates the incorporation of the records of Zimbabwean library holdings into Southern African union catalogues published on microfiche since 1972. Its collections, which in 1987 totaled more than 90,000 monographs, 15,000 technical specifications, and 500 current periodicals, supplement public library services in providing academic, scientific, technical, and cultural books and information.
Sources:
|