Acquisition trip Burkina Faso 2017

In the period 21-25 November 2017 the ASCL library visited the 14th edition of the Foire internationale du livre de Ouagadougou (FILO) in Burkina Faso. The aim was to purchase materials for the collection and assess if future visits to the fair would be useful. In total 68 exhibitors were visited at the fair in addition to 13 other NGO’s, bookshops, religious organisations and academic publishers. Over 400 publications were selected and shipped to the library  for an average of slightly less than eleven euro per item (including handling, shipping and additional costs of food, transport and accommodation). This is a cost effective way of collection development and a valuable supplement to the 258 items from Burkina Faso, already present at the library. Most important subjects turned out to be in the first place (not surprisingly) fiction, followed by religion, history/culture and politics. Surprisingly absent in the street scene were newspapers but this was somehow compensated by the purchase of more than 60 issues of l’Appel and le CERFIste, two Islamic magazines  digitized by Frédérick Madore. Together with the books and pamphlets published in Burkinabé languages and the existing collections at the Leiden University Libraries, the complete collection published in Burkina Faso consists of 1061 items.