Who's Who

New Appointments - MSU Libraries Africana Collection

Peter Limb joined the MSU Libraries staff in March 2001 as Africana bibliographer. He comes to MSU from the University of Western Australia (UWA) Libraries, where he had been on staff since 1979. He received a Ph.D. in history/African studies from UWA in 1997; his dissertation was titled "The African National Congress and Black Workers in South Africa: Continuity and Change in their Relationship before 1940."

MSU's Africana collection is considered one of the most extensive in the country, and Limb's primary responsibilities include acquiring materials from and about Africa as well as maintaining the widely used bibliographical Web site "An A-Z of African Studies on the Internet " http://www.lib. msu.edu/limb/a-z/az.html (http://www.lib.msu.edu/limb/a-z/az.html). He is also an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of History and coordinator of the African e-Journals Project (AEJP), a joint project of the Libraries (http://www.lib.msu.edu/), African Studies Center (http://www.isp.msu.edu/AfricanStudies/), MATRIX (http://www.matrix.msu.edu/), and MSU Press. He is on the editorial boards of several scholarly journals and encyclopedias, and in 2001 was elected to the executive board of the Center for Research Libraries Cooperative Africana Microfilm Project.

Since arriving at MSU, Limb has made two trips to southern Africa, where, in addition to acquisition activities, he has given talks at universities in South Africa, Botswana, and Zimbabwe; made new contacts with librarians, faculty, publishers, and new AEJP partners; and explored exchange possibilities. His current research interests include Africa and the Internet, ethics and Africana archives, South African history, and African and Asian comparative nationalism.