[WikiEN-l] Verifiability and Africa

[Ray Saintonge]

Geoffrey Burling wrote:

>On Thu, 2 Mar 2006, Nicholas Moreau wrote:
>  
>
>>Africa was brought up in discussion of verifiability. This raises an  important question, should/can we be lax references for African content  in en?
>>
>> Suppose a tribes' elder writes an article on his village, he'll do it  based on oral history, or one-off documents. This information may be  recorded in books, but these books are stashed away in libraries miles  upon miles away.
>>
>> What happens then? It's true information, but there's little or no available sources for the writer to cite.
>>    
>>
>Welcome to my challenge: writing articles about Ethiopia (& neighboring 
>countries) where I can provide adequate sources. The short report on this 
>challenge is that sometimes I'm successful, & sometimes I'm not; compared to 
>a number of other topics one could write about for Wikipedia, verification 
>is currently harder, & for the forseeable future will likely remain so.
>
Oral histories have a role to play.  In Canada the Supreme Court has in 
the past given credence to oral histories in establishing land claims of 
the First Nations of British Columbia.

>The longer report on this challenge is as follows. The problem of 
>"oral history" isn't as insurmountable as it might first appear: a large 
>number of field researchers spent the 20th century combing Africa & 
>recording oral historical traditions, so a lot of material that one might 
>expect to find in an encyclopedia is in print, & can be verified. Getting 
>ahold of the printed accounts might pose a challenge of one kind or 
>another: for example, I own a copy of Richard Pankhurst's quite informative 
>_Economic History of Ethiopia_ (which covers the years 1800-1935), but it 
>had a first printing of 4,000 copies, so I don't know if someone else could 
>easily verify any material I might draw from it. 
>
Hmmm!  Published in Addis Abeba in 1968.  (not exactly the best place to 
publish if you want high circulation. :-) )  4 copies available through 
Abebooks, with the cheapest at US$59.37.  The pre-1800 volume was 
published in London and can be had for $14.31

>But that is a problem with 
>every specialized discipline. (Anyone else on the list own a copy of 
>_Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament_? It's another 
>valuable work, but not one found in the average public library.)
>
32 copies available through Abebooks with the cheapest being for US$75.00

The point for me is that these are easy to track down, and I'm confident 
that I could verify the material if I took an interest in the subject.

Ec