Most press releases I get are about new (or sort of new) products and they’re all about how cool stuff is. But ProQuest’s latest is cool in a better, more socially conscious, way. It’s from the UK arm of ProQuest, the old Chadwyck-Healey company, which announced it will offer to African libraries and universities its newly launched online edition of the African Writers Series, either for free or heavily discounted. Release One of the African Writers Series contains 65 volumes originally published in 1962 by Heinemann Educational Books. It features fiction, poetry, drama, and nonfiction works by well known African writers. ProQuest estimates the full series will be online by 2007. This is good news, particularly in light of its timing, right before the IFLA conference next week in Norway, where there will doubtless be many African delegates.