It is now almost 30 years since Dame Margery Perham, the internationally acknowledged academic expert on British colonial administration and a widely respected figure at Oxford University (Research Lecturer in Colonial Administration, 1935 and Reader 1939-48, Fellow in Imperial Government at Nuffield College, as well as being its first female Fellow, Director of the Institute of Colonial Studies and founding Director of the Oxford Colonial Records Project), died in 1982. Her work as research consultant to Lord Hailey and his team on the African Survey project (1938), her record of co-operation with the Colonial Office as a leading member of several of its committees including that set up to plan the post-war training of Colonial Service cadets (the Devonshire Courses) and her close links with a number of the new university colleges in the overseas territories, notably Makerere led to the award of the CBE in 1948.

The African Studies Association gives its Presidents no formal guidance on the content or presentation of their addresses, but my predecessor Rowland Moss suggested that one method was to chose a title first and write the address afterwards. In my case, the major part of the title was easy to decide on, since it was as the representative of SCOLMA, the Standing Conference on Library Materials on Africa, that I first joined the A.S.A. Council in 1964. I do not, however, intend to speak about SCOLMA in any detail, since I have done so on more than one occasion; my aim is to look at the materials which one might find in a major library on Africa and consider how they came to be written, the categories into which they fall, and the way in which they reflect changing attitudes to Africa.

The nucleus of the TUC Library was formed in 1915 with the establishment of the Labour Party Information Bureau. In 1922, a number of Joint Departments were set up by the Labour Party and the TUC, and Sidney Webb became the main advisor on the stock and organisation of the new library. In 1956, the TUC moved in Congress House in Bloomsbury, bringing the greater part of the stock with them.

The formation of the ILO in 1919 and contacts, particularly with the South African and Indian delegates, intensified the TUC's interest in labour conditions in British Protectorates. The new library began to gather material to service the Joint International Committee and the Joint Advisory Committee on Imperial Affairs. The formation in 1937 of a Colonial Advisory Committee led to a further organised attempt to collect African trade union literature.

In April of this year John Walford, Head of Modern Records at the PRO, gave a paper to the SCOLMA AGM on the preliminary findings of an investigation of the Zanzibar Archives covering their content and condition and proposals for their preservation. The essence of those proposals was a training/salvage workshop programme, which was carried out in Zanzibar from late July through August. The workshops were hosted by the Zanzibar Government and sponsored by the Commonwealth Foundation, the Leverhulme Trust and commercial firms in Tanzania, the UK, Kenya and Germany.

The programme comprised three concurrent workshops: Paper Conservation, Arrangement and Description of Documents and Archives Administration and Records Management. Each aimed to review or teach the fundamental procedures in its field, to provide practical supervised experience in dealing with real record problems and to achieve as much basic work on the records themselves as possible.

Barclays’ international business was founded in 1925 as Barclays Bank (Dominion, Colonial and Overseas). The roots of the business lay in three 19th century banks: the Anglo-Egyptian, the Colonial, and the National Bank of South Africa. It had long been the dream of Barclays Chairman, Frederick Goodenough, to create an ‘Empire Bank’, and, by buying these three and merging them, that is precisely what he achieved. This article sets out to provide an overview of the collection and suggest avenues of future research.

By a regrettable anomaly in our Association's practice, now removed, two distinguished historians who preceded me in this office — Roland Oliver and John Fage — were never called upon to deliver Presidential Addresses. So, with the exception of our first President (Dame Margery Perham) — whose historical writing achieves a distinction which few of us can hope to emulate, but who has been so much else besides — I find myself the first historian to discharge this duty. I feel somewhat as Lepidus must have done when invited to speak on behalf of the Triumvirate.

I suppose I should begin by claiming — as I think I can justly do — that historians have played a distinctive and important part in the development of African Studies during the last quarter century, and in the affairs of our own young Association.

In Uganda, records and archives management in government ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) is the responsibility of the Ministry of Public Service through the Records and Information Management Department (DRIM). The Uganda National Archives is a section of DRIM. Officially, the Department's responsibilities include:

• initiating and developing records management and archives administration policies

• planning and budgeting for records management and archives administration programmes

• giving guidance in the management of current records, semi-current and non-current records

• co-ordinating the implementation of records and achives laws and policies

• developing guidelines and procedures for records and archives administration

• sensitising records creators and members of the public to enhance awareness on the importance of records

• designing career development plans for records and archives staff, ensuring that government organisations follow good records management practice managing public records in all media or formats, including digital records

The paper describes the types of booksellers in Ghana, their problems, and the library's role as a partner with booksellers for enhancing the book trade in Ghana. The writer is of the view that the future of bookselling in Ghana does not appear gloomy. There are several ways in which libraries can help in promoting the book trade in Ghana, and attempts must be made to develop this partnership.

The African Studies Association of the West Indies (ASAWI) came into being in 1967 for the primary purpose of promoting a scholarly interest in African Studies in the Caribbean area. In the context of this region, the term “African Studies” was to be used to include elements of African culture which persisted in or had an influence on institutions in the region. ASAWI aimed at making a contribution to the body of scholarship on African topics, especially in subjects where West Indian sources and interpretations would add another dimension. ASAWI Bulletin (hereafter Bulletin) was a major forum through which the Association disseminated information to the public.

Eight issues of the bulletin were published between 1967 and 1976. It began as a mimeographed item, but after three issues it appeared in printed form. By the time eight issues had appeared, the editors acknowledged that the Bulletin from its inception had “showed signs of life more akin to a journal.“

This article describes the work of the Jalada Translation Project in promoting translation into and between African languages through networking, social media, print and digital publishing and in confronting issues of orthography and editorial process. The terms of debate have changed and multilingual publication is becoming more commonplace. The author asks where responsibility lies for African language publishing and raises questions for government policy and African philanthropy.