I had originally thought of calling this piece, with a startlinglack of originality, ‘Forty years on’. It is after all exactly forty years since my own existing interests in African bibliography became formalised when I followed the option ‘Oriental and African bibliography’ at the School of Library Studies, University College London, taught by J.D. Pearson, the Librarian of the School of Oriental and African Studies. I later came to teach thisoption myself, from 1965 onwards, and indeed to follow Pearson by becoming the second to hold a chair entitled ‘Professor of the Bibliography of Asia and Africa in the University of London’. And in 2002 it will be forty years since SCOLMA (Standing Committee on Library Materials on Africa) was founded, the body that has done most in the U.K. to respond to the perceived needs of African bibliography, and one with which I have been associated for many years.