The Commonwealth political ephemera collection was begun in 1960-1961 with material continuing to be collected up to the present day. The Commonwealth Political Party, Trades Union and Pressure Group Materials collection consists of over 13,000 items from more than sixty countries, including most Commonwealth member nations, and from some of the Overseas Territories of the UK. There is also a substantial amount of material from some countries before they became independent (such as Rhodesia and Nyasaland). For periods where countries left the Commonwealth material continued to be collected, most significantly for the purposes of this paper in the case of South Africa. In addition there is a small amount of material from countries (for example Angola) that are neither Commonwealth members nor were British colonies, but were colonies of other European imperialist countries.

This article deals with the British Library's collections on Africa, and especially with its collection of private papers of India Office officials (with a particular focus on the twentieth century). The choice of India-related collections may seem surprising, but in fact these records contain much that is relevant to African history.

In this article I am concerned not only to describe what is held at the British Library, but to discuss the historical construction of these collections. That is, how factors that might be thought mundane and pedestrian - decisions about the selection or destruction of records, and their preservation and arrangement - affect both the nature of archival holdings and the scholarship built upon them.

For many, the spread of the missionary movement overseas is inextricably linked with the rise of the British Empire. Missionaries often preceded the arrival of colonial government in many parts of the world and some of the first recorded encounters between Westerners and indigenous peoples are those of missionaries seeking converts to Christianity. At the height of the missionary movement, between 1880 and 1920, some sixty societies based in the UK were actively engaged in this work with many thousands of missionaries going out to the mission field. The legacy of all this global activity lies in the archives, personal papers, books and pamphlets, published annual reports, missionary magazines, photographs, films, slides, sound recordings and artefacts scattered throughout museums, archives and libraries across the UK.

This study investigates the information management in Nigerian Commercial banks; the survey method was adopted for the study. The population constituted the 365 and 248 branches of First Bank and Union Bank respectively. Both purposive and random sampling procedures were used to select the two oldest banks and 129 branches as samples for the study and the 279 samples of the respondents surveyed. The findings revealed that information sources generated are technical reports, statistical data and articles from magazines and newspapers. The technology most used to manage information is electronic mail and computers. Information technology is most important in the storage of data and dissemination of information. The findings indicate that information is used in managerial functions such as planning, controlling, organising, directing and staffing.

The History of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope by the Hon. Alexander Wilmot and the Hon. John Centilivres Chase was published in Cape Town by J.C. Juta in 1869. In his South African Bibliography (London 1910), Mendelssohn commented that “This was the first regular and consecutive history of the Cape Colony”. He drew attention to George McCall Theal's comment in his History of South Africa, vol. IV (1834-1854) (London 1893) that “It is now out of print and it is rarely met with”. In his own Catalogue of Books and Pamphlets Relating to Africa South of the Zambezi (Cape Town, S.A. [1912]) published two years later, Theal added that “Before 1892 there was not a copy even in the South African public library at Capetown”.