The Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, currently offers a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses and seminars that concern themselves exclusively with the history, government, and social organization of the peoples of northern and sub-Saharan Africa. The Department of Tropical Public Health in the School of Public Health, the Law School, and the School of Business Administration also find a place for Africa in their respective curricula. The Center for International Affairs has for a number of years sponsored an interdisciplinary faculty seminar on Africa. It has also supported research in the fields of African history and government and maintains a continuing interest through its Development Advisory Service in the economic problems of Africa.

The resources of the Harvard University library system serve these varied teaching and research needs. Of the more than 7 million volumes housed in the various constituent libraries of the University, approximately 34, 000 form the core of the African collection. Much of this collection is scattered throughout the component libraries and, within each, shelved among a number of subject classifications. The largest single centralized Africana grouping is found, appropriately under “Africa,” in the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library. It contains about 14, 000 books and periodicals. A total of about 6, 000 additional volumes is classified according to language or under the categories Folklore, Archaeology, Economics, Education, Sociology, Geography, South America, and Asia. (Early printed titles are often housed, however, in the Houghton Library.) The Law School Library holds about 5, 500 volumes pertaining to Africa; nearly half of its collection relates to the Republic of South Africa. The Library of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology contains about 2,400 volumes of monographs, 1, 600 volumes of serials, and several hundred pamphlets, all of which, together with an index of periodical articles by author and subject, appear in the 53-volume printed catalogue of the Library. The Andover-Harvard Theological Library of the Harvard Divinity School has about 700 volumes that deal with the churches of the Republic of South Africa and some 1, 500 volumes on Protestant missions in tropical Africa. The libraries of the Harvard Schools of Medicine and Public Health, the Graduate School of Business Administration, the Graduate School of Public Administration, and the Museum of Comparative Zoology each contain several hundred books and serials directly relevant to the study of Africa. The Library of the Center for International Affairs also maintains a select collection of books and periodicals dealing with contemporary Africa.