The Schomburg Collection is a library of special materials devoted to Negro life and history. It is international in scope covering every phase of activity of peoples of African descent. It ranges from early rarities to current materials on happenings from Tennessee to Timbuctoo. The Collection is mainly based on Arthur A. Schomburg's distinguished private library of rarities and treasures which was purchased from him and presented to the New York Public Library by the Carnegie Corporation of New York in 1926. However, a year earlier the Division of Negro Literature, History and Prints had been established in the One Hundred and Thirty-fifth Street Branch of the New York Public Library meet the neighborhood demands for books by and about Negroes.

In 1959 the Libraries Committee of the African Studies Association undertook a survey of holdings of Africana in American Theological libraries. The official approval of both the American Theological Library Association and the Catholic Library Association was received and inquiries were sent to a selected group of libraries in each Association. The main purpose was to ascertain the location of significant collections of printed material and to uncover, if possible, unknown or unrecorded manuscripts.

A very successful symposium was organized by the Afrika-Institut, Leiden, in 1955 on the theme of “The future of customary law in Africa.” Unfortunately this symposium had a restricted membership and there was not sufficient time to consider all the very fundamental problems that are raised by this subject today. The British territories in Africa have also held two professional the conferences on native courts and native customary law, both under the chairmanship of Sir Kenneth Roberts-Wray, Legal Adviser to the Colonial Office and the Commonwealth Relations Office. These “Judicial Advisers' Conferences,” as they were termed, were held Kampala, Uganda, in 1955, and at Jos, Nigeria, in 1956; the reports of their proceedings have been published as supplements to the Journal of African Administration.

Members of the African Studies Association may be interested to know something about the Department of African Studies at the University of Delhi, which I visited last fall. This is the only African studies program in India; it was established in 1955 at the instance of the Government of India following a rapid increase in interest among Indians in political ana racial affairs in Africa. The prospectus for the Department states that it was established “in order that India might have a centre for the study of Africa—her history and culture and arts, her social institutions and her languages, her politics, her race relations and her other problems, her economics and her geography. It is intended that at this centre facilities shall be provided for research as well as for the stuay of particular courses leading to tne conferment of certificates, diplomas and aegrees.