Most of the Fellows of the African Studies Association have participated in at least one Peace Corps training program, so that they have an interest in, and opinions on, this subject. The present article summarizes the major factors of training programs, outlines the main characteristics of the projects in Africa and of the volunteers, and then considers some aspects of the relationship between the Peace Corps and the universities. Finally, there is a detailed summary of all Peace Corps training programs for Africa, from the first one in June 1961 through the summer of 1965. Forty-four different universities, colleges, or other organizations have produced 132 programs for 19 different African countries, and some 6,000 volunteers have successfully completed the training and gone to serve with the Peace Corps in Africa (the usual service period spent in Africa is two years).

The first step in the establishment of a training program is a discussion between an interested university and the Training Division of the Peace Corps, followed by a series of negotiations which culminate in a formal contract. The contract specifies the duration of the program, the number and educational background of trainees, the faculty who will participate, the details of phases of training, and the country and project for which the trainees are being prepared. An important part of the contract is the budget, the cost generally being a little more than $200 per trainee per week.

During 1963 and 1964 the Africana Newsletter published regularly surveys of ephemeral material (party pamphlets, rare newspapers, constitutions, reports of congresses, trade-union literature, hard-to-find government documents) on Portuguese African nationalist movements, the Camerouns, Nigeria, and the Congo. This material was then filmed and deposited in the Center for Research Libraries (formerly the Mid-West Inter-Library Center), Chicago, Illinois, for use by members of the Cooperative African Microfilm Project (CAMP). The Editors of the African Studies Bulletin would like to continue this program of locating, listing, and collating rare African ephemeral materials. Please send inventories of your collection to the Editors. The original plea by Immanuel Wallerstein to cooperate in this program is reprinted from the Africana Newsletter:

All of us when we go to Africa acquire, sometimes systematically, more often haphazardly, mimeographed and printed documents which we store, often unused, hopefully to be used in the future. Scattered issues of journals, when added together, can make nearly complete collections.

I have certainly collected many odd items which are of little immediate use to me but which might be invaluable to someone doing particular pieces of research. I would hope that photostats of all these items could be collected in a central place and thus be available to all scholars.

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.

Africana at Howard University, Washington, D.C., developed as records on the African background of the American Negro were required to supplement the Library's collection of works written by and about persons of African descent.

Among the first books acquired by the Library soon after Howard University was incorporated on March 2, 1867, were titles on Africa. Some of the founders of the University interested in foreign missions donated to the Library their files on periodicals, books of travel and description, histories of Africa, and biographies of missionaries. Among these was the first edition of Churchill's Collection of Voyages and Travels issued in four volumes in 1704; seven editions of the works of Hiob Ludolf, the Elder ( … Historia Aethiopica, 1681; … Aethiopicam … commentarius, 1691; … Lexicon Amharico, 1698; … Grammatica Aethiopica, 1702; A New History of Ethiopia, 1682 and 1684); Barbot's Description of the Coasts of North and South Guinea (1732); the 1639 reissue of the 1632 edition of Africae descriptio of Leo Africanus; and works of travel by Bosman, Proyart, Kolbe, Bruce, Smith, Vaillant, and Sparrman. Some of the serial files presented were the Missionary Herald (1821-1882); Africa's Luminary (1839-1840); African Repository (1825-1900); Mouvement Antiesclavagiste (1889-1906); Liberia (1892-1908); Journal of the Royal Geographical Society (1833-1849); Afrique Explorée et Civilisée (1879-1882); and Bulletin du Comité de l'Afrique Française (1891-1919).

The rising demand for out-of-print Africana, and indeed all rare and scholarly books, is stimulating unprecedented interest and reprinting activity among publishers. With programs and courses springing up all over the United States, Africa, and other parts of the world, librarians and scholars have found themselves in fierce competition for scarce materials on African subjects. Simultaneously, booksellers, at pains to meet this tremendous increase in demand, have found the supply of Africana dwindling and near depletion. However, because of the proliferation of publishing houses specializing in scholarly reprints, the solution to this problem seems to be close at hand.

If one may judge by the number of works which have already appeared and by those known to be in the planning stages, it would not seem very long before nearly all the most important works are republished. The following does not purport to be an exhaustive listing, but will serve to indicate the very large number of reprints recently published or forthcoming.

This is the second in a series of annual surveys of South African reference literature and follows the general pattern of the first review. Works published in 1963 which reached the compiler too late for inclusion in the earlier review are included in the present survey.

General Works. Among the generalia issued during the year was a second edition of E. Rosenthal's Encyclopaedia of Southern Africa (London, Warne; R4-45 ). The South African Library Association issued a Directory of Natal Libraries (Potchefstroom, The Association; 35c), one of a regional series, which will probably be superseded by a comprehensive “Directory of South African Libraries,” scheduled for publication by the State Library in 1965. The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research published letters H and I of Periodicals in South African Libraries (Pretoria, The Council; R1O p. a.), which is a union list of serials held in South Africa.

Yearbooks. A very important reference work which appeared for the first time in 1964 was the Statistical Yearbook, compiled by the Bureau of Statistics (Pretoria, Government Printer; R4-15 overseas). The yearbook for 1964 contains 606 pages of statistical tables covering the period 1945-1963 and embracing the following subjects: population, migration, vital statistics, health, education, social security, judicial statistics, labor, prices, agriculture, fisheries, industry, trade, transport, communication, banking and finance. The last issue of the Official Yearbook of the Union of South Africa was No. 30 (1960), and later editions are still awaited. The Statistical Yearbook fills a gap in this connection.