While doing bibliographic research on Africa for the Permanent Ethnographic Probability Sample at Northwestern University, I have had to comb much literature about Africa in my search for authors who have adequately described at least ten different aspects of the culture, have lived among the people for at least one year, and have some claim to knowledge of the native language of the people. In the investigation of bibliographies on over 400 African tribes, it has become quite evident that there is a relatively large body of detailed material written by missionaries which is seldom consulted in general research about Africa and is not readily available for use by persons with specialized research interests. These missionary reports are usually scattered in missionary records, in many journals (some of which are little known), and in books printed in small quantities by obscure presses. Most frequently they are written in German, Flemish, French, or Portuguese, and this, in addition to their not being readily available in most American libraries, may account for their not being consulted.

The monumental work by Sanford Berman, “Spanish Guinea: An Annotated Bibliography” (Washington, 1961, 597 p.), is the only major bibliographical work produced by a non-Spanish author and devoted to Spanish Guinea. The service rendered to African studies by the writer cannot be overestimated, since he has brought not merely technical competence to his task but also scientific impartiality—a quality often unknown to Iberian authors.

On the afternoon of 15 September 1864 John Hanning Speke, discoverer of the Source of the Nile, accidentally shot himself in a field at Neston Park, near Box, Wiltshire. In the hundred years since there have been numerous biographies of other explorers of Africa—shelves of books record the achievements of Livingstone, Stanley and Burton—but Speke has been accorded nothing longer than periodical articles or sections in books. Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that any extensive papers exist, but there is a good deal of scattered information in print, and this note is an attempt to relate this to an outline of his life.

The Flag Research Center was established in February 1962 for the purposes of collecting all types of materials relating to political symbols, and especially the history of flags, and of making this information available to interested persons. In addition to a large number of actual flags, the Center Library (181 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston 16, Massachusetts) has voluminous files of notes and correspondence. There is also a collection of over 800 books and pamphlets on the subject of flags, heraldry, and related subjects. The New York headquarters of the Flag Research Center (at 1452 Leland Avenue, New York 60) contain the editorial offices for The Flag Bulletin, a quarterly journal of vexillology, the history of flags.

The records described in this inventory belong to Record Group 84, Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State. They are both complementary and supplementary to records in Record Group 59, General Records of the Department of State. Both record groups contain communications and other papers transmitted between the Foreign Service posts and the State Department in Washington. In Record Group 45, Naval Records Collection of the Office of Naval Records and Library, are materials dealing with the African slave trade and Negro colonization. Papers relating to the slave trade and its suppression are to be found in Record Group 21, Records of the District Courts of the United States; Record Group 48, General Records of the Department of the Interior; Record Group 60, General Records of the Department of Justice; and Record Group 118, Records of the United States Attorneys and Marshals.

The rising demand for out-of-print Africana, and indeed all rare 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.

The Italian Institute for Africa (Via Ulisse Aldrovandi 16, Rome) is the only agency destined by law to carry out the functions of a National Centre of relations with Africa on a cultural, economic, and social basis. Other Centres in Italy that are interested in particular geographic areas of the African Continent are the Centro per le Relazioni Italo-Arabe (Centre for Italo-Arab Relations) (Via Caroncini 19, Rome) and the Istituto per l'Oriente (Via Caroncini 19, Rome) whose attention is directed toward Mediterranean Arabic Africa and countries of the Asiatic Near East. There is in Milan (Via Santa Radegonda 8) the Gruppo Vittorio Bottego directed by General B. V. Vecchi that on a private basis promotes Italo-African relations in collaboration with the Centro Economico Italia-Africa della Camera de Commercio di Milano. Other interrelations on scientific and academic grounds are encouraged by some Italian universities also within the course of studies of the faculty of Political Science and Letters. In Naples there is the Istituto Universitario Orientale that pays a great deal of attention to Africa especially in the field of philology.