The database used for my A Guide to Original Sources for Precolonial Western Africa published in European Languages (xxvi + 192pp., African Studies Program, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1987) has been subject to continuing revision and updating. The total number of entries has grown from some 780 to close on 830, and in all I estimate that something like 400 changes have been made to the published form of the Guide. Some of these are essentially cosmetic—for example, rearrangements of an entry's layout intended to make its text easier to use and understand, or the correction of obvious misprints or infelicities. But, leaving these aside, there are now a sufficient number of substantive changes to suggest that-pending the appearance of a second edition—it might be sensible to seek to publish this list of significant corrections and additions separately.

Of those whose help I acknowledged in 1987, I can only express my continuing gratitude to P. E. H. Hair, Adam Jones, and Robin Law for the way in which they are still drawing my attention both to new sources and to my earlier errors. I have also gained useful bibliographical insights from holding in my hand many of the 3537 items listed in the great and glorious sale catalog recently put together by Paul Wilson, of Oriental and African Books, Shrewsbury, of “rare and scholarly” books published on West Africa and the western and central Sudan from the early seventeenth century onwards.