Developing a Collection on Africa, South of the Sahara

significance of modern Africa can be easily assessed by the frequent appearance of scholarly as well as popular books on some aspect of African life. While a goodly number of American universities and colleges have a concentration of courses dealing with Africa, no university library would be complete without acquiring some material in this field. College librarians perform the crucial role of making available the necessary written data to insure the development of competent scholarship in a given field. To achieve scholarship in the field of African affairs, whether we like it or not, one must work with considerable speed and urgency. The librarian, therefore, should have some frame of reference for necessary guidance in developing a useful collection. Considering the size of Africa as a continent, the infinite diversity of its people, the complexity of its problems, and the all too real difficulty of securing books and reports, the suggestions made here do not presume to be final or complete in scope. It is merely claimed that they are noteworthy contributions toward the development of scholarship in this field. Perhaps the easiest to secure but the costliest to own are the so-called traditional or classical books on Africa. These books, historical in treatment, form the background or core of any good African collection: Stanley's Travels, Du Chaillu's tales, Bruce's Travels, Baker's Explorations, and so forth, to mention only a few. It is an open secret, I guess, that much of the interest in Africa could have