Students interested in the history of Liberia have been hampered by the dearth of serious studies on Africa's first republic. With few noteworthy exceptions, published works on Liberia can be grouped into two rather broad categories. The first consists of works which tend to be too journalistic in concept and execution to satisfy the demands of serious scholarship. The second includes a variety of memoir-like collections of reminiscences and observations recorded by individuals stationed at one time or another in Liberia while engaged in educational, missionary, or developmental programs. Much of the published material in both categories is useful, and indeed quite valuable, for it provides a good deal of information not readily found elsewhere. Yet, while informative, these books do not constitute a body of scholarly work which the serious student of West Africa would wish to have available.

One work which must have a place on the relatively brief list of trust-worthy books of reference relating to Liberia is the exhaustive compilation of basic documents prepared by the distinguished international jurist, C. H. Huberich. Paradoxically, it appears that it was this important work which discouraged many historians from searching further for basic source materials, for Huberich noted that most official Liberian documents were destroyed during a violent storm in Monrovia. Writers on Liberian affairs who accepted Huberich's statement as the final word on the subject seem not to have attempted to utilize unpublished Liberian government papers in their research. Even those researchers who have, in recent years, had sufficient interest to probe into this alleged disappearance of the Liberian archives, or who were desirous of determining the extent of archival materials which might have survived the disaster, were undoubtedly discouraged by ambiguous replies from Monrovia in response to their inquiries.

The conference, sponsored by the African Research Committee and the African Studies Group of the University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee, was held June 2-4, 1966, at the Kenwood Conference Center, Milwaukee. Conferees were as follows: D. W. Griffin (University of California, Los Angeles); Peter C. W. Gutkind (McGill University): Ruth Simms Hamilton (Iowa State University); George Jenkins (University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee); G. Wesley Johnson (Stanford University); John Paden (Northwestern University); Michael Safier (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee); Henry J. Schmandt (University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee); W. M. Swanson (Yale University); and Alvin Wolfe (Washington University).

African urban studies are on the verge of escape from scarcity into bulky unintelligibility. At least sixteen books are being prepared by Americans for publication; most of them are single-instance studies by junior scholars, although six of them will present comparable materials gathered according to the “Bohannan plan.” (See African Urban Notes, I [April 1966], 1). In addition, some thirty Americans and Africans are presently in Africa or writing dissertations based on field research, and at least twenty more Americans are planning field research. Furthermore, the ARC conferences on unemployment, the West Indian Ocean area, geography, and migration have recommended still more urban research. Although this does not mean that a surfeit is threatened in any sector of urban studies, African urban research will probably be marked for some time by increasing descriptive affluence and continuing theoretical poverty. The essential need in this area of African studies is to provide for more meaningful development of a sizable movement whose momentum seems assured for the immediate future.

American scholars doing research in African literature sometimes have trouble locating the books they need. It is easy enough to get one's hands on African literary works published in England or America, but how does one get hold of material published in Africa -- e.g., Onitsha market chapbooks, early Lovedale or Morija press publications, or works in vernacular languages published by literature bureaus and small mission presses? Fortunately, for the older titles once can search through several published library catalogs -- Library of Congress (1942-1952), UCLA (1963), Berkeley (1963), the Schomburg Collection of the New York Public Library (1962), the African collection in the Moorland Foundation at Howard University (1958), Northwestern University's African collection (1962) -- and for the newer titles one can consult the National Union Catalog or the Joint Acquisitions List of Africana issued since 1961 by the Northwestern University Library. However, because these reference works do not list the older titles which libraries have acquired in recent years, one can never be certain that a particular African literary work is unavailable in the United States.

The mission was designed in part as a follow-up and in part as a complement to Professor Philip D. Curtin's research liaison visit to western Africa in 1965 on behalf of the Association. Senegal, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Tchad, and Cameroun were revisited. The previously unvisited Central African Republic, Dahomey, Niger, and Upper Volta were added to the itinerary. Difficulties in flight scheduling and unexpected delays during the trip ruled out the planned visits to Gabon and Togo.

The goals of the mission were as follows: (1) to establish or renew contacts with universities, research institutes, appropriate government authorities, African and expatriate researchers, and American scholars currently engaged in research in Africa; (2) to make known the existence of the Research Liaison Committee (and sometimes, as it turned out, of the ASA as well) as a two-way clearing house for Africanist research information; (3) to establish more regular means of exchanging information with institutions in Africa on current and planned research, so as to make possible some informal coordination of research plans among scholars; (4) to determine the existing formal procedures (if any) for researchers from abroad; and (5) to convey back to the Africanist community in the United States some of the feelings, attitudes, and suggestions from these countries.

The United States Department of Commerce is the largest data collecting organization in the world. Its Bureau of the Census has the monumental job every ten years of conducting a population census; its Office of Business Economics has the important task of measuring the national income and computing the balance of international payments and is also nationally known for a family of publications including the scholarly monthly SURVEY OF CURRENT BUSINESS.

These data are intended primarily to provide statistical guidelines relative to the course of the domestic economy. However, a different kind of data collection activity is carried on regularly by the Department in the Bureau of International Programs and the Bureau of International Business Operations. These two bureaus have primary responsibility within the department for the promotion of United States foreign commerce and private international investments. Both are new organizational units created as of August 8, 1961 to replace the former Bureau of Foreign Commerce, and both are under the supervision of the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for International Affairs who is, in turn, responsible directly to the Secretary of Commerce. In announcing this reorganization in the department's international affairs' responsibilities, Secretary Hodges stated that the Commerce Department must “fulfill our role in formulating U.S. foreign economic policy especially as it affects the American business community. … We want to be in a position to advise both business and government on the imminent changes in world trade and investment resulting from regional economic integration, from the threat of the Sino Soviet Bloc, and from our own economic growth. We need better methods to evaluate and set upon developments abroad which have an impact on the U.S. foreign and domestic trade.”

A small conference was held in New York on March 19 to 20, 1964, concerning the general position of the teaching of African Languages in the United States at the present moment.

The conference, called at the joint request of the National Defense Education Act Language and Area Centers and Columbia University's Institute of African Studies, was attended by the directors and teachers of African language of the major centers of African studies in the United States.

In the course of the two-day meeting the directors reported in some detail on the position of African language teaching in their respective universities and a number of clarifications of NDEA policy were presented by Mr. Donald Bigelow.

The question of a summer session on African languages was discussed at length and a variety of suggestions were offered for possible changes in the format of the existing summer session sponsored by NDEA. In this connection, a resolution was passed urging the establishment of a summer Institute of African Languages, to be located at a permanent site, and under the sponsorship of the African Studies Association.

The following highly selective list was compiled for presentation at the October 1964 meeting of the African Studies Association's Libraries-Archives Committee in Chicago. It was designed to illustrate preliminary findings of the ASA's National African Guide Project in the area of private (i.e., nongovernmental) papers, and particularly to emphasize their wide variety and distribution. The entries, by individuals and organizations, are grouped under the following broad “activity” categories: Politicians; Diplomats; Naval Officers; Humanitarians; Missionaries; Businessmen and Businesses; Authors, Journalists, and Travelers; and Scholars and Scientists. In several cases there is a further breakdown into subcategories. Within their respective categories or subcategories the entries are arranged alphabetically. An effort has been made throughout this list to complement--rather than duplicate--the coverage of the Collins and Duignan guide,Americans in Africa (Stanford, Calif., Hoover Institution, 1963).