The Africa collections at Stanford University are housed largely in the University Library, the library of the Food Research Institute, and the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace. Although the major portion of the material is found in the Hoover Institution, the other two libraries constitute important resources. Special collections are located in the Branner Library (Geology), the Cubberley Library (Education), the Lane Medical Library, and the Law Library. The curator of the Hoover Africa Collection assists all university libraries by recommending titles of old and new items so that the various collections develop in all fields.

The University Library buys widely in the African field but accepts primary responsibility for all African material before 18 70 and in the areas of art, ethnography, geography, linguistics, literature, religion, sociology, statistics, and technical documents. The Government Documents Division receives general statistical annuals and bulletins from all African countries and statistical reports of foreign trade from most countries. An effort is made to acquire all census and development-planning material. Most departmental reports are also received. The Documents Division was long an official depository for British government documents and thus contains an outstanding collection of parliamentary debates, blue books, command papers, Foreign Office papers, and annual reports of the Colonial Office from the early nineteenth century. For France the debates of the Assemblée Nationale are held from 18 71 and the Journal Officiel from 1914; for Germany the Reichstag debates are complete from 1867. These together with the depository publications of the United Nations make a substantial collection of material relevant to Africa.