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.”

The city of Salem, Massachusetts, was a major port for American commerce to Africa for much of the nineteenth century. Even in the latter years of the century, when trade had moved to larger centers, the Salem men still played an important role in some African areas.

Due to the efforts of the Peabody Museum and the Essex Institute, many of the papers relating to this American contact with Africa have been preserved. The collections include logbooks of vessels, merchants' account books, and letters to and from agents and captains.

The following pages briefly describe the materials relating to the history of Africa in the archives of the two Salem institutions. The list includes only those items of historical interest. (There are many logs of voyages to Africa of only nautical value.) It attempts to be complete, but no claim is made to having found every document of interest to the historian. Part of the contents of the archives remain uncatalogued and materials relating to Africa are occasionally uncovered under unlikely headings. Research for new sources is being continued.

Some of the most accessible sources for African maps are the new atlases which have been published since World War II. If we interpret the term “atlas” loosely so as to include any assemblage of maps which can be placed on a book shelf, the range of subject materials covered is surprisingly large -- from agriculture to zoogeography. But despite the wealth of data which is presented in convenient map form, it is difficult to obtain information about atlases and their contents. The purpose of this article is to provide a guide to the kinds of information which is available, and a list of atlases and other publications with African maps which have appeared since 1945.

The analysis is based mainly upon atlases examined at the Map Division in the Library of Congress, at the American Geographical Society in New York, and at the University of California, Los Angeles. A few additional atlases were obtained through inter-library loan. Mrs. Clara Egli LeGear, of the Map Division, Library of Congress, provided especially helpful bibliographic aid at the early stages of the survey. This article is a part of a research project supported by the African Studies Center at U. C. L. A. More extension listings of African maps and atlases are in preparation; the authors would therefore welcome comments upon errors or omissions which may be noted in the article.

(The following article on the forthcoming First International Congress of Africanists is reprinted from the Bulletin of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, No. 2, 1962, pp. 88-9. Previous accounts of planning for the Congress, by Conrad Reining and William O. Jones, may be found in this Bulletin, October I960 and December 1961.)

African Studies until very recent times were developed as a part of Oriental Studies. To some extent this is explained by the fact that the northern, most developed areas of Africa are populated by Arabic-speaking peoples, and there are not a few reasons for regarding them in historical, cultural, and political aspects as part of the general Arab world. Northern Africa was usually included in the rather vague concept of “the Orient,” and then, this time without any reason for it, the whole continent began to be included in “the Orient.”

But the main reason for including African Studies in Oriental Studies is that the study of the countries of Asia and Africa was pursued primarily by the scientists of the colonial powers, and inasmuch as their work fundamentally served the aims of ruling enslaved countries in the interests of imperialist monopolies, both the great continents were regarded as one single colonial complex.

The grant by the Carnegie Corporation of New York to the Library of Congress in December 1959 for the purpose of establishing and operating for five years an African studies unit resulted in the formation of the Africana (since changed to African) Section within the General Reference and Bibliography Division of the Reference Department of the Library. Activation of the unit came in March 1960 with the transfer of Miss Helen F. Conover to the African Section as area specialist. Dr. Conrad C. Reining was appointed head of the section in April of 1960. The position of editorial clerk was provided for by the initial grant and has had three incumbents. Mrs. Audrey A. Walker, of the Manuscript Division of the Library, was appointed to fill the position of bibliographer-reference librarian in June 1961.

The section has gradually built up a collection of reference works comprised of bibliographies, directories, atlases, guides, and surveys which is of prime importance for its work and invariably of interest to visitors. The current issues of fifty or so periodicals selected for display are also constantly used by both staff and visitors. About fifty boxes of ephemeral reference material have been assembled. The section maintains a card file of current publications on Africa, which is a continuation and refinement of one originated by Miss Conover some years ago. About twenty entries per week are made from Library of Congress preliminary catalog cards and from notices of new books. Most of the entries are for publications of the past three years. The file is consulted several times a day by the staff and research workers, and is currently forming the basis of Miss Conover's major task of revising the general bibliography Africa South of the Sahara. We have also started reference card files for addresses of organizations concerned with Africa, biographical materials, pertinent abbreviations, and special issues of periodicals on Africa.

This list of fellowship opportunities was originally compiled by Professor Rhodes to accompany the May issue of this Bulletin, which was devoted to African arts and humanities. It was not published at that time due to pressures of space. It may be noted that many of the fellowships listed are available to Africanists in other disciplines. Also, not all of these are tenable in Africa; many awards are for work in African studies in the United States or Europe.