PREFACE

This is a list of published guides to the archives of Africa, especially those in microform and including inventories, records, catalogs, lists both finding- and special-, indexes, annual reports (and for South Africa, also archivalia and trials), arranged by regions, primary international language, and countries, excluding only Egypt, with titles in English, French, and Portuguese, but not those solely in Arabic. No titles were found for Spanish-speaking Africa. Collections of Africana on microfilm are identified as they provide better access to original materials not otherwise available. In addition, considerable time and funds have been spent by non-profit organizations such as the Cooperative Africana Microform Project (CAMP) in identifying archives and manuscripts to be filmed, targeting the funds to film them, and then having the microfilm available to scholars world-wide. The Center for Research Libraries (CRL) online catalog which contains CAMP's nearly 10,000 titles is a major source for African archival materials.
 
Ancillary materials are histories or historically-related materials such as pamphlets that together provide an important source for the writing of history. These appear as a small selection of materials in book format at the end of each geographic area, where they exist.
 
Much of this guide is based on the holdings of the University of Iowa and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It was developed from the two libraries' respective in-house lists. Other U.S. research libraries have been added for location of additional titles and copies. Citations in this guide derive from searches in the RLIN database (now well over 100,000,000 titles), which includes holdings of the Library of Congress, Columbia, and Yale, as well as other major U.S. research libraries, along with the individual online catalogs of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) members: Northwestern, Michigan State, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, and Penn State as well as those of Iowa and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As CIC members are also members of the Center for Research Libraries (CRL), titles located in CRL are also identified. However, this is not a union list of all U.S. libraries holding these titles (see the online library catalogs and other sources available on the Internet). The OCLC database was not used as a source for this guide.
 

Migrating Archives and Preservation
 

The publication of guides to archival records has come about only since independence was achieved by most African states, e.g. Sudan: 1956, Ghana: 1957. Few African archives and libraries could afford the luxury of documenting their past. In many cases, records were stored rather than described or made available through finding-aids or inventories. In some countries like Kenya, Malawi, and Zimbabwe, there has been a determined and sustained effort to locate and preserve records of the past before they vanish. Beginning with the microfilming of some national archives in the 1960s, the Government of Kenya has sought records of "migrating archives" outside the country. Finally in 1989, the Kenya National Archives published the results of their search in the Guide to Records Retrieved from U.K. and U.S.A. (see item 264; 298-299 for Malawi, and 753 for Zimbabwe).
 
Many African countries have similar problems in finding, identifying, and bringing historical records home, even on microform. It is hoped that continued interest in Africa's past will bring to light additional records for historians and other scholars doing research regardless of where the materials are located.
 
There is some urgency in the preservation and microfilming of archives on the African continent, e.g. the recent destruction by arson of the Sierra Leone regional archives by factions in the civil war there. African archivists lack the financial resources to preserve their own archives, especially as some philanthropic organizations have discontinued seed funds for projects to preserve national archives. International and the support of European, North American, and Asian funds are needed now to preserve archives by microfilming them. The current microfilming of select court records of the Senegalese national archives with funding by U.S. African Studies Centers' Title VI grants is a positive move toward preserving and creating access to important African archival materials, not only from Senegal, but also from other African countries.
 

Government Publications and Confidential Prints

 
Guides to official publications of African countries are not included as many are available in the series of publications by the African Section of the Library of Congress from 1960 to 1978. Shorter guides and microfilm of many official publications of English-Speaking Africa were issued commercially as Government Publications Relating to Africa in Microform by EP Microform from 1973 to 1984. The Center for Research Libraries (CRL) has the complete run of both guides and microfilm.
 
However, selected Confidential Prints of the British Government are included especially those available from The Public Record Office of Great Britain which maintains a list on microfiche of titles it has on microfilm. The Confidential Print is a collection of selected correspondence, memoranda and other documents, some quite lengthy, printed for internal use in the Cabinet, and before the Cabinet was established, for the Colonial Office, the Foreign Office and for distribution to British diplomatic missions. Within the last fifty years, the Public Record Office was authorized to have
copies of some Confidential Prints made available on microfilm. Even more recently, the collection of the Confidential Print is becoming available in hard copy (see item 6).