By a regrettable anomaly in our Association's practice, now removed, two distinguished historians who preceded me in this office — Roland Oliver and John Fage — were never called upon to deliver Presidential Addresses. So, with the exception of our first President (Dame Margery Perham) — whose historical writing achieves a distinction which few of us can hope to emulate, but who has been so much else besides — I find myself the first historian to discharge this duty. I feel somewhat as Lepidus must have done when invited to speak on behalf of the Triumvirate.

I suppose I should begin by claiming — as I think I can justly do — that historians have played a distinctive and important part in the development of African Studies during the last quarter century, and in the affairs of our own young Association.

One of the continuing problems of participation in the SCOLMA “area specialization plan” for a medium-sized developing university library like Exeter's with many and increasing necessary commitments and interests, is that of being able to give to the particular collection the consistent attention it needs. In our case, an Assistant Librarian with various other duties, has had overall charge of the collection with occasional help from the Deputy Librarian and the Heads of the Orders and Accounts and of the Periodicals Departments. The Library has also benefited especially from the presence over the years from 1967 to 1973 of Mrs. Elsie Frimpong and Mrs. Grace Amonoo, two Ghanaian library assistants, wives of research students here, who were naturally interested in the collection and gave useful practical advice. Informed interest among the Library Staff has now been strengthened by the coming of our new Sub-Librarian Mr. D.W. Evans with his experience of the Africana collections at Birmingham.

For obvious reasons I shall confine my comments almost entirely to the courses at the School of Library, Archive & Information Studies at University College London, of which alone I have first-hand knowledge. Equally, I shall be concerned very largely with discussing the situation at the level of the Diplomas, the first professional qualifications, in both Librarianship and Archives. It is only at this level that one can talk of “teaching” African Bibliography at the School. There are a number of ways in which an interest in African bibliography & librarianship can be followed at the higher degree level, for the M.A., M.Phil., or Ph.D., but for higher degree work, even for the M.A. which has an element of written examinations, there are normally no specific courses taught. Indeed at the M.A. level a regional interest can be pursued within a number of the stated options; not merely in “Regional studies” but also in “Comparative studies”, “Historical & Social Studies”, even in “Management” or “Classification & Cataloguing”.

Our rapidly changing world and the unique place South Africa, with her heterogeneous population, occupies among the nations make it necessary for South Africans to account for their place and role in the world situation. One event follows another so rapidly that the average individual simply cannot keep abreast of the times. It follows that there is a need for a responsible interpretation of events, preferably in such a manner as to fill the needs of both the academic who wishes to study the situation and the man in the street. Not only must facts be supplied in a scientific manner, but they should also be interpreted in their historical sense.

South Africans have lagged behind in their efforts to enter the field of contemporary historiography. Neither the lack of distance between events and the writer describing them, which could obscure his perspective and judgement, nor the lack of historical sources ought to be allowed to hamper exponents of contemporary historiography in South Africa.