African Studies in the United States are alive, well and still growing despite lower increases in the level of goverment and institutional funding since the period of rapid growth in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Although some institutions have experienced sharp declines in funding or personnel, many have increased their Africanist activities in recent year. African Studies still are not a high priority in the American educational system. There is a wide gap between what Africanists consider to be essential information about Africa and what is actually known and taught about the continent in the U.S. Certainly there is room for expansion and improvement of existing academic teaching and research programs. Nevertheless, African Studies have made substantial advances in'the last 25 years and are still developing.

Maurice Line, Director-General of the British Library Lending Division, has said that one can always tell where parties of librarians have been by the trail of union catalogues they leave behind them. He added that ‘there lurks an innate tendency to construct union catalogues in the same way as some species of the animal kingdom have exotic and apparently irrational habits, like the mating displays of kangaroos or the exotic nest building of some birds’.

SCOLMA has been involved in constructing union catalogues for a long time. It is now twenty-three years since it began recording African periodicals — ‘somewhat lightheartedly’, according to Donald Simpson — and we have now published two lists containing almost 23,000 titles with details of library holdings for probably about 13,000. I have a file of about 3,000 extra titles, which is likely to grow considerably in the next few months.

SCOLMA has now existed twenty-three years. One of its basic aims throughout its existence has been to promote library co-operation in the acquisition of African material.

SCOLMA has achieved much on very slender resources. The Area Specialization Scheme in particular has resulted in much African material being available in this country, which would otherwise have never been collected. Inevitably, it has not been wholly successful, as the participating libraries have had varying degrees of success in their endeavours. This has been due to the inability of some libraries to devote sufficient resources to the project, and the fact that some libraries have attached more importance to it than others for various reasons.

SCOLMA has always understood that priorities can change over the years, and that academic interests in member-libraries’ institutions cannot be expected to remain the same for ever.

It has been my good fortune to take part in half a dozen conferences focussed on African Studies - half of them international, half of them essentially yet in no way exclusively domestic - during the past twelve months. No less than three of these involved an anniversary input, not necessarily in the celebratory sense so much as in the straightforward chronological one. Having gained so much from this apparent ‘Have Paper, Will Travel’ commuter's circumjetification, I could hardly reject the Editor's invitition to contribute a personal account of the African Studies Conference landmarks of 1984/85 as viewed by merely one British participant.

In 1943 there appeared in the Mombasa Times a column which, with the exception of Sir Arthur Bryant's ‘Our Note Book’ in the Illustrated London News, became probably the longest-running feature of its kind by. a single writer in African, Imperial or global journalism. The author, Edward Rodwell, was born at Sittingbourne, Kent, on 28.7.1907, and educated at Herne Bay, where he showed an aptitude for imaginative composition and edited the school magazine. In 1921 he was indentured for five years to a jobbing printer and, having mastered his craft, was promoted to manager of the firm in 1928. In this capacity, he gained some experience of writing, editing and publishing. After completing a course at the London School of Journalism, he applied for a post with the East African Standard group, which appointed him Managing Director of the daily newspaper, the Mombasa Times.