The first edition of Daniel McFarland's Historical dictionary of Upper Volta (Metuchen, N.J. and London, Scarecrow Press, 1978. 217 pp.) was published in 1978. From that time until the early 1990s, McFarland updated many of the entries and collected new materials. Dut to family health considerations he felt unable to complete the second edition. I agreed to undertake that project in 1995 with complete access to his collected material. That volume was published in 1998: Daniel Miles McFarland and Lawrence A. Rupley Historical dictionary of Burkina Faso [fomer Upper Volta (Haute Volta)] 2nd ed. Lanham, MD, Scarecrow Press, 1998. Ixxvii, 279 pp. This article is an outgrowth of that work. Following some general background on the country, this article reviews a sampling of the published literature concerning Upper Volta/Burkina Faso. Where citations are not included in the text, they can be found in the bibliography.

African and Africa-related collections in St. Petersburg can be found in a number of museums, archives, libraries and other institutions. Unfortunately, there is no joint catalogue or detailed description of the collections in either Russian or any other language. Therefore not all St. Petersburg African sources can be covered here. For example, until recently not much was written about Russian expeditions to East Africa in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The diary of a zoological expedition from Mombasa to Entebbe in 1914 including some interesting ethnographic material is currently in press at St. Petersburg University Press (ed. by Prof. Andrei Zhukov, African Studies Department, St. Petersburg University).

The only exception is Ethiopia. Most Ethiopian manuscripts in St. Petersburg have been described in two catalogues: Boris A. Turaev. Ethiopian manuscripts in St. Petersburg. St Petersburg, 1906, and Vyacheslav M. Platonov. Ethiopian manuscripts in St. Petersburg collections. St Petersburg, Russian National Library, 1996.