In May 1963, discussions between the African Studies Association (U.S.), the Midwest Interlibrary Center (now Center for Research Libraries), and Africana librarians from twelve North American institutions helped create the Cooperative Africana Microform Project (CAMP). Owing to the rise in digital information and preservation formats, CAMP renamed itself the Cooperative Africana Materials Project in 2010. Its mission has been to collect and preserve African newspapers, serials, and ephemera not typically held at U.S. institutions. As its original name suggests, microfilming continues to be an important method of preserving CAMP holdings. While building the collection involved some direct purchases of microfilm from Africa and Europe, the role of collaboration among U.S. and later African institutions enhanced collections and expanded the scope of CAMP's work. The history of these initiatives prior to 1995 has been documented by several CAMP members.

The British Library for Development Studies serves as the library of the Institute of Development Studies, but it also has a wider remit in supporting development research globally, funded by the UK Department for International Development. The collection has been built up over fifty years and consists of over two hundred thousand titles and over one million physical items, making it the largest collection of economic and social development materials in Europe. Over half of these items originate from developing countries, including development plans, budgets, national accounts, statistical yearbooks, and census reports for nearly all African and Asian nations. Much of the stock is believed to be unique - 42% of the catalogued holdings at BLDS do not appear elsewhere in WorldCat's global holdings.

SCOLMA's 2013 conference was based on the Research Library UK (RLUK)'s 2012 report, Hidden Collections, which SCOLMA defined as “material for which there is no online presence” in its pre-conference publicity. Many researchers are made aware of collections and documents in the custody of West Sussex Record Office via online sources such as the National Register of Archives (NRA), Access to Archives (A2A) - still an extremely useful resource, even though new catalogues and additions to existing catalogues can no longer be entered - and our own website, using our Search Online facility. The purpose of this paper is not to dispute the importance of an online presence in our increasingly digital world.

This article was provoked by the recent creation of two major state of the art modern museums in the western Grassfields of Cameroon. The two museums in question are the Mankon museum, located at the fon's palace, and the Babungo museum, also located at the Babungo fon's palace. The museums were part of an initiative by an Italian NGO - Centro Orientamento Educativo (COE) - to establish five museums in some regions of Cameroon. The objectives of the initiative were:

The continuous evolution of communication systems and the availability and accessibility to a wealth of instant information is promoting new ideas, issues, individualised learning and evoking curiosity. Today, being knowledgeable is not enough; rather, the ability to create knowledge is cherished. This diffused information environment is enabling people to gain expertise in many areas and is making people more assertive than ever. Countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya and Mauritius are experiencing economic vitality because their people are adapting knowledge, information and technology to create enterprise clusters (World Bank, 2008). Knowledge, information, and the ability for self-education are setting people free of the age-long dependence on the library. They are claiming responsibility for their own lives.