The Library collection was formed on the establishment of the Institute of Colonial Studies by University Statute in 1945. The moving spirit behind the formation was the doyenne of British Africanists, Margery Perham (later Dame Margery), who became the first Director and a prinicpal benefactor. The Library's first home was at 10 Keble Road.

In 1956 the Institute was renamed Commonwealth Studies basically because the word “Colonial” was no longer in vogue, and because it did not adequately describe the work done in the Institute which was naturally reflected in the material held by the Library. Then in 1960 the Institute, while retaining its identity and University responsbilities, moved with its Library, Office, and academic personnel into its present home, Queen Elizabeth House at 21 St. Giles.

The IRD (French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development) is a French research institute serving the Mediterranean and intertropical countries that make science and innovation one of the first levers of their development. It is a French public science and technology establishment (EPST) which is under the dual supervision of the Ministry of Higher Education and Research and the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs.

The Decree of 1 December 1955 (ORSTOM 1955) organising the services of the Office for Scientific and Technical Research Overseas, published in the Official Journal of the French Republic of 21 December 1955, defines the existence of a documentation centre under the direction of the Institute. Article 6 of the decree states that “le Centre de documentation est charge1 d'assurer le depouillement, la conservation et la diffusion de la documentation scientifique et technique se rapportant aux activitfe de 1'O.R.S.T.O.M.”.

Archives have significant value as primary sources for a broad range of academic disciplines. In areas where published texts are lacking, such as Ethiopia, archives elucidate the history and culture of the society and clarify the current situation of that society. However, the meaning and influence such archives provide for the people in the society must be discussed.

This paper aims to discuss new perspectives by combining archival research and anthropology. It focuses on the Kafa culture, the collections of Friedrich Julius Bieber (subsequently referred to as F. J. Bieber), recognised as the foremost authority on ethnological research dealing with Kafa in southwestern Ethiopia, and the significance of establishing archives from collections.

The paper first discusses Kafa and its history. After examining previous Kafa research, it concludes that the Kafa people refer to foreign researchers’ work when explaining their own history and culture.

The UNESCO project for a General History of Africa has been around for some time now. It was launched in 1964 by a resolution of the General Conference of UNESCO, and was essentially a consequence of the accession to the United Nations and to UNESCO of the large number of new African states which secured their independence in the early 1960s. These felt, rightly, that Africa had too long been ‘the dark continent’ of world history, and that it was high time that, the history of its peoples and cultures was placed on the same level of public record as that of the other continents.

The first positive step taken by UNESCO was to call a ‘meeting of experts’ at Abidjan in 1966. This seems to have taken the line that the first thing to be done if the history of Africa were to be written on a major scale was to provide support for research into it.

Last year the University of Texas at Austin celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of what was to become the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, an archive named after a former English professor who had risen rapidly up the university's administrative ranks, using his considerable budgetary authority as Dean, Vice President, Provost, President, and finally Chancellor of the entire fifteen-campus University of Texas system to fulfill his vision of establishing in Austin “a center of cultural compass, a research center to be the Bibliotheque Nationale of the only state that started out as an independent nation”. To get things started, on September 11,1957, in his position as Director of the university's Rare Book Collection, he wrote a formal letter to himself authorising the expenditure of $25,000 from Special Research Collections in Humanities “to purchase books and materials for the use of the humanities faculty in furthering their research”.

This article explains what has led to privatisation of some library services in Nigerian university libraries, with emphasis on the Ahmadu Bello University Library experience. It also discusses the prospects and problems of already privatised services such as photocopying and word processing. Other viable services for privatisation are enumerated.