American Library, Art, and Ethnographic Collections on Africa

Abstract

The American Geographical Society, Broadway at 156th Street, New York, N. Y. 10032, has an African collection of approximately 5,000 volumes, with emphasis on exploration, travel, description, history, and geography, and an estimated 137 linear feet of shelf space of government documents and 100 feet of shelf space for periodicals. The Society holds sets of maps for most African countries as well as numerous single maps for individual countries. The maps date from 1500 to the present time. Subjects covered include geology, soils, population, ethnography, economics, history, and transportation. The approximate number of single maps is 7,000. In addition, the Society has approximately 70 atlases, and a unique catalogue of maps published in periodicals and books is maintained. Area studies at Yale University, New Haven, Conn., embrace Africa, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe. There is also interest in Near Eastern, Indie, and Commonwealth studies. Each area has a curator or adviser to the Library who ensures that all important publications issued in or about his area are secured. Although the Council on African Studies at Yale goes back only to 1957, interest in Africa extends much further into the past. Individual members of the faculty have pursued Africanist researches from the beginnings of such studies. African history and the African collections in the Yale Library owe much to Professor Harry Rudin. Professor G. P. Murdock and associates founded the Cross Cultural Survey at Yale, out of which grew the Human Relations Area Files. (The complete files of both are housed in the Sterling Memorial Library.)