The connection between the Sudan and Durham (England) may not be immediately obvious. Indeed, one might wonder why the largest collection of original research material on the Sudan outside the Sudan, apart from the Public Record Office, London, happens to be in Durham rather than elsewhere. In 1957, the year after the Sudan became independent and some years before the Oxford Colonial Records Project and St. Antony's Middle East Private Papers collection were set up, Durham had the three vital ingredients for successful archival enterprise: knowledge and enthusiasm (Mr. R.L. Hill, lecturer in Modern Near Eastern History at Durham University, formerly of Sudan Government Railways); premises and academic support (Professor T.W. Thacker, Director of the School of Oriental Studies, Durham University); and a sponsor in good standing with potential donors, with a Durham interest (Mr. K.D.D. Henderson, formerly of the Sudan Political Service and Secretary of the Spalding Trust).

Originally named the Colonial Society, and also known variously in the stages of its history as the Royal Colonial Institute (1870-1928) and the Royal Empire Society (1928-1958), the Royal Commonwealth Society was founded in 1868 as ‘a place of meeting for all gentlemen connected with the Colonies and British India’ and as a centre for the study of colonial affairs. A library was one of the major objects of its founders and photographic material was early seen as an integral part of a collection attempting to present a comprehensive survey of the concerns of empire. The Proceedings of the Royal Colonial Institute for 1896, and for several succeeding years, invited ‘donations of photographs of the various Colonies … from Fellows and others’, and this brief appeal seems to have met with considerable success on an individual level, with many accessions dating from around this period.

Many libraries in the United Kingdom collect publications which have a bearing on Third World studies. In preparing a relatively short paper on resources for Third World studies it has been necessary to be highly selective in order to give prominence to those collections which are concerned primarily with modern studies, ie recent history and political and economic development of countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America; collections which are intended for in-depth study and research which serve a clientele involved in some way in the affairs of those countries. Such collections are mostly located in government or other official organisations, in universities or other research bodies. In the interest of brevity commercial and industrial libraries are not included, nor are the national and para-national libraries: the British Library, the other copyright libraries, the British Library of Political and Economic Science at the London School of Economics.

In June of this year, the Royal Geographical Society will be sending a team led by John Walford, head of modern records at the Public Record Office, to examine the condition of the Zanzibar Government Archives and to make recommendations for their future care. Mr. Walford carried out a similar UNESCO sponsored survey of the Kenya National Archives last year. This year he will be looking at documents which not only push back by several decades the period for which records are available for East Africa as a whole but which present different technical problems. The records themselves constitute a small collection, totalling about a thousand linear feet, but their size bears little relation to their importance.

Zanzibar, with the rest of the East African littoral, was part of a declining Arab empire when, toward the close of the fifteenth century, the Portuguese began their conquest of the area.

It was very flattering to read Mr. Olden's article in African Research and Documentation 30 with so many references to myself. This is to acknowledge that my “ego is being served” (vide first line, p. 29). May I be allowed a few brief comments, if only to acknowledge how gratifying it has been to see that the amateur approach still survives (it hardly flourishes). In my two essays on the subject, and now in some of the ‘personal communications’ in Mr. Olden's essay there are various nuances and veiled sarcasms that a future commentator may find curious (or miss).

One peculiarity about the amateur bibliographers listed in Olden's article is that three of us, Williams, Mortimer and myself, are all professional geographers. I suspect that all our methods of collection were “boy-scout operations” (Mortimer).