For the past 16 years, the Institute of Africa of the Russian Academy of Sciences has been publishing books every year with a large print on the cover.: "Proceedings of the Institute of Africa". I don't think that's quite accurate. On the next page after the cover, this name is already typed in a rather small font. And here is the true title of the book: "Bibliography of books, pamphlets and articles on Africa published in the CIS in...". Instead of an ellipsis, insert any year from 1998 to 2014 (the first issue of the handbook was published under the heading "Africa: Judgments and Facts"). And a little smaller: "Reference and bibliographic series". Compiled by A. N. Ivanov. The reference book is certainly necessary and useful. However, I would like to hope that the next volumes will be published under the title that exactly corresponds to the content of the publication. Looking through these annual issues, for example, over the past 9 years, from volume 11 to volume 19, one cannot help but come to the conclusion that the science of African studies itself has made a huge step forward during this time. If in 2006, which is devoted to the 11th volume of publications, it listed 1196 articles and books with brief characteristics (publisher, number of pages, etc.), then in volume 18 more than twice as much-2607. And the circulation of the publication has grown significantly during this time - from 70 to 500 copies. Each volume of the series consists of two sections - " Countries and regions "and"General problems". "Countries and regions" are listed alphabetically. The General Issues section of volume 18 contains 35 subsections: "History and Archeology", "Economics", "Counter-terrorism", "Religion", "Gender Issues", "Africa and the UN", etc. In principle, the list of problems has not changed much in recent years. On the one hand, this is a good thing: from the very beginning, the compilers quite accurately identified a set of topics and problems in this list. On the other ... Read more