In the summer 1963 issue of Africana Newsletter (pp. 38–39), I reported on the then sad state of public records in the Gambia. Since that time the Gambian government has acted to preserve and catalogue the materials which prior to independence had been so carelessly handled. This reconstruction was made possible by a substantial gift by Nigeria on the occasion of independence. With these funds a trained Library Records Officer, J. M. Smyth, was brought from the Colonial Office to Gambia. From November 1965 to February 1966 he planned and did the preliminary work necessary for a functioning archive. Before he left Gambia the bulk of collecting, sorting, and cataloguing had been done and the framework for future growth had been created (see Smyth’s Report, Sessional no. 10, 1966).