The Historic Maps of Africa collection includes 78 maps and dates from circa 1631 to 1973. Geographic content of individual maps varies from topographical information, boundaries of colonial territories, and ethnic groups, among other topics. While several depict the continent of Africa in its entirety, many focus on specific countries and geographic regions. There are a particularly large number of maps depicting the West African Coast.

The collection dates from 1678 to circa 2005 and consists of 58 maps, engravings, posters, original documents and photographs related to East, Central and South Africa. There is a special focus on Ethiopia (Abyssinia), Tanzania and the Sudan, and the collection's subjects include East African geography, history, political affairs and African leaders, as well as European (German, Italian, British) and American colonization, exploration and warfare in Africa.

The Historic Engravings collection is comprised of 154 pages of engravings, dating from 1747 to circa 1905. The engravings depict subject matter related to Africa and Africans.

Manuscript and printed textual material, photographic prints and negatives, slides, audio tapes, film, original and reproduction artwork, maps, scrapbooks, and historical and natural artifacts related to the history of African exploration and natural history, dating primarily from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Includes correspondence, drafts of publications, diaries, account books, ephemera, posters, newsclippings, biographies, memoirs, portraits, and the former personal property of selected explorers, big game hunters, missionaries, pioneers, and naturalists in Africa.

Includes a separate index (ca. 24 pages).

This accession consists of field notes of Grace E. Pickford (1902-1986), a zoologist and professor at Albertus Magnus College, Yale University, and Hiram College. These field notes document her focus on worms while in South Africa as a traveling scholar of Newnham College, Cambridge. These records document specimens in the National Museum ...

This collection, which dates from 1949-1970, contains approximately 2513 color 35mm slides depicting the people, environment and cultures of more than 30 African countries. Images include landscapes, agriculture and marketplace scenes. Countries represented include Algeria, Angola, Benin, Burundi, Rwanda, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritius, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Zaire), Cote d'Ivoire and Zambia. Also included in this collection are 117 postcards from West and Central Africa and approximately 17 maps of and 10 guide books for East and West Africa. A small amount of miscellaneous ephemera rounds out the collection.

This record unit consists entirely of oversized materials, mostly lunar surface maps and a few maps of Earth's surface, including Egypt, taken from space. For other records concerning lunar nomenclature, the lunar surface, and space maps of Egypt, see the papers of Farouk El-Baz, Record Unit 7415.

This accession consists of field notes of Raymond B. Manning (1934-2000), curator in the National Museum of Natural History, Department of Invertebrate Zoology. Manning's specialty was the study of Decapoda. Many of these materials document research in Tunisia. Materials include field data sheets, notes, correspondence, postcards, maps, microf...

The Priscilla Reining papers, 1916-2007, primarily document the professional life of Reining, a social anthropologist and Africanist who worked for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) from 1974 to 1989. Her area of specialty was sub-Saharan Africa, specializing in desertification, land tenure, land use, kinship, population, fertility, and HIV/AIDS. During the 1970s, she pioneered the use of satellite imagery in conjunction with ethnographic data. She is also known for her ground-breaking research in the late 1980s that showed that uncircumcised men were more susceptible to contracting HIV/AIDS than circumcised men. The collection contains correspondence, field research, research files, writings, day planners, teaching files, student files, photographs, maps, sound recordings, and electronic records. Reining's research files, particularly on the Red Lake Ojibwa, the Haya, HIV/AIDS, and satellite imagery, form a significant portion of the collection.