The net has become a widely used means of information and communication within the academic community and beyond. After the glimpse into German-speaking universities with Swahili studies, and the fascinating Kamusi project hosted by Yale University in our last number, we will plunge fully into life this time. There are several Tanzanian and Kenyan newspapers on the net now, most of them offered for free, some requiring subscription. One can find out about radio programs, the time they are being broadcast. Most of the radio stations offer to listen to the program in RealAudio. Students from East-Africa in the USA or in Canada maintain their own sites and offer information on their countries and culture, and many links to other sites related to Swahili language and culture. Johannes Fabian and Vincent de Rooij of the University of Amsterdam are in the process of setting up an internet journal on popular culture in Africa, Swahili texts being a special area of interest.

Everybody knows the Intemet by now, most of us have had a glimpse into it or use it frequently. Without doubt it offers many possibilities, like sending long documents within a very short time and without any material carrier from one computer to another or to many others. The World Wide Web (WWW) is an important means of finding information on nearly everything, the web sites are often designed attractively and many offer multi-medial information at the same time. Yet, after a time of euphoria about the possibilities people became aware that the web is very vast and one can spend hours and hours looking for something, without finding it. Roger Pfister with his `Internet for Africanists and others interests in Africa` (see the review in this issue), was a first and most useful attempt to help everybody interested in African studies to find information faster.

Scientists make use of the Internet for quite some time now. In the humanities it has only recently become accepted more widely. The Swiss Society of African Studies reacted sceptically when Roger Pfister first introduced his project. In. his preface, Beat Sottas, the society`s president admits that their committee was `wondering about such a project`but that finally the `initiative turned out to be highly significant at the time being.