During the three-yearly congress of the ICOM in Stavanger (Norway, 1995), CIDOC members elected a new board of directors. I was attributed the task of being chief editor of their Bulletin. It was and still remains a challenge for me to celebrate my fifteen years of membership of CIDOC in this way.

I know when writing this first editorial just how much commitment my predecessor Hendrik Jarl Hansen had and the efforts he made. The same can be said of the complete staff and editorial board of the Nationalmuseet in Denmark and the CHIN in Canada, all of whom have been able to surprise the members each year with another yet exciting issue of the Bulletin. Over the last six years it has been given a new gestalt both in its contents and in its form and for this I would also like to express my appreciation.

This issue has been published thanks to the help of the Getty Information Institute. I wish, in the name of the new board of directors, to express my sincerest thanks for your trust and cooperation.

This CIDOC Bulletin answers a real need of its members for information. The reports from the various work-groups within our committee are a regular feature in the bulletin and provide an idea of one year's work in the various areas of museum documentation. The present issue is to be published and circulated just before the yearly meeting of the CIDOC in Nairobi in Kenya. It seemed only proper that for our (first) visit to the African continent and to the cradle of humanity, we should provide an overview of the various methods of documentation in museums which sometimes lie at such great distances from each other. Given the important role that the CIDOC is playing in ICOM's AFRICOM project, this issue could not be without some written contributions on the matter. Two further articles on the illicit trafficking of cultural objects further focus our attention on the present state of affairs.