  The current status of carbon stars in the Local Group and beyond, is
discussed. Although many carbon stars and late M-stars have been identified in
Local Group galaxies, a coherent understanding in terms of the chemical
evolution- and star formation history of a galaxy is still largely lacking.
Although a few major new surveys have been carried out over the last three
years, the observational data is still incomplete in many respects: 1) for some
of the larger galaxies only a small fraction in area has been surveyed so far,
2) surveys have been conducted using different techniques, and some of the
older surveys are incomplete in bolometric magnitude, 3) only for some galaxies
is there information about the late M-star population, or it is sometimes
unpublished even when the data is available, 4) not all galaxies in the Local
Group have been surveyed, 5) especially for some of the older work insufficient
data is available to determine bolometric magnitudes. I have correlated carbon
star positions with the 2MASS 2nd incremental data release to obtain $JHK$, and
bolometric magnitudes, to remedy this situation in some cases.
  From the existing observations one can derive the following: the formation of
carbon stars is both a function of metallicity and star-formation history. In
galaxies with a similar star formation history, there will be relatively more
carbon stars formed in the system with the lower metallicity. On the other
hand, the scarcity of AGB type carbon stars in some galaxies with the lowest
metallicity indicates that these systems have had a low, if any, star-formation
over the last few Gyrs.
