Graduate Program Review for American Civilization
10 April 2000

The extent of the Library collection that supports American Civilization cannot be accurately calculated because the interests and scope of the department are so varied. They overlap and intersect with all areas that are concerned with American society and culture, which is itself increasingly diverse. So, it may be possible to say, for example, that the Library currently subscribes to 64 serials which are specifically identified as supporting this department, but clearly there are scores of others that are acquired primarily on behalf of other disciplines that are relevant to American Civilization. (The drop from 1995 relates primarily to the transfer of titles to the American History fund created in 97/98).Among these interests are: material culture, the history of women, popular culture, the mass media, immigration history, ethnic studies, the history of sexuality, gay/lesbian studies, folklore, history of technology, history of medicine and public health, and history of childhood and child welfare. To these might be added other broad areas such as anthropology, philosophy, religion, literature, and political science. Consequently, the Department benefits from materials purchased on behalf of Afro-American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English, History, History of Medicine, Modern Culture and Media, Music, Philosophy, Political Science, Portuguese-Brazilian Studies, Race and Ethnicity, Religious Studies, Sociology, Theatre Arts, Urban Studies, and Women's Studies. And, in turn, American Civilization acquisitions help support study in these other disciplines. In summary, any department which treats a facet of American life provides material for the interdisciplinary and multicultural interests of American Civilization.

Additionally, many of the holdings in various libraries on campus are heavily and routinely utilized by the Department. For example, current graduate research in many areas will find significant support in the special collections. In particular, the Schirmer Anti-Imperialism Collection will provide resources for work on Philippine-American relations; the Pillar, Aldrich, and Harris Collections for children’s literature; the Rhode Island Women’s Health Collective papers for the contemporary abortion debate; the Sheet Music, Harris, and Anne S. K. Brown Military Collections for images and representations of Asian-Americans; the Rhode Island Medical Society Collection for the public health movement in America; the Eberstadt and Tinker Collections for narratives of the frontier and the American West. Similarly, recent graduate work, notably that on Asian-American women, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, contemporary music, race and gender in American society, has been well supported by both the current and retrospective collections. The Hay has added major microfilm collections, including the papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Margaret Sanger, and has begun digitizing some of its own resources. The Art Slide Library has substantial holdings in all aspects of culture that can be represented visually, both slides and photographs, which can be borrowed for classroom use. Additional slides may be made in-house or purchased from vendors on request. The resources of the Orwig Music Library also provide support for teaching and research. The John Carter Brown Library offers outstanding resources on colonial American history, the story of race in early America, and the construction of our national identity, to name a few. At the same time, many rich collections remain to be explored.

The tables below show the expenditures for the general, and selected special collections, for the past five years:

It should be noted that, as with other interdisciplinary departments, we tend to purchase on these funds only those materials which do not readily fit under a broader subject, such as history or American literature.

For the same period, Special Collections expenditures in selected areas were the following:

Special Collections:
Expenditures	1994/95	1995/96	1996/97	1997/98	1998/99
Broadsides	$18,704	$20,022	$23,118	$18,045	$9,000
Davenport		500	130
Harris	69,941	71,827	69,253	68,247	66,966
John Hay	402	1,066	702	447	495
Lincoln	2,613	2,693	4,622	14,400	12,695
Lovecraft	43,294	50,815	6,587	14,083	13,480
Kirk Alcohol		800		2,703
Katzoff	885	648	20,652	19,667	1,187
Total	$135,839	$148,371	$125,064	$137,592	$103,823

According to the Collection Development Policy Statement, prepared for American Civilization (then a program) in 1984, the desired coverage in most areas of the discipline is divided between STUDY and RESEARCH. A RESEARCH level collection is one which includes the major source materials required for dissertation and independent research, including primary sources and specialized journals. It also includes all important reference works and a wide selection of specialized monographs, as well as the major indexing/abstract services. A STUDY level collection is one which supports undergraduate and graduate course work. The Library has endeavored to maintain its American Civilization collections at RESEARCH or STUDY levels, as indicated in the policy statement. This has meant, for some subjects, raising non-existent or very basic holdings to these levels, but as we said above, these are areas of interest to many other constituencies at Brown and we have been able to spread the cost around. A revision of the policy statement, which will bring it completely up-to-date with current interests of the Department, is in the planning stage.

The strengths and weaknesses of the American Civilization resources relate to the blossoming interests of its faculty and graduate students. Although support for primary topics like race and ethnicity, sexuality, gender, gay/lesbian studies, and popular culture and media has grown, they continue to be areas that need strengthening. One area our survey of graduate students revealed to be a particular weakness was our retrospective holdings, especially turn of the century, in Asian-American studies, an area that some work was done on that clearly has not been sufficient. We must develop a plan in conjunction with faculty and graduate students to identify and acquire the needed material.

Since the last review, the Library has added a vast array of electronic and Web-based resources and vastly improved access to the Internet. These include major indexes like America: History and Life, PoolesPlus (indexing to 19^th C periodicals), and the MLA Bibliography and major full-text databases like Accessible Archives (19^th C newspapers), JSTOR (backruns of major journals), Literature Resource Center, and the LION group, which includes poetry and drama.

While a department with such diverse and non-traditional interests as those of American Civilization might potentially place a great strain on the Library to support it, that has not been the case. This is probably due, chiefly, to two reasons. First, the interest is in American culture, which has always been one of the strengths of our collections, including our special collections. Second, so many of the interests are shared by other departments or programs, which allows us to spread the cost among them. We will continue to make efforts to remedy gaps where they exist, accommodate new areas of interest, and maximize accessibility to Internet resources and the holdings of libraries throughout the world. We want to work with faculty and graduate students to enhance and improve the collections. We encourage their suggestions and efforts to make us aware of the availability of relevant material.

William S. Monroe, Head, Collection Development, Steve L. Thompson, Rosemary Cullen, and Mary-Jo Kline.

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Department of American Civilization
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