Developing and Managing the Brown University Library Collections
Collection Policies by Subject:  American Civilization

• Library Liaisons:
  Rosemary Cullen@brown.edu
• Departmental Library Representative (DLR): 
  Barton_St_Armand@brown.edu

• Description of the Academic Program | American Civilization Department Home Page
  The goal of the American Civiliation Department, as stated in its initial 1945 catalog statement, is "to provide the student with a more comprehensive and better unified knowledge of American Civilization . . . than would be possible within the limits of a single department." This rigorous interdisciplinary approach still informs the program's goal of reaching a better understanding of the diverse cultures, groups, and experiences that make up American Civilization.
  
  The faculty of American Civilization work in the fields of popular culture, history of technology and material culture, museum studies, ethnic studies, African American literature, environmental writers, medical history, women's history, and social and intellectual history. The department encourages students to take courses not only with its own faculty, but with faculty throughout the University. American Civilization students now work with professors in the departments and programs of: Anthropology, Africana Studies, History of Art, Modern Culture and Media, English, History, Biology, Political Science, and Music, among others.
  
  Public Humanities Initiative: The Department of American Civilization has undertaken a new initiative in Public Humanities to recognize the work done by Brown faculty and students in this field and to train undergraduate and graduate students to present the humanities to a variety of audiences in a variety of forms. The Initiative's work is centered in the John Nicholas Brown Center for the Study of American Civilization (JNBC) , housed in the historic Nightingale-Brown house on the Brown campus,.
  
  Undergraduate concentrations and graduate programs are offered. The graduate students study in three programs: a two-semester M.A. in American Studies; a four-semester M.A. in Public Humanities; and a Ph.D. program. Most students and faculty in American Civilization have an interest in issues of race, ethnicity, class, and gender.
  Database of Honors, Masters, and Ph.D Theses

• Overview of the Collection
  Many areas of the Library's general collections support research and study in American Civilization. Collections in American literature, history, performance studies, art, philosophy and religion, anthropology, sociology and demographics, government and politics, the history of science and technology, gender, ethnic, and minority studies all have a place in the study of American Civilization. An assessment of these areas is thus an assessment of the Library's historic collection building as a whole. Areas such as literature and the history of science, owing partially to holdings in Special Collections, are strong. The history of popular culture (outside Special Collections), and performance studies (with the exception of music), tend to be less strong. History collections have been built along traditional lines, and do not always reflect current needs for sources outside the mainstream. Current purchasing reflects the teaching and research interests of the faculty, as well as collection-maintenance in an area generally of historic strength in the Library.
  
  Serials: There are currently over 70 serial subscriptions targeted specifically at American Civilization, representing over 50 different titles and over 20 multiple formats (online resources or microfilms). The serials are in areas such as American ethnic studies, general American cultural history and important resources for local history, sports, labor history, gay and lesbian issues, popular culture, and material culture, to name only a few. These serials are supplemented by those acquired for Race and Ethnicity, Africana Studies, Gender Studies, History, History of Art and Architecture, and other related departments and programs.
  
  Electronic Resources: Full-text databases are providing good coverage of American literature and primary sources in history, at least of the mainstream. Since the Library's print collections are strong in these areas, the databases essentially provide full-text and cross-text searching of many of the Library's own collections.
  
  Access to full-text of secondary sources is more problematic and scattered, although the Library subscribes to many of value to American Civilization. America: History and Life is primarily a database of citations and abstracts, with links to such electronic journal providers as JSTOR and Project Muse. The more general databases, such as Academic Search Premier must be used to insure broader coverage. And databases with a specific focus, such as Ethnic NewsWatch and the Chicano Database are vital complements to the more general sources.
  
  The electronic journals provided through JSTOR and Project Muse are key for American Civilization in that they provide full-text access to some of the most important scholarly journals. At present, including these two providers, the Library has access to over 200 electronic journals of specific interest to American studies; many hundreds more in related categories are available.
  
  See: Electronic Resources by Subject: American Civilization
  See: Electronic Journals by Subject: American and U. S. History
  See: Library Resource Guide for: American Civilization
  
  Audiovisual Resources: There is increasing interest throughout the Library and within American Civilization in particular in acquiring audiovisual materials. Issues with the technological infrastructure, as well as funding concerns, have slowed collection building in this area. This is an area that must be targeted for improvement in the short term. Specific areas of interest are in non-mainstream documentaries and narratives that illuminate aspects of American culture, as well as classic mainstream films.

  See Library support statement for Graduate Program Review for American Civilization
  See Library support for External Cluster Review for American Civilization

• General Collecting Guidelines
  American Civilization's interest in virtually every aspect of American culture, coupled with its "rigorous interdisciplinary approach," determines the type and scope of collections that are developed by the Library on its behalf. Such a range of teaching and research interests means that the Library provides at least representative examples, and in many cases, extensive collections, of material in the popular genres and subjects, as well as the canonical and the scholarly.
  
  Specifically, collecting endeavors have focused on acquiring resources for the study and understanding of class, gender, sexuality, identity, and the diverse groups and experiences within our society. There is particular interest in Asian-Americans and Latinos, but immigration, diaspora, and the ethnic/minority experience in general are also important subjects. Other areas of interest include folklore, popular culture and media, the history of technology and material culture, museum studies, medical history, women's history, social and intellectual history, religion, and urban life.
  
  Interest is not confined to the geographic United States. The effects of globalization and the impact on, and interaction with, other cultures also fall within the Department's purview. There are clear connections and overlap with courses in a variety of other disciplines, including Africana Studies, Anthropology, Modern Culture and Media, English, Biology, History, Political Science,Race and Ethnicity, and Music; the Department benefits from material acquired by the Library for these subject areas as well. The Library seeks to respond to the variety of needs by systematic development of collections in the appropriate areas, as well as through timely response to individually expressed requirements for particular resources.
  
  Collecting levels in the past have been set at the study/research level for most areas. A research level collection includes major source materials required for dissertation and independent research, including primary sources, specialized journals, important reference works, major indexing/abstracts services and a wide selection of specialized monographs. A study level collection supports undergraduate and graduate course work, but may not hold the specialized primary sources and journals necessary for graduate and faculty research. Given the broad, intedisciplinary nature of American Civilization's interests, building research collections in a wide variety of areas of both historic and contemporary interest, will continue to be a challenge.
  

• Specific Collecting Guidelines
  • Language: English; Spanish
  • Chronological Span: Discovery and exploration to the present
  • Imprint Date:Discovery and exploration to the present; most acquisitions are of current imprints
  • Geographical Range: United States, but there is interest in world cultures that affect or are affected by American culture.
  • Types of Material Included: Books, journals, and some popular periodicals, newspapers and audiovisual materials; electronic resources. Excluded: Textbooks and other instruction-based introductory works.
    
• Special Collections
  

  Special Collections in the John Hay Library is one of the country's most distinguished repositories of rare books and special collections. Its collections of printed books, manuscripts and archives, and graphic materials, numbering well over 2,500,000 items, provide a wealth of resources in support of graduate and undergraduate instruction and faculty research in American Civilization

  Notable collections include the Harris Collection of American Poetry and Plays, at 250,000 volumes the largest of its kind in existence, the McLellan Lincoln Collection and the John Hay Collection, archives of modern American literary presses, and notable author collections including H. P. Lovecraft, and H. D. Thoreau, among many others.

  Collections relating to modern American culture include extensive holdings of broadsides, sheet music, pulp fiction, comics, entertainment memorabilia, popular publishing, children's literature,pageants, wit and humor, and film and television scripts. Gorham Archives document American style over a period of a century, and provide much information on the operation of a major local manufacturer over the same period.

  Historical collections include materials on Afro-American soldiers in the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection, the American whaling industry in the Morse Whaling Collection, Rhode Island history in the Rider Collection, the literature of American western exploration in the Ames collection.

  Archival holdings include the papers of a number of important literary presses and publishers, including Burning Deck, Conjunctions, and Greenhouse. In addition, the acquisition of the St. Martin's Press archive is a landmark development in the documenting contemporary literary publishing.

  The collections of gay and lesbian literature have been significantly enriched by the acquisition of the James Jackson Library, the John Preston Papers, and the collection of scarce and ephemeral gay pulp fiction. Contemporary culture collections acquired in recent years include the very extensive Michael J. Ciaraldi Collection of comics and graphic novels, one of the largest such collections in an American library, and by the Tierney collection of posters, tickets, programs, and other entertainment memorabilia. The Hall-Hoag Collection is a vast repository of information, much of it in ephemeral form, on extremist organizations of every political and cultural stripe over the past half century.

  Other relevant collections of note include the Schirmer Collection on Anti-Imperialism, the Dupee Mexican History Collection, and the Kirk Collection of Alcoholism and Alcoholics Anonymous, the J. Saunders Redding Collection, and Barton St. Armand's papers relating to Emily Dickinson and H. P. Lovecraft.
  
  See Collections A to Z for more complete documentation on subject based holdings.
  See the Center for Digital Initiatives for the Library's own digitized holdings, including finding aids to manuscript and archival collections.

• Breakdown of Subjects and Collecting Levels

  New Titles Cataloged

• Related Collections and Other Resources
  The collections at the John Carter Brown Library are an important resource for the study of American Civilization. The Library houses "an internationally renowned, constantly growing collection of primary historical sources pertaining to the Americas, both North and South, before ca. 1825".
  
  The Rhode Island Historical Society Library collections include early Rhode Island imprints and an important New England genealogical collection. It also includes microforms of Rhode Island historic newspapers, the Rhode Island Cemeteries database, city directories, and Rhode Island census information, and a wealth of other printed, manuscript, and graphic sources on Rhode Island history.
  
  The Rhode Island School of Design Library collections in American art and decorative arts are a valuable resource for Brown faculty and students.
  
  Brown is a member of the Boston Library Consortium and the Consortium of Rhode Island Academic and Research Libraries. Access, both on site, and through interlibrary loan, to the holdings of member institutions is provided for Brown users. Through the Borrow Direct service, there is access to the holdings of Ivy League institutions, and the World Cat and Illiad interlibrary loan services provide world-wide access to holdings of books and articles.
  See: Borrowing Options
  
  As a resource for the study of American Civilization, we are fortunate to be so close to the American Antiquarian Society. The AAS "collections document the life of America's people from the colonial era through the Civil War and Reconstruction. Collections include books, pamphlets, newspapers, periodicals, broadsides, manuscripts, music, graphic arts, and local histories". Its collections closely parallel Brown University Library's own in many areas.

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