Dartmouth College Library
Collection Management & Development Program
Collection Development Policy
COMPUTER SCIENCE
- COLLECTION AREA
- HISTORY
- GENERAL PURPOSE
- DARTMOUTH COLLEGE PROGRAM
- GENERAL SUBJECT BOUNDARIES
- LANGUAGES
- GEOGRAPHIC AREAS
- TYPES OF MATERIALS COLLECTED
- FORMAT OF MATERIALS COLLECTED
- SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND MANUSCRIPTS
- OTHER RESOURCES AVAILABLE
- OTHER RELATED COLLECTION POLICIES
- CREATION DATE
- REVISION DATE
- LC CLASS
- BIBLIOGRAPHER
- LIST OF URLS
- COLLECTING INTENSITY CHART is located on a separate page.
Computer Science
Dartmouth College has a long history with computer science
beginning in 1887 when Harry Bates Th'79 designed an
electrical punch-card machine. In the 1960's Dartmouth
pioneered the use of the time-sharing operating system,
and two professors, John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz, developed
the BASIC programming language. In 1968 a Ph.D for
a dissertation about programming language implementation
was granted by the Mathematics Department. Courses
were offered in computer science through the Mathematics
Department and Thayer School of Engineering, but not
until 1979 was there an undergraduate major. Ph.D granting
authority was granted to the Mathematics Department
and Thayer School, but the Ph.D program in Computer
Science was not approved until 1986. Between 1980 to
1988 M.S. degrees were granted in the Computer and
Information Science program which combined studies
in information systems and business. From 1983 until
1994 computer science was part of the Mathematics Department.
But in 1994 an independent Department of Computer Science
was established assuming responsibility for the undergraduate
and graduate programs.
The collection in computer science primarily supports
the research activities and instructional programs
of the faculty and students in the Department of Computer
Science. The collection supports the Thayer School
of Engineering's program in Computational Science,
and faculty and students in the Computer Engineering
Program will rely on the collection. The computer science
collection is also a resource for faculty and students
in other disciplines which might use computers or computational
methods in their research. The mathematics collection
is an indispensable complement to research in computer
science.
The Department of Computer Science
offers an undergraduate major in computer science.
Subject area coverage for this degree includes data
structures, software design, compilers, programming
languages, algorithms, theory of computation, architecture,
operating systems, networks, digital electronics, information
systems, graphics, artificial intelligence, and numerical
analysis. All students must complete a honor thesis
or a culminating experience, both requiring independent
research. Students may follow curriculums designed
to prepare them for graduate study in computer science,
or for modified majors with mathematics and engineering,
or any other discipline that uses computational methods.
The Department offers Masters and Doctorate degrees.
The Doctorate degree requires comprehensive knowledge
of algorithms, computer architecture, operating systems,
programming languages, and a fifth area chosen from
theory of computation, artificial intelligence, or
numerical analysis. A
bibliography of current (1991- ) Ph.d dissertations is available
as is a description
of active research projects. Other
research activities include a
colloquium series ,the
Dartmouth Institute for Advanced Graduate Studies,
the Dartmouth
Experimental Visualization Laboratory,
and the Wavelet Warriors.
The Department of
Engineering Sciences at Thayer School provides a
Bachelor of Arts (A.B.) degree. The A.B. undergraduate
degree can be modified with a major in computer science
requiring four classes from the following subjects
to be studied: software design, computer architecture,
algorithms, information systems, graphics, artificial
intelligence, operating systems, programming languages,
and networks. Undergraduate courses in engineering
use computers in the analysis of electrical networks,
solid mechanics and Very Large Scale Integration Systems.
Through the Computational Science Program, Computer
Science plays a major role in the M.S. and Ph.D degrees
offered at Thayer.
Laboratories for numerical methods, digital
electronics, VLSI, graphics, and networked multimedia
information systems have been established.
Current research at Thayer using computer science
is described on Thayers webpage for research.
The M.D.-Ph.D. Program in
Computational Biology is committed to the
development and application of
new, path-breaking computational tools to explore problems at the frontiers
of biology and medicine. This unique
program brings together scientists in computer science,
mathematics, and engineering with those in biology and
medicine. Emphasis is on the development of computational
tools and technologies needed to analyze proteins, nucleic
acids, and their interactions in complex biological systems.
The Computational Biology program is equally strong in
medical imaging, image processing, and scientific
computation.
Previous collection development policies established
computer science as a component of a larger collection
comprising other subject areas like computer engineering,
management information systems, biomedical applications
of computers and information science. Theoretical aspects
of computing and software systems were housed in the
Cook Mathematics Library.
The Feldberg Library
(Business and Engineering Library) collected hardware systems and operations research
materials. The divisions were not rigid so many subjects are represented in both locations.
The current policy is focusing on Computer Science.
Computer Engineering, Business Data Processing, Management
Applications (Management Information Systems), Biomedical
Applications, and Telecommunications will not be included.
Most of the Computer Science collection in the Cook
Mathematics Library classes in Q325-Q342 and QA75-QA76
areas of the Library of Congress classification schedule.
Materials related to artificial intelligence, pattern
recognition, and multimedia (including the internet
and the world wide web) are interdisciplinary and are
collected by Cook,
Baker, Dana and Feldberg. Computer
architecture, computer software design, neural computing,
computer networks, graphics, and operating systems
are important to both computer science and computer
engineering so both Cook and Feldberg will have collections
in these areas. Computer science examines the mathematical/theoretical
(QA) aspects of these topics, and not so much the engineering
(TK) aspects.
Other collections will also include computer science
material, mainly concerned with applications of computers
to individual disciplines. Biomedical computing and
computers in the humanities are two examples.
English is the principle collection language though
no material is excluded because of language.
To date most of the material comes from Europe, North
America, Japan and Russia. No geographical areas are
excluded. Like languages, the nature of the publication
rather than its geographical origin determines its
selection.
Principally, monographs and serials are collected. National
and international conference proceedings and journals
are an important part of this collection. Technical
reports have been collected in the past but most technical
reports are now available freely over the internet.
Providing
pointers to these technical report archives
will replace the physical volume except for
technical
reports produced at Dartmouth College where a print
copy is collected.
Bibliographies and dissertations are selectively collected.
Dissertations produced at Dartmouth College are comprehensively
collected. Indexes and abstracts are accessible through
online vendors like Dialog and STN, but since 1994
collecting indexes and abstracts has been in flux with
a move toward accessing rather than collecting.
The collection includes print, microform and electronic
media including CD-ROM, online and World Wide Web based
materials. For electronic materials, access is available
through stand alone machines,
Dartmouth College's network
and the internet.
The papers of George R. Stibitz in Special Collections
are very pertinent to research in computer science.
His research areas were computing devices, electronic
music, and computer models for biomedical and physiological
systems. The notebooks and published materials of John
G. Kemeny are also important additions to the computer
science collection. He created the BASIC computer language
and was president of Dartmouth College. A small collection
of papers of Ernest G. Andrews could be of interest
to computer scientists. His work included computer
design at Western Electric Company. Technical reports
produced at Dartmouth College and Ph.D and Masters
dissertations of Dartmouth graduate students are a
rich resource and copies reside in
Special Collections.
Use of Online Computer Library Center
(OCLC) and the Research Libraries Group
(RLG) for interlibrary loan provides access to national and
international computer science collections in academic
and private libraries. Use of
Canada's Institute For
Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI)
and Linda Hall Library
provides a rush service for documents and further alternatives
for hard to find documents. The Computer Science Department
of Dartmouth College maintains a WWW archive of their
technical reports and provides links to other WWW
sites for technical reports. Kresge/Cook Libraries
is actively collecting
computer science internet resources. Collecting in this
context means providing in an organised fashion url's
to appropriate materials with the additional step of
insuring that the url's remain valid. The
Center for
Biological and Biomedical Computing
provides computational biology resources.
STN
and Dialog are used to
provide access to databases
and indexes not collected by the library system.
Mathematics
Engineering
Business Administration
Library Science
June 1981 (Jim Fries & Sheila Gorman)
August 1991 (Karen Sluzenski & Sheila Gorman)
February 1997 (Mark Mounts)
Q295-Q390, QA75-QA76.95 , QA267-QA268.5, QA402, T385,
TA1630-TA1650, TK5102, TK5105, TK7882-TK7895
Mark Mounts
Baker Library
[http://www.dartmouth.edu/~baker/baker.html]
Bibliography of Current Ph.d Dissertations
[http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/recent_phds.html]
Business Administration
[http://www.dartmouth.edu/~cmdc/cdp/busadmin.html]
Center for Biological and Biomedical Computing
[http://www.dartmouth.edu/artsci/bio/cbbc/]
CISTI
[http://www.cisti.nrc.ca/cisti/cisti.html]
CS Active Research Projects
[http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/research/]
CS Colloquium Series
[http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/colloquia/]
Computer Science Beyond Dartmouth
[http://www.dartmouth.edu/~krescook/qnetlinks/cslinks.html]
Cook Mathematics Library
[http://www.dartmouth.edu/~krescook/cookhome/]
Dana Biomedical Library
[http://www.dartmouth.edu/~biomed/]
Dartmouth Experimental Visualization Laboratory
[http://devlab.dartmouth.edu/]
Dartmouth Institute for Advanced Graduate Studies
[http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/dags/]
Department of Computer Science
[http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/]
Department of Engineering Sciences at Thayer School
[http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/thayer/]
Dialog
[http://www.dialog.com/]
Engineering Collection Policy
[http://www.dartmouth.edu/~cmdc/cdp/engineering.html]
Feldberg Library
[http://www.dartmouth.edu/~feldberg/]
Laboratories for Numerical Methods
[http://www-nml.dartmouth.edu/nml/nml.html]
Library Science
[http://www.dartmouth.edu/~cmdc/cdp/libsci.html]
Linda Hall Library
[http://www.lhl.lib.mo.us/]
Mathematics Collection Policy
[http://www.dartmouth.edu/~cmdc/cdp/math.html]
OCLC
[http://www.oclc.org/]
Pointers to Technical Reports
[http://www.dartmouth.edu/~krescook/QAnetlinks/CSlinks.html#pre]
Program in Computational Biology
[http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~mdphd/]
RLG
[http://eureka.rlg.org/gateway.html]
Special Collections
[http://www.dartmouth.edu/~speccoll/]
STN
[http://www.cas.org/stn.html]
Technical Reports in CS at Dartmouth College
[http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/reports/]
Thayers Research Using Computer Science
[http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/thayer/research/]
Wavelet Warriors
[http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~gdavis/warriors.html]
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Collection Development
Policy Table of Contents
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Last updated July 27, 2000 by:
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