Dartmouth College Library
Collection Management & Development Program
Collection Development Policy
HISTORY
- COLLECTION AREA
- GENERAL PURPOSE
- DARTMOUTH COLLEGE PROGRAM
- GENERAL SUBJECT BOUNDARIES
- LANGUAGES
- GEOGRAPHIC AREAS
- TYPES OF MATERIALS COLLECTED
- FORMAT OF MATERIALS COLLECTED
- OTHER RESOURCES AVAILABLE
- CREATION DATE
- REVISION DATE
- LC CLASS
- BIBLIOGRAPHER
- COLLECTING INTENSITY CHART is located on a separate page.
History
To provide library resources for undergraduate instruction and student and faculty research. The main users of the history collection are faculty and students of the History Department. However, since members of many other departments need historical sources and since the history faculty have a wide variety of interests and stress inter-disciplinary approaches, collecting needs to be done on a broadly comprehensive and even basis.
Dartmouth College offers an undergraduate major in history. Students have the choice of specializing in the history of the United States, Great Britain, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, Asia, or Africa. The history faculty has one or more specialists in each of these areas as well as the history of science, Native American history, African American history and women's history. Seminars, which rely heavily on library holdings, are required of majors, and an honors program, which requires a thesis, is offered.
The History Department offers a broad range of traditional courses which reflect the core of the subject collection. In addition to traditional national history, the program and collection at Dartmouth includes the history of women, African-American history, Native American history, and the history of science. The subject is not limited by language or geography. There is some overlap in subject matter with the disciplines of fine arts, government, economics, anthropology, sociology, and the sciences.
Although foreign languages are not excluded, the main language for historical materials is English. Selected scholarly works, some primary sources, and important scholarly journals are collected in French, Spanish, German, and to a lesser degree, in Italian, and Russian. Western language material, especially English, is emphasized for non-Western regions. For the major exception of Chinese, see the collection policy statement for Asian Studies. A very limited amount of material is collected in Japanese.
There are no geographical limits for the history collection although heavier emphasis is given to the U.S. and Great Britain. The history of New Hampshire and the White Mountains is Dartmouth's most comprehensive history collection. This local regional material receives broad usage by visiting researchers as well the faculty and staff of Dartmouth. Also within the U.S., there is a somewhat greater depth in the history of New England, the Middle Atlantic states, the old South, and the Middle West east of the Mississippi than on the area west of the Mississippi. Canada and Western Europe occupy a second tier of emphasis while Latin America, Russia, China, Japan, Africa, the Middle East , and India are on a third level.
The time span covered is from the beginning of recorded history to the present, with the exclusion of Ancient Mediterranean history, which is covered by the Classics policy statement. No time period is given more emphasis than others, although because more is published on the modern era (ca. 1450- ) a larger amount of the budget is expended on that period.
Printed material and microforms are collected systematically. There is an extensive collection of periodicals and newspapers, as well as monographs in paper format, and there is also a large collection of pamphlets, newspapers, other periodicals, domestic and foreign documents, and unpublished materials in microform. The Dartmouth College Library has been a depository for U.S. Government documents since 1884, and the Library also collects Vermont, New Hampshire, and United Nations documents. There is a very small collection of videotapes. We depend on interlibrary loan for dissertations. The purchase of dissertations is only made in special situations such as a request by a faculty member. These are decided on case by case basis. Textbook and juvenile material are not collected
Paper and microformat account for almost all of the history resources. There are some videotapes and recordings but these formats are not systematically acquired. Although there are no historical materials in electronic formats yet they will be given very serious consideration as they appear. The lack of work stations may slow our development in the near future, but appropriate electronic sources will be considered for use in other College settings.
The Dartmouth Special Collections Library contains a substantial amount of historical material. Rare books, original manuscripts, broadsides, local oral history, and other unpublished materials, which are not in microform, are the responsibility of Special Collections and are covered by its own collection statement. Special Collections holdings on the history of New Hampshire, Vermont, and Dartmouth College are extensive, and there is a significant collection on polar exploration.
The most important outside source of information is Interlibrary Loan which has gained in significance with the advent of access to major research collections through national, and even international, online networks. This is supplement by the collections of the New Hampshire and Vermont Historical Societies, the New England Historic and Genealogical Society, The New Hampshire Records and Archives, the Vermont State Archives, regional historical museums such as the Peabody Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, and regional town archives and historical societies.
October 1985
December 1992
C, D, E, F
William C. McEwen
Top of Page
Collection Development
Policy Table of Contents
CMDC Home Page
Last updated January 29, 1999 by: CMDC@Dartmouth.Edu (jdh)