Dartmouth College Library
Collection Management & Development Program
Collection Development Policy
MATHEMATICS
- 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.
Mathematics
Mathematics has been part of the educational experience
at Dartmouth College from very early on. The first
Professor of Mathematics was Bezaleel Woodward who
was promoted from Tutor in 1782. For the next 128 years
only 12 more professors of mathematics were appointed,
and Arthur Sherburne Hardy who authored a book on quaternions
was the only significant member of that group. In 1909
Charles Nelson Haskins was elected Assistant Professor
of Mathematics. He was the first mathematician to come
to Dartmouth with an earned Ph.D. Haskins had a tremendous
influence on the mathematics collection in the library.
He built the collection from one of the poorest in
New England to one of the best surpassed only by Harvard,
Yale, and Brown. He especially liked buying collected
works of the masters. He donated to the library his
english translation of Riemann's great paper of 1861
on the flow of heat (Gesammelte mathematische Werke.
Nachtrage. pp. 391-423). Haskins also donated his personal
library containing a collection of reprints and papers.
John Wesley Young was hired as the Head of the Department
of Mathematics in 1911. He came with a national reputation
based on his advanced text, Fundamental Concepts of
Algebra and Geometry, and his collaboration with Oswald
Veblen on the text, Projective Geometry. Young built
the Department of Mathematics into one of the strongest
departments in the College, and he served a term as
the president of the Mathematics Association of America.
During World War II, the Department of Mathematics
taught courses specifically for the Naval V 12 unit.
John G. Kemeny came to Dartmouth College in 1953. As
department chair he pioneered courses based on problem
solving and stressed the use of reference materials
(i.e. library resources). He built the department into
a national model and developed Dartmouth's first doctoral
program in mathematics. The Department has remained
an outstanding one with increasing coordination with
Dartmouth Schools of Engineering, Business, and Medicine,
and a broading of its curriculum with the joint major
of "Mathematics and Social Sciences" and
the "Mathematics Across the Curriculum" project.
The mathematics collection mirrors the heritage of
the Mathematics Department and its faculty.
The mathematics collection has been developed over the
years to support primarily a program of research and
graduate studies with emphasis towards pure mathematics.
The collection aims at providing research materials
for faculty, graduate students and visiting scholars
at one of the oldest graduate programs in the College
of Arts and Sciences at Dartmouth. The collection also
supports the needs of the teaching faculty at the undergraduate
level. Though the collection has been developed more
towards pure mathematics, works in applied mathematics
are also acquired. This collection overlaps strongly
with the collections in physics and computer science.
The collection supports the needs of other disciplines,
both for teaching and research, such as engineering,
physics, astronomy, computer science, chemistry, economics
and psychology. The collection has grown to reflect
new areas of research in dynamical and complex systems,
ergodic theory, number theory, nonlinear systems, mathematical
biology and wavelets.
About 90 percent of all Dartmouth undergraduates take
at least one course offered by the
Mathematics Department
during their college careers.
Four programs of study are offered to undergraduates
who wish to major in mathematics. Students can concentrate
on pure mathematics, applied mathematics, general mathematics,
or mathematics recommended by the National Council
of Teachers of Mathematics. Honors and advanced placement
are available for those planning advanced degrees in
pure mathematics. A joint BA/MA degree is possible
for those sufficiently well advanced in their studies
upon entrance to the college. The Department of Mathematics
offers a Ph.D degree in mathematics. Though an M.A.
is obtained during this work towards the doctorate
the program is not designed for those wishing just
a M.A. degree. The doctoral program requires certification
in algebra, analysis, topology, and one other area.
Recent topics for Ph.D. research include algebra, analysis,
applied mathematics, combinatorics, geometry, logic,
number theory, probability, set theory and topology.
Competency in two foreign languages is also required
before completion of the Ph.D. degree. The
research
interests
of the faculty and graduate students are centered around
algebra, topology, combinatorics, differential geometry,
functional analysis, probability, logic and set theory,
number theory, and wavelets.
Weekly mathematical colloquia
and an annual Kemeny lecture are given to further research
and education
A project called
Mathematics Across the Curriculum
is an attempt to integrate the study of mathematics
with courses in physics, chemistry, geology, biology,
social science, economics, art, music, philosophy,
computer science, architecture, medicine, engineering,
and literature. 22 new interdisciplinary courses will
be added and 10 existing courses will be revised to
be more interdisciplinary. This is a five year project
which will greatly influence the demand for materials
in mathematics. Another important ongoing project is
called Chance.
The aim of Chance is to make students more informed
and critical readers of current news that uses probability
and statistics.
The collection includes the QA section of the Library
of Congress classification schedules with the exception
of the QA801-QA939 sections (analytic mechanics) and
the QA75-QA76.9 sections (computer science). The mathematics
collection is located in the
Cook Mathematics Library.
Older material classed in either the NM section of
the old Dartmouth classification system or the Dewey
Classification System are housed in the
Storage Library.
This comprises about 10-15% of the mathematics collection.
Materials related to statistics are found in
Baker
and Cook Libraries. Statistics under this policy is
mathematical statistics (QA276-QA281) and not special
applications to statistics which can be found in disciplines
like Psychology or Education (H's and L's of the LC
classification system).
English is the main language collected. Materials in
foreign languages are well represented with a predominance
of German, French, and Russian language. Italian societies
publications are regularly received as well as those
of Japanese origin. No language is excluded. Rather
the level and quality of the publication is the determinant
in the selection process.
No geographical areas are excluded. Like languages,
the nature of the publication rather than its geographical
origin determines its selection. Eastern European countries
are well represented in the collection as well as Australia
and Russia.
Both the serials and the monographic collections are
at an advanced research level. Societies publications
are well represented. Seminars in mathematics and lecture
notes from many institutions and societies are actively
collected from various sources. With the extensive
publication program of the "Lecture Notes in Mathematics"
by Springer-Verlag, and "Progress in Mathematics"
by Birkhauser, these materials are now acquired more
systematically through commercial publishers. Periodicals
represent a large part of the collection. Proceedings
of conferences and symposia are acquired regularly
as are important doctoral dissertations. Indexes and
abstracts are not being collected locally. Internet
access to the main electronic index in mathematics
(MathSciNet)
is available, but starting with 1997 Dartmouth no longer
collects the print equivalent, Mathematical Reviews,
but instead pays for a connection to the American Mathematics
Society's Web site and their electronic database.
Printed materials comprise most of the collection. Microforms
are present in the collection because of the publication
format of some societies and also to complete some
journal collections. Publishers are releasing supplementary
materials to many monographs and journals in electronic
form; this electronic material has been a mixture of
CD-Rom, diskette, and webpage. All these formats are
now represented in the mathematics collection. Electronic
journals released via the World Wide Web is a format
that continues to grow in importance, and the mathematics
collection includes this format.
The
Special Collections Library has a collection of
mathematical theses prepared by German university students,1869-1890,
donated by Professor Charles N. Haskins. Copies of
undergraduate and graduate theses prepared by Dartmouth
students are collected by both Cook Library and Special
Collections. In addition monographs authored or edited
by John Wesley Young, John G. Kemeny, and other mathematics
faculty of Dartmouth College are collected by Special
Collections. A few important rare books reside in Special
Collections: Euclides' Elementa geometriae (1482),
Stifelio's Arithmetica integra (1544), and Galileo's
Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche, intorno a due
nuoue scienze, attenenti alla mecanica & i movimenti
locali...Con una appendice del centro di grauita d'alcuni
solidi (1638).
The Center for Mathematics Education
at Dartmouth College falls under the Mathematics Across
the Curriculum project. The Center collects and houses
all materials generated by Mathematics Across the Curriculum
courses as well as standards, curriculum, and articles
relevant to the integration of mathematics.
Kresge/Cook Libraries maintains a selective and organised
list of internet urls for mathematics resources found
outside of Dartmouth College called
Mathematics Beyond Dartmouth.
Use of Online Computer Library Center (OCLC)
and the Research Libraries Group (RLG)
for interlibrary loan provides access to national and
international mathematics collections in academic and
private libraries. The
American Mathematical Society
(AMS) , Canada's Institute
For Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI)
and Linda Hall Library
provide document delivery and further alternatives
for hard to find documents. STN
and Dialog
are available for literature searching.
Astronomy
Biology
Computer Science
Economics
Engineering
Philosophy
Physics
September 1982 (Susan George)
August 1991 (Sheila Gorman)
March 1997 (Mark Mounts)
QA
Mark Mounts
American Mathematics Society
[http://www.ams.org/publications/mathdoc.html]
Astronomy Collection Policy
[http://www.dartmouth.edu/~cmdc/cdp/astronomy.html]
Baker Library
[http://www.dartmouth.edu/~baker/baker.html]
Biology Collection Policy
[http://www.dartmouth.edu/~cmdc/cdp/biology.html]
Center for Mathematics Education
[http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/]
Chance
[http://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/]
Computer Science Collection Policy
[http://www.dartmouth.edu/~cmdc/cdp/compsci.html]
Cook Mathematics Library
[http://www.dartmouth.edu/~krescook/cookhome/]
Dialog
[http://www.dialog.com/]
Economics Collection Policy
[http://www.dartmouth.edu/~cmdc/cdp/economics.html]
Engineering Collection Policy
[http://www.dartmouth.edu/~cmdc/cdp/engineering.html]
Feldberg Library
[http://www.dartmouth.edu/~feldberg/]
Institute For Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI)
[http://www.cisti.nrc.ca/cisti/cisti.html]
Kresge Physical Sciences Library
[http://www.dartmouth.edu/~krescook/home.html]
Linda Hall Library
[http://www.lhl.lib.mo.us/]
Mathematics Across the Curriculum
[http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/]
Mathematics Beyond Dartmouth
[http://www.dartmouth.edu/~krescook/qnetlinks/mathlinks.html]
Mathematics Collection Policy
[http://www.dartmouth.edu/~cmdc/cdp/math.html]
Mathematics Department
[http://www.math.dartmouth.edu/]
MathSciNet
[http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/]
Online Computer Library Center (OCLC)
[http://www.oclc.org/]
Philosophy Collection Policy
[http://www.dartmouth.edu/~cmdc/cdp/philosophy.html]
Physics Collection Policy
[http://www.dartmouth.edu/~cmdc/cdp/physics.html]
Research Libraries Group (RLG)
[http://eureka.rlg.org/gateway.html]
Research Interests in Math Dept
[http://emmy.dartmouth.edu/projects/individual-projects.html]
Special Collections
[http://www.dartmouth.edu/~speccoll/]
STN
[http://www.cas.org/stn.html]
Storage Library
[http://www.dartmouth.edu/~library/libcirc/Storagehome.html]
Weekly Mathematical Colloquia and Annual Kemeny Lecture
[http://www.math.dartmouth.edu/~colloq/]
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Policy Table of Contents
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Last updated July 27, 2000 by:
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