Dartmouth College Library
Collection Management & Development Program
Collection Development Policy
REFERENCE (Baker Library)
- COLLECTION AREA
- HISTORY
- GENERAL PURPOSE
- DARTMOUTH COLLEGE PROGRAM
- GENERAL SUBJECT BOUNDARIES
- LANGUAGES
- GEOGRAPHIC AREAS
- TYPES OF MATERIALS COLLECTED
- FORMAT OF MATERIALS COLLECTED
- OTHER RESOURCES AVAILABLE
- OTHER RELATED COLLECTION POLICIES
- CREATION DATE
- REVISION DATE
- LC CLASS
- BIBLIOGRAPHER
- LIST OF URLS
Reference: Social Sciences and Humanities Library (Baker)
The reference collection supports all disciplines served by Baker Library. It is not affiliated with a single academic department of subject area and so does not have a program history in that sense.
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The collection serves the reference needs of a broad spectrum of users that includes the College community, guest borrowers, and patrons not affiliated with the College. It brings together the handbooks, encyclopedias, dictionaries, directories, biographical dictionaries, general and subject-oriented indexes, bibliographies and abstracts, statistical compilations, and aids of various sorts, which are most often needed by both reference staff and patrons. Since patrons represent a wide variety of demands, resources not necessarily related to the curriculum are provided. The subject coverage is primarily of the social sciences and humanities, plus general reference works though, for convenience, the collection includes some basic volumes for subjects otherwise out of scope.
Encompassed in the reference area are four units:
the Jones Microtext Center, the Government Documents Center,the Reference Room itself, and the Map Room . The first three use a common budget for reference items and are really parts of the whole; the Map Room has its own budget and is attached to the Reference Department more as a matter of convenient oversight. The Baker stacks especially is an extension of the reference area; older editions are transferred to it and new material which, under other circumstances would be in the Reference Room but cannot be accommodated in its limited space, are located there initially. To a somewhat lesser degree this reliance on the stacks is true also for the remainder of the classification. The reference collection as a whole has to balance a quick, informational type of use with the support of scholarly research that requires preservation of material historically.
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See 'General Purpose' above.
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In addition to general materials the major subject areas covered are philosophy, psychology, religion, history and its auxiliary sciences (e.g. archives, calendars, inscriptions, heraldry), geography, anthropology, economics, sociology, government and public affairs, law, education, language and literature, recreation, materials dealing with library science, and publishing and auction records. Reliance is, for the most part, on the related libraries to provide reference materials in their areas, while duplication is kept to a minimum in the Baker reference collection.
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English is the primary language of the collection; however, foreign-language publications are acquired as appropriate, e.g. encyclopedias, bibliographies, dictionaries. Publications in infrequently consulted languages are located in the stacks.
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The reference collection is not restricted by any particular geographical constraint.
Some regions are more heavily documented than others as a response to need.
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Both monographic works and serials form the collection. Among the serials are bibliographies, indexes, and abstracts, as well as many yearbooks, encyclopedias, directories, travel guides, college catalogs, telephone directories, biographical dictionaries, statistical compilations.
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Printed books and serials still compose a large part of the collection though an increasing percentage of material is now available in other formats. There has been a significant shift where possible to provide reference material in an online, networked format; provision of mediated online resources, i.e. DIALOG, is also available. CD-ROMs continue to serve as a common format for reference titles. Microfiche is still utilized for certain titles.
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Access to the OCLC and RLIN databases through DCIS provide information about domestic and international library holdings. The "Baker Reference Resources" web page and web search engines, e.g. YAHOO, provide Internet access to an ever growing number and variety of resources from around the world. As a member of the Research Libraries Group Dartmouth has the ability to transmit queries to its members and retrieve material that may not be available otherwise, i.e. reference books. Referral is sometimes made to the collections of the Vermont Law School and to the Howe Library in Hanover, and occasionally to the New Hampshire State Library and Vermont Department of Libraries. These referrals are for books and journals not in our collection as a rule, rather than for reference consultation. Access to both the New Hampshire and Vermont statewide online systems is within our capability. Queries are made to organizations, official agencies, etc. for information not found locally.
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Government Documents - U.S policy
Map and Atlas Collection policy
November 1981 (Virginia L. Close)
April 1989 (Virginia L. Close)
September 1994 (Fran Oscadal)
March 2000 (Fran Oscadal)
A through Z.
Very few titles are collected in Art (N), Music (M).
Francis Oscadal
Baker Reference Resources
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~bakerref/
Government Documents Center
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~govdocs/
Government Documents - U.S. Collection Development Policy
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~cmdc/cdp/usgovdocs.html
Howe Library
http://www.thehowe.org/
Jones Microtext Center
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~bakerref/microtext.html
Map Room
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~maproom/
Map and Atlas Collection Development Policy
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~cmdc/cdp/maps.html
New Hampshire State Library
http://www.state.nh.us/nhsl/index.html
Research Libraries Group
http://www.rlg.org
Vermont Department of Libraries
http://dol.state.vt.us/
Vermont Law School
http://www.vermontlaw.edu/LIBRARY/library.html
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Collection Development
Policy Table of Contents
CMDC Home Page
Last updated June 6, 2000 by: (z)