Collection Development Policy : Anthropology

GENERAL PURPOSE

Anthropology is an unusually broad discipline that embraces biological, historical, and cross-cultural studies. Physical anthropologists examine the interwoven biological and cultural processes through which our species was created in the past and continues to change in the present. Cultural anthropologists focus on those factors, ranging from values through politics to ecology, by which the behavior of modem people can be described and explained. Archaeologists, in turn, extend this study into the remote past, investigating culture change processes that span centuries and millennia. What unites this disparate field is a commitment to holistic studies of culture. Such holism is founded in the premise that human behavior is largely a product of culture which, in turn, can only be fully understood as the conjunction of social, physical, ideological, political, and economic processes operating on and through individuals over variable lengths of time.

GENERAL SUBJECT BOUNDARIES

Needless to say, such diversity poses challenges for developing a coherent collection policy. Supporting teaching and student research in anthropology requires library resources as diverse as the field and its practitioners. Cultural anthropological, physical anthropological, and archaeological volumes and journals must all be represented. In addition, since our courses cover all major world areas save Australia and the Pacific, works dealing with Africa, Asia, Europe (prehistory), and North, Middle, and South America must be available for students to consult. Varied topic areas must also be addressed in the collections, some of the more salient themes addressed in our courses including: alcohol use, ethnicity, gender roles, linguistics, medicine, race, religion, sexuality, and all manner of theory. Given the multifarious nature of anthropology, our collection goals are to: 1. stay current, and 2. maintain a balance among subfields, geographic regions, and essential topics. Given the size of our budget, and the mind-numbing rate at which new books and journals appear, this is no mean feat. Anthropology also resides at the core of several interdisciplinary programs and majors, including African and African American Studies, Asian Studies, Environmental Studies, International Studies, Neuroscience, and Spanish Studies. As such, our courses, and the library collections that support them, must be structured to sustain student work in fields related to, but outside, anthropology.

Unfortunately for the purposes of this document, far more is included than excluded from the list. We must collect aggressively, albeit selectively, in all of the subdisciplines, world areas, and topics outlined above if we are to encourage independent student investigations leading to oral presentations and term papers within the various courses we teach. Some economies can be achieved through deselection, though these decisions are rarely easy and there are no fixed criteria that can be universally employed in deciding what resources to continue and which ones to delete. Such selections must be made on a case-by-case basis and always involve sacrificing a good resource for what we hope is a better one.

TYPES OF MATERIALS COLLECTED

The primary types of material needed to fill out the anthropology collections include: monographs; journals; government documents; serials (such as the Handbook of North American Indians, an ongoing publication project of the Smithsonian Institution); and all abstracts and databases relevant to anthropology (though anthropology is not well represented in most social science databases and indices). Ideally, we would like access to the Human Relations Area File on microfiche or CD as this is an important source of cross-cultural comparative data that students could use in research projects.

FORMAT OF MATERIALS COLLECTED

We need to intensively collect items in just about all media; i.e., printed books and journals, microforms, and electronic formats. Most of us employ films as an integral part of our courses, thus requiring substantial additions to audiovisual holdings. Slides are also important parts of archaeological classes. Most of the transparencies currently in use are the property of the individuals offering the relevant courses. Expanded use of this audiovisual aid can only come about through institutional purchase and curating of slides (e.g., from such vendors as Pictures of Record). Maps of various world areas are also crucial teaching aids.

LANGUAGES

Most of the material, regardless of its format, should be in English to facilitate use by the majority of students. We do need, however, to collect some relevant sources in Spanish if only because Spanish studies majors taking anthropology courses to complete their course of study need to draw on references in that language for term papers and other research projects. Further, some information on Latin America is only available in Spanish language publications.

GEOGRAPHICAL AREAS

As noted above, we systematically collect materials dealing with Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe (prehistory) in order to support courses we currently teach. The only region excluded from the list is Oceania, including Australia.

CHRONOLOGICAL GUIDELINES

You can see this one coming; since our courses deal with time periods stretching from before the appearance of hominids to the present, our chronological guidelines are very broad.

SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND MANUSCRIPTS

The Catherwood prints of prehispanic Maya monuments, curated in Special collections, are rare and valuable resources for student and faculty research. Similarly, the 19th century maps of Ohio stored in the archives give the distribution of prehistoric earthworks that have long since succumbed to plow and bulldozer. These are important collections for anthropology.

OTHER RESOURCES AVAILABLE

CONSORT and OhioLINK are crucial to student research efforts as they are to course preparation and investigations conducted by the faculty.

CREATION DATE AND REVISION HISTORY

This policy was created during May, 1999 by Department Chair Edward Schortman with considerable help from the department's library liaison Priscilla McIntosh.