Undergraduate Peace Studies Library Collection
As part of the Plowshares Project, the librarians at Manchester, Goshen and Earlham undertook a collection analysis. The results are now available for other librarians who are developing peace studies collections. Hopefully this data will be useful in others’ collection development efforts, as it has in our own. Librarians also found it useful, both for collection analysis and development, to compile and examine peace studies course syllabi and reading lists from each institution. Both the collection analysis and the perusal of syllabi were important steps in the path toward creating a cooperative collection development policy among the three libraries.
The collection analysis project began with a comparative analysis of the book collections of the three principle colleges, Goshen, Manchester and Earlham, and a reference group of exclusively liberal arts colleges who offered a major in peace studies: Juniata, Haverford, Guilford, Eastern Mennonite University and Bethel. The results are displayed in lists of titles held by 5 libraries (PDF), titles held by 6 libraries (PDF), titles held by 7 libraries (PDF), and titles held by 8 and 9 libraries (PDF). You will note that while only eight institutions took part, one of the lists overlaps between eight or nine libraries. The ninth library is the separate Mennonite Historical Library at Goshen College. See introductory information on the collection analysis page for more details of the process.
A final aspect of the collection analysis efforts involved inventorying and compiling results of peace studies periodicals access at the three schools—both print and electronic formats. Included in the list for comparison purposes are titles from Katz's Magazines for Libraries (2004) “Peace” section. Equipped with Ariel Inter-Library Loan technology, and partnering already in consortial database acquisition, the three libraries did not pursue further collaboration for periodical acquisition, beyond agreeing to check--before canceling a periodical-- whether it is the last one available in Indiana libraries.
- Collection Analysis: Peace Studies Commonly Held Titles
- Plowshares List of Peace Studies Periodicals
