GENERAL STATEMENT

DEPARTMENT & SERVICES

The English department students and faculty are heavily dependent on library materials. Books on English , American, and world literature are among the categories with the highest circulation in the library. It is the library’s goal to support undergraduate and graduate teaching and research and the general information needs of students, faculty, and administration so far as budgetary constraints allow. Degrees offered in the department are: B.A. MA in English; B.F.A., MF.A. in creative writing; B.A. in comparative literature; B.A. in journalism; and B.A., M.A. for English teacher 7-12. A minor is offered in English, comparative literature, and journalism. The department supports basic courses in composition and English-as-a-second-language. It also houses Core 6 (Landmarks of Literature), which is required of all students. B.A. programs in linguistics and American studies are also supported through the English department’s budget allocation.

FUNDING

Regular funding for library materials is obtained through state-levied monies that are part of the library’s annual budget. State grants and interest on gift funds provide some supplemental funds. The gift funds marked for the purchase of literature include the Gerber fund, the Dennis Spininger fund, and the Harvey fund, which is devoted to the purchase of Irish materials.

GENERAL APPROACH TO MATERIALS SELECTION

A. Acquisitions Strategy:

The primary selection tools used include Choice, Library Journal, Booklist, the New York Times Book Review, publishers catalogs and announcements, and various scholarly journals in the field. Faculty suggestions are also an important source. Most of the material ordered is available from standard publishers or distributors. A small amount of small press material, however, has to be ordered direct. Replacement volumes are frequently obtained through out-of-print book services including Bibliofind, Bookfinder, and the Universal Serials and Book Exchange. Reviewers copies of needed materials are regularly purchased at a 50 per cent discount through a program with the Strand book store. A large desiderata file covering materials published in the last three years is kept to identify possible purchases. Materials that cost over $150 are flagged so that they can be quickly reviewed for times when the library receives large sums of money that have to be spent right away. Expensive web based subscription services are recommended and evaluated with the Associate Librarian for Collection Development for possible purchase by Brooklyn College and/or CUNY. Web resources that are free are evaluated and added to the subject guide for English whenever appropriate.

B. Level of Difficulty

Materials are purchased to support undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate research. Popular fiction is purchased as budgetary constraints permit. Priority is given to serious fiction that is likely to become part of the literature curriculum in the future. Mystery, science fiction, and romances are not generally elected, unless it is in conjunction with a course being offered in one of those sub-genres.

C. Languages: Primarily English.

D. Geographic Areas:

Areas of primary interest are the British Isles and the United States. Significant material from other areas (i.e., Canada, Australia, etc.) will also be included, especially translations from major world authors.

E. Current and Retrospective Purchases:

Current publications are of primary importance and account for most ordering activity. However, with books going out of print more quickly nowadays, searching for o.p. materials has become more common. Fortunately, internet search engines like Bibliofind and Bookfinder make out-of-print book searching easier and more economical. The acquisitions unit is fairly successful in fulfilling most search requests at reasonable costs.

F. Format of Materials Collected/Excluded:

1. Print and non-print materials are ordered in so far as budgetary constraints allow. VHS video and CD-ROM sound recordings are the preferred formats collected. Priority will be given for items required for classroom use. Electronic resources, including subscription based products, will be ordered as needed and as budgetary considerations allow. An effort will be made not to duplicate resources in more than one format, unless the additional costs are justified by heavy use, increased access, or archival considerations. Resources available through CUNY and other consortia will be taken into account as well before committing library funds to expensive items, particularly subscription services.
2. Serials are extremely important to current research in the fields of English and American literature. The latest research is reported in the scholarly journals and indexes, and reference services such as Contemporary Authors provide quick and easy access to a wealth of information. With humanities data bases and electronic journal collections like Project Muse and J-Store becoming ever more prevalent and -- ever more expensive - additional monies will have to be allocated to support these resources. Purchase of serials and electronic resources will be periodically evaluated against the holdings of CUNY libraries and other local libraries and consortia.
3. Doctoral dissertations and talking books are not collected.

G. SUBJECTS COLLECTED: Level

English Literature 4
American Literature 4
Creative Writing 3
English - Teacher Education 3
Folklore 3
Journalism 3
Composition and Grammar 3
Critical Theory 4
World literature in translation 3

H. Reference Policy:

Bibliographies, dictionaries, encyclopedias, handbooks, yearbooks, concordances, indexes and abstracts, digests, and anthologies will be purchased. All formats will be considered including paper, microform, CD-ROM and online.

I. DUPLICATION:

As a result of insufficient book budgets over the past twenty years, the library has adopted a general policy that only one copy of any new title is ordered. Exceptions are made, however, for titles that will be in heavy demand. Duplicates for popular or landmark titles are essential purchases for a library of this size. Core courses like “Landmarks in Literature” require the purchase of several copies for certain titles. The English department’s list of new courses is checked each semester in order to ascertain what seminars will be given. Duplicate copies of books on seminar subjects are ordered when needed. With books going out of print more quickly now, it is important to attempt to evaluate the need for duplicate copies of a title at the time of publication. The library’s plan with the Strand Bookstore allows for duplicates to be purchased at a considerable discount (usually 50 per cent). Replacement copies for stolen or mutilated books are also being ordered more frequently. It is important that the bibliographer receive timely notification of lost or stolen items from the Circulation department, so that students continue to have access to materials that are in heavy demand.

J. Weeding Policy:

Due to time constraints on the bibliographer, weeding usually gets a low priority. Most weeding is a result of damaged books brought to the bibliographer’s attention by the shelvers. The ideal would be to set aside two or three hours a week for weeding, but this would take time away from more pressing activities such as reference desk, library instruction, and collection development. A recent inventory and the re-classification of older Dewey books have resulted in wholesale weeding, mostly of books in condition too Poor to be saved.

K. SELECTION ACTIVITY PROBLEMS

Selection problems for this department are minor. The faculty as a whole are very library minded and suggestions for orders come from a wide variety of faculty members. One problem that arises is what to do about books ordered by English department faculty that fall in other disciplines. With interdisciplinary research becoming more common in the fields of language and literature, this is a more frequent problem than it used to be. It has always been my practice to pass these requests on to bibliographers in the discipline in which the request falls. Other bibliographers handle it differently, believing that the order should be charged to the faculty member’s discipline. This seems less appropriate to me since I believe that the subject bibliographer is the best one available to evaluate a title’s value to the overall collection. More time to p pursue the scholarly journals in the field and, most of all, more money to support the program, are the only other problems to selection activity.

L. COMMENTS

Being a bibliographer for the English department is a real pleasure. The department has a dedicated cadre of scholars and teachers that are interested in research and teaching. A good many of them use the library for their own research and encourage their students to use the library as well Compliance with faculty council’s basic skills requirements has been excellent, and the result of cooperation between the library and English 1 & 2 instructors has resulted in nearly all Brooklyn College students having been exposed to a minimal level of library instruction. Graduate students in English also receive library instruction as part of their graduate research seminar. The next challenge to meet will be to find a way to target English majors for instruction on using the library for literary research.

Updated: July/2001
Prof. William Gargan