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Juliet Flesch, Collection Management Librarian, 1996
1.1 To evaluate the History collections of the
University of Melbourne Library.
1.2 To identify areas of the collections which require strengthening.
1.3 To lay the foundation for a collection management policy for the discipline
in the University of Melbourne Library.
The collections were assessed through list checking and interviews with 23 academic staff in the Departments of Classics and Archaeology and History. The interviews ranged from 45 to 90 minutes in length and were conducted on a one-to-one basis rather than in groups, although individuals were occasionally speaking on behalf of colleagues with similar interests who could not be present.
A shelf-scan was conducted only cursorily for 4 reasons:
The 1988 report by Constance C. Gould for the Program for Research Information Management of the Research Libraries Group, Inc., Information needs in the humanities: an assessment, has the following comments to make:
At the University of Melbourne, "history" encompasses a time-span from prehistory to what happened yesterday, and, with varying degrees of intensity, covers the globe. The languages nominated by the experts as those in which material central to their research is published are: Afrikaans, Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Malay, Polish, Russian, Spanish and Turkish.
Virtually anything is grist to the history mill, and higher-degree theses completed or in progress concern Regency romance fiction, circuses and sideshows, popular bourgeois art, Anglo-Australian cricket, the sexual politics of women's clothing and the history of gay liberation, all relying on material beyond the traditional monograph, pamphlet or scholarly journal. To quote Constance Gould again:
Historians are broadening their scope of inquiry into new areas and consequently tapping a staggering variety of published and unpublished information resources...Historians' advocacy of a broader definition of culture leads them to seek out magazines - professional, ethnic, literary and "pulp"; folklore - blues music, anecdotes and jokes; advertisements from magazines, radio and television; and political documents - 19th century broadsides and the literature of dissent from the 1960s.
While the primary vehicle for the dissemination of research in history is still the printed monograph or scholarly journal article historians require access to all of the above as well as, not instead of, traditional library material.
Many of the experts interviewed stressed that although they foresaw a growing place for resources available electronically, at present the internet is used principally as a means of fast informal exchange of views rather than as a source of substantial data files. Exceptions to this general rule were:
Academics (as well as librarians) are uncertain about the archival status of electronic journals and of cd-roms and this has implications for a discipline heavily dependent on older material. Considerable stress was also laid by experts on the continuing importance of large locally-held monograph collections. While access through facsimile document delivery is seen as useful for the transmission of journal articles, historians continue to require large numbers of hefty tomes which they can use over protracted periods of time and which it is impractical to borrow from another institution.
Since the interests of historians are so wide-spread, it should come as no surprise to find the collection they use is scattered far and wide. Several noted that the present scatter is detrimental to the utility of the resources. Inadequate shelving (books mis-shelved or missing), absent staff (in the Research collection and the Microforms area) and the plethora of Branches (historians especially use the Giblin, Law and Architecture Libraries in addition to the Baillieu and the ERC) were all mentioned as problems.
The hours of opening of the Libraries are deemed inadequate, especially as many of them rely on weekends and the summer period to undertake research in the Microform collection.
The Conspectus Division History and Auxiliary Sciences includes areas of central interest to the departments of History and Classics and Archaeology. Related departments are, of course, those of History and Philosophy of Science, Fine Arts and Cinema Studies and Geography and Environmental Studies. Interviews were conducted with staff from the first two departments only. History of art, science, technology and medicine are treated within their own Conspectus divisions while the interests of the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies now focus less on the travel accounts which fall within the History and Auxiliary Sciences Conspectus division than on material falling in the social sciences divisions.
The two Departments teach and research in:
Ideally, the Library would support these with level 4 collections. In practice, collections achieve this level only in relatively sharply focussed areas, the focus being by period or by geographical coverage.
Historians rely pretty much equally on monographs and serials. While they require, as noted above, immediate access to large bodies of monograph literature, interviews with experts revealed a high unsatisfied demand for journals not held in The University of Melbourne Library. This may be a function of the relatively high level of monograph funding (which the Department of History enjoys as the result of a rich targeted bequest which cannot be diverted to serials) but the inability to acquire a reasonable selection of new journals or new subscriptions in areas in which the two Departments' interests are developing is seen as a severe restriction.
The lack of standing orders to important series (archaeological reports, monographs in series etc.) is also inhibiting. Most of The University of Melbourne Library's standing orders to monographs in series were cancelled in 1979 and title-by-title ordering is regarded as a poor and unreliable substitute, which places undue demands on academic staff time.
As far as monographs are concerned, however, the historians are in the fortunate position of being able to afford much of what they want, and enjoy the security of several specific and substantial bequests which cannot be affected by University or government funds reallocation. Because of this, regardless of the current size of the collection in particular areas, it has been possible to describe the Acquisition level as the same as the Goal level in most cases.
Another factor which has greatly affected the state of the Australian history collections is a longstanding Approval Plan for Australiana, which in theory covers all material of tertiary-level interest published in Australia. In practice, publications of learned societies and university departments have been erratically covered by this Plan and those of government departments and instrumentalities are formally excluded, with their coverage left to selection by academic staff and, since the restructure in 1996 of the Collection Management Division, to Information Services staff.
Academic staff, notably those working in Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islander history, Aboriginal archaeology and sports history, believe that significant publications, from small presses (histories of clubs, etc.,) were not being acquired. There is evidence to support this, and the reassignment of selection responsibilities combined with the demise of the printed Australian National Bibliography will make it hard to improve the situation.
British and American academic books in English are very extensively covered by an Approval Plan for the output "of interest to the Faculty of Arts" of some 200 mainstream publishers. The Plan has been in place since 1983 and is to a large extent responsible for the presence of material in the collection on modern South African, Middle Eastern and Spanish history published before these topics were formally established within the Department of History.
The University of Melbourne Library has been fortunate in attracting very substantial gifts of money and in kind as well as a number of important bequests.
In addition, many large collections have been received from present and former staff and members of the general community. Members of Melbourne's Jewish community in particular have supported the history programme with important private libraries.
The University of Melbourne Archives was described in a recent review as "a national asset unrivalled in Australia" of a "depth without peer in the English-speaking world". Comprising some 11 kilometres of records, it is especially strong in trade union and business documents, with mining company records providing a notable feature.
The archives of Meanjin, Scripsi and McPhee Gribble are held in their entirety, providing a unique insight into the intellectual history of Australia in the 20th century.
This Australiana collection, which is arranged by broad subject, covers many fields (children's literature, poetry, theology) which would be classed outside the History and auxiliary sciences Conspectus division, but includes some 10,000 items in the areas of Aborigines, aviation, crime, politics, militaria and Pacific and New Guinea history, which relate directly to the teaching and research interests of the Department of History.
In 1986, the Moonee Valley Regional Library Service was obliged to dispose of the collection of books relating to the two World Wars which it had collected as part of the Victorian Public Libraries' Subject Specialisation Scheme under which nominated libraries undertook to retain one copy of titles discarded to them by other public libraries.
The World Wars Collection includes some 100 titles relating the First World War and 700 titles relating to the Second World War Not held elsewhere in The University of Melbourne Library. They are mostly popular accounts of the kind which have only recently begun to be valued by academic historians and form an important enhancement of the Library's strong representation of scholarly works in the area.
The basis of the Villiers Collection is some 3,000 titles acquired from the estate of the Australian author and seaman, Alan Villiers (1903-1982). It is particularly strong in biography and memoirs, naval warfare and tactics to 1880, naval architecture and seamanship and navigation.
The Raab Collection is devoted to political thought of the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries with particular reference to Machiavelli and his influence. It numbers some 200 titles and is added to periodically. The fact that it is a closed segregated collection militates against its value to undergraduates, so it has over the years become more sharply focussed on rare books.
The Cambridge Collection covers material relating to the University, Town and County of Cambridge. It numbers about 1,500 titles, including long runs of the Calendar and other serial titles, ephemera, histories of colleges, clubs and societies and memoirs and reminiscences. It continues to be enlarged and is supported by an important collection of some 400 pictures, some of which are displayed in the Graduate Studies Centre. The books date from 1568 to 1996.
The Map Collection in the ERC contains some 140,000 maps and 5,000 atlases and gazetteers. The special strengths are in representations of the Melbourne region, Victoria and Australia. There are city plans for most Australian cities, as well as many European and Southeast Asian ones.
The collection includes between 3,000 and 4,000 original examples of maps dating from the 16th to the 19th centuries as well as many facsimiles of such works. Of special importance are the Walker Collection (over 140 maps of the Middle East and Asia Minor from between the 16th and 18th centuries) and maps relating to Australia and Oceania and England.
This is a growth area of the collection, largely because the historians use much fictional material which would not itself be classed in the History and auxiliary sciences Conspectus division. It is not the wish of the historians to create a research- level collection so much as a collection which will support research. It supports current programmes in History and cinema.
Within the general Rare Book Collection, there are some 3,000 titles classified in the History and auxiliary sciences Conspectus division. This figure has been established by visual scan, attempting to allow for multivolume works, extremely thin pamphlets shelved in folders, etc., and may well be a significant under-estimate.
The Australiana Rare Books Collection contains some 2,000 works in the History and auxiliary sciences Conspectus division, including a complete run of the Sands & McDougall directories for Melbourne.
In all areas of History and the auxiliary sciences, the microform holdings either constitute the research depth of the collection or greatly enhance it.
The Library has over the last 20 years acquired in microform archives and manuscripts, government documents and newspapers, rare books and ephemera from virtually every country in the world.
Identifying lists which could tell us something useful about the collection was difficult. Although a few general lists were checked, it was felt that overall a more valuable assessment of the collection would be obtained by checking a large number of highly-specialised lists. For the most part, these consisted of bibliographies recommended by academic staff from texts used by them, lists of publications received by scholarly journals and some review journals themselves. Since the collection is extensive and being actively developed, checking was concentrated in areas identified by the experts and the surveyor as weak rather than on areas of known strength. A list of tools and the results of searching is attached. In all, 7,568 titles were checked, of which the library holds 3,650 or 48.23%.
As noted in 2 above, shelf-scanning presented problems, many of which were highlighted by the expert users during the Conspectus interview. A straight count of the shelf-list seemed as valid as walking the miles. The tens of thousands of relevant monographs held in microform should also not be over-looked.
Examination of the shelves does however reveal the immense impact of the Pitt and Foster Bequests, most notably in the Research Collection, where the appearance of rows of new titles shows in sharp distinction to the drabber appearance of the surrounding shelves.
23 members of the academic staff were interviewed between 28 May and 2 August, 3 from the Department of Classics and Archaeology and the remainder from the Department of History. A questionnaire was filled out during the interview (attached as Appendix 3), allowing the academic staff to assist in assigning Conspectus levels to the collection. Specific recommendations appear below.
This collection requires enhancement. The coverage of works cited in American reference books annual has declined from 60% in 1986-1990 to 20% in 1996. Selection of reference titles was, until the mid-1980s, undertaken by the Reader Education Librarian in an annual survey.
As well as the poor coverage of general reference works, a lack of specialised, regional dictionaries and encyclopedias was noted.
The Library has strong holdings both in print and in electronic format, with the latter steadily assuming ascendancy in this field at least. Some of the electronic titles held are:
The monograph collection in DDC 900-999 includes some 150,000 titles in hard copy. The microform collection also contains tens of thousands of individual titles, comparatively few of which are individually catalogued although printed catalogues, indexes and finding aids are acquired if available. It should also be noted that the very rich collections in the history of the Reformation and the French Revolution are largely classsified in the 200s and 300s.
There are about 500 currently received titles in the 900-999 classification. This does not, of course, give any indication of the number of journals in the collection of interest to historians, since the classification excludes even such obvious sources as newspapers and titles such as Publishing history, which is classified elsewhere.
Two lists of serials - List of title abbreviations in Halton's Classical scholarship and Journal abbreviations in Urban history - were checked, and the Library has current holdings of 41.5% of the titles in Halton and 45.9% of those in Urban history, which casts a very wide net in terms of subject scope and language of publication.
The Library's inability to fund new serial titles was raised as a constant problem by the experts. The Library has undertaken a succession of serials cancellations since 1978 and academic staff believe all titles being acquired to be essential. What is lacking is the new titles in new fields of academic inquiry which complement without superseding the established ones.
The microform collection is also rich in serial titles, with such projects as the Early English newspapers, Missionary periodicals from the China mainland and other missionary collections, The underground newspaper collection and other collections of "alternative" serials, etc., complementing the collection in hard copy.
As already noted, historians display a variable amount of interest in and enthusiasm for material available through the World Wide Web. The Index of resources for historians, maintained by the Department of History at the University of Kansas and the Lehrstuhl für Ältere Deutsche Literaturwissenschaft der Universität Regensburg, however, lists some 1,700 sites of possible interest, including several Australian ones, which suggests that local use of electronic resources will grow rapidly, without lessening the demand for traditional materials.
The Library is a depository for higher degree theses of The University of Melbourne.
Interest within the Department is focussed on North Africa (especially Morocco from 1600 and Libya 1600-1800), South Africa from 1948 and comparative colonial history. The last is seen as a growth area and compares South Africa, Canada and Australia. Two experts were interviewed.
North Africa forms the research interest of a newly-appointed staff member. Acquisition to support his research has been rudimentary and the collection has not specifically been assessed at this early stage. The Library has made some bulk purchases of older titles and a few microform purchases, focussed on the needs of the new appointee.
South Africa has been the focus of acquisition for some 7 or 8 years, through a programme in the Department of Political Science, supported by a generous fixed-term gift. Both the monograph and serials collections are assessed at 2a with a goal level of 3a. The results of list-checking support this assessment. The serials collection is a special problem, with Parliamentary debates, the Rand daily mail, the Cape times all required from 1900 onwards. Material is required in both English and Afrikaans. The microform collection for South African material is rated at 3a with a goal level of 3b. The current level of acquisition should enable this goal to be reached, although it is likely that a greater volume of material will become available in the near future.
The focus of academic interest has shifted slightly with changes in academic staff. The three experts rated the current collection as between levels 3a and 4 and the goal levels between 3b and 4. The acquisition level (with the exception of new serials) appear consonant with this assessment, especially when the microform holdings are taken into account. The absence of a number of US newspapers is a severe inhibition to both undergraduate and post-graduate work, with titles (current and retrospective) required from Chicago, New York, Washington, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
The microform collection, including large runs of archives, maps, serials, government reports and monographs is rated at 4.
Interest in these fields is spread across two Departments and the three experts interviewed agreed on the patchy nature of the monograph collection, rating it between 2b and 3a, with a goal level of 3b or 4. The serials collection is even patchier, partly offset by long runs in the Department of Classics and Archaeology Library which are obtained in exchange for the Department's publication Abr-Nahrain. These holdings, of course, do not form part of The University of Melbourne Library collection and are not accessible through the University Library catalogue. The acquisition level appears consonant with this assessment, particularly given the uneven coverage of monographs in series.
Assessment of this collection is vitiated by the fact that material in Western languages only was covered. Obviously, research in Chinese, Indonesian and Japanese history is based largely on material in Chinese, Indonesian and Japanese. The three experts consulted assessed the current collection between 2a and 3b, with particular note of poor holdings in Indonesian and Dutch. The serials collection is inadequate across the whole area. The acquisition level appears consonant with these assessments.
The assessment of the five experts consulted varied sharply on the current collection level, with assessments ranging from 2b to 4. There was a widespread perception that while older material and the output of Australian commercial presses were well-covered as a result of retrospective acquisition (eg the McLaren Collection) and the Australiana Approval Plan, coverage of the output of Australian university departments and of small publishers (eg of histories of individual sporting clubs) was poor.
This assessment was borne out in the list checking. Selection of this material was, until this year, undertaken by the Collection Management Division. The devolution of selection responsibilities and the cessation of publication of the printed Australian national bibliography will make the problem hard to remedy unless academic staff can be relied upon to spend time on selection.
The comment, first heard five years ago, that holdings of material relating to Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islander history are especially poor, was reiterated, although it must be noted that persistent efforts by the Collection Management Division have so far failed to elicit any instances of specific titles which should be acquired.
Several newspaper backruns and current serials were identified as lacking.
The academic experts rejected the proposition that the holdings of the State Library of Victoria and special libraries such as the MCG Library could fill the perceived gaps, alleging difficulties in using the material and pointing out that individual institutions are supposed to cater for 90% of their undergraduate demand.
The University Archives are of enormous importance in this field and the experts stressed the need for more and better listings of that collection.
The two experts assessed the monograph collection at 3b, with a goal level of 4. The serials collection was rated between 2b and 3a, with a goal level also of 4. The microform collection once again provided greater depth and was rated at level 4.
The current acquisition level of monographs will be sufficient to raise the collection level, while the serials situation remains a problem.
The two experts assessed the monograph collection at 3b overall and at 4 for the French Revolution. The goal level was rated at level 4. The serials collection rated 3a for English and 2b for French titles, with a goal level of 4. Once again, it was the microform collection which was seen as ensuring the research importance of the collection as a whole, especially when combined with impressive, though patchy holdings of early material in hard copy. The acquisition level is lower than these assessments would suggest and the weakness (with less than a 50% holding of the list checked) occurs mainly in the earlier period (before 1789). See also, therefore, Medieval History.
The two experts (covering different periods of German history) assessed the monograph collection at level 3b with a goal level of 4. Material published during the 1960s and 1970s is lacking. Monographic series are lacking. The reference collection, notably in the field of regional dictionaries, is poor. Assessment of the serials collection varied from 2a to 3a, with a goal level of 3b for LOTE titles and 4 for English-language. The microform collection was rated at 3a, with a goal level of 4. The importance of material in English, such as the Foreign Office and State Department manuscripts and of pre-20th century sources was stressed.
Assessment by three experts rated the monograph collection between 1b for modern Italy and 3a for the period from 1400 to 1700, with Renaissance Florence rated at 3b. The current acquisition level for modern Italian history, especially in English, is better than this suggests, with an average holding of 78% of the two lists checked. The goal level is 3a for modern Italian and 4 for the earlier period.
The serials collection rated between 1b and 3a, with a goal level of 3b.
The microform collection was rated between 3b and 4. The lack of detailed catalogue records and an updated guide makes the staffing of the area crucial to its proper exploitation.
No expert assessment of this collection was provided, but the list checking (42% held) reveals a patchy collection. Emphasis in the past has been on modern German Jewry, where the monograph collection reaches level 4 in both English and German, on the Jews in France from the turn of the century, for which it also reaches level 4 in French and English and on the Jews in America for which the collection reaches its goal level of 4. The collection on the Holocaust is probably the strongest in the country, with the microform and monograph collections in Western European languages at least easily reaching the target level of 4.
The history of the Jews in other countries, including Eastern Europe, is less adequately covered, especially in the languages of the area.
The serials collection has been improved since the appointment of the Lecturer in Modern Jewish History, but at 2b it remains below the goal level of 3b.
There are very significant strengths in the microform area, most notably in the recent acquisition of the Montefiore Collection and the systematic acquisition of the Jewish Forward from its early years. Purchases of Memorial books, in print and hard copy also provide a resource for the history of vanished communities. The Comprehensive Yiddish Collection acquired from the National Yiddish Book Center provides some strength in that language, backed up by several microform collections.
Acquisition funding for this collection is not a present problem, thanks to a generous and focussed bequest but the devolved collection management function makes increased academic input essential, especially in languages other than English, if the goal level is to be reached.
Medieval history was not taught at The University of Melbourne for a 10-year period, and while basic material continued to be acquired in English, the monograph collection, in the opinion of the two experts consulted, varies between level 2a and 3b depending on geographical area.
Monographic series are lacking. The serials collection is rated between 1a and 3a with a goal level of 3b for LOTE and 4 for English.
Once again, the microform collection rescues the collection from mediocrity in the early modern period, bringing it to level 4 overall and level 3a for the 17th century. It does little, however, for the medieval period although several manuscript collections have been acquired.
Electronic resources acquired include the Patrologia latina database and Medieval realms.
The assessment by the two experts consulted placed the monograph collection between 3a and 3b, with a goal level of 3b. Australian material formerly selected by the Collection Development Division is lacking from the current collection.
Assessment of the serials collection varied between 1a and 2b with a goal level of between 3b and 4. The judgement of 1a appears unduly harsh given that the Library holds 45.9% of the titles listed in Current bibliography of urban history. The absence of newspapers, notably the Herald-sun, West Australian and San Francisco chronicle (current and retrospective holdings required) is crippling.
There have been notable microform acquisitions of monographs, serials, oral history transcripts and maps and the collection is rated at level 3b, especially for US material, with the Australian collection rated less highly. The goal level is 4.
This is a new area within the Department, with the lecturer responsible being interviewed within 4 months of taking up his appointment. It is an area in which rapid acquisition has taken place over the last 12 months, notably of material published by Archive Editions, from which firm more than a dozen major series have been acquired.
The monograph collection is assessed at 2b for English and 2 for LOTE. The goal level is 3b. Major gaps are seen from 1960 to 1990. Academic assistance in selection in LOTE, especially Arabic and Hebrew, will be essential for the goal level to be reached.
The serials collection is rated at 1b with a goal level of 3a. At least 4 serials are required urgently, together with 3 or 4 major newspapers.
While the microform collection is stronger than the rest of the collection, it falls short of its goal level of 3b, coming in at 3a.
The monograph collection was assessed by the expert consulted at 3a (English only) with a goal level of 3b in all appropriate languages. Achieving this will place considerable pressure on academic staff time with both linguistic and bibliographical expertise required.
The serials collection is rated as 3a with a goal level of 3b, while the microform collection is seen as very strong (level 4) in some areas only. The insufficiency of guides to the contents of the collection again inhibits its usefulness.
This is another comparatively new area of interest, forming part of several other programmes rather than one in its own right. Materials on Spanish history are required in the Medieval and early modern and North African history programmes as well as for studies of Europe in the 20th century. Acquisition, except in English and to a lesser extent to support the medieval programme, has been patchy.
The monograph collection is rated as 2b with a goal level of 3b. The serials collection is 1a with a goal level of 2b.
The microform collection provides some strength for the modern period, with several collections of material relating to the Civil War and the large collections of Books printed before 1601 providing some strength in the early modern period. It is rated at a patchy 3a.
The perceptions of the two experts consulted varied from a uniform level 4 in one case to 2b with a goal level of 3a in the other, reflecting differences in geographical focus. The collection is very much better for Australasia, the Pacific Rim, the United States and Europe, including the United Kingdom, than it is for Asia, especially Japan. Publications of Non-Government Organisations were rated as highly important and poorly covered. Such material requires active selection.
The absence of new serial titles meant the collection rated at 2b as against a goal level of 3a.
The microform collection is extremely strong in this area, with collections of monographs, manuscripts and archives of individuals and societies, serial collections, etc., acquired in English, French and German.
Existing areas of research strength are:
I would like to thank all the academic staff who so gave so generously of their time and attention, not to mention many cups of coffee. I wish also to acknowledge my debt to Shirley Sullivan, Physical Sciences Division Collection Management Librarian for her assistance in all aspects of this survey and help from Catherine Dimitrin and Gayle Pickett in checking the lists.
Attachments:
Last modified: August 18 2004.
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