Collection Policies

LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

Subjects Covered:  TheLatin American Studies Program collection is designed to supplement the Latin American studies curriculum by providing the materials necessary for students to understand and develop an appreciation for the cultural background that underpins the program's courses.  To that end collecting emphasis is placed on acquiring materials relating to customs, practices, philosophy, political structures, economic development, geography, history, religion, and literature of Latin Americans in South America, in Central America, and in the United States.

Departments and Users Served:  Latin American studies is an interdisciplinary collection serving students and faculty in the Latin American Studies Program. Students and faculty in other humanities or social science programs may benefit as well from materials in the library's Latin American Studies collections. Through direct patron borrowing the collection also serves students and faculty in schools affiliated with the OhioLINK system.

Quantitative Information

Faculty:  Faculty in the Latin American Studies Program are drawn from a number of colleges and departments throughout the University.

Degrees Granted:

Undergraduate Certificate: http://www.artsci.uc.edu/departments/interdisciplinary-studies/las/undergrad.html

Grants and Special Funding: The Latin American Studies Program collection receives no grants or special funding beyond what is allocated to develop the collection from the library's general budget.

General Description of the Collection

Location: The Latin American Studies Collection is located in the Langsam Library.

Other Collections Supporting the Program:  The Latin American Studies collection receives support from other collections in the arts, humanities, and social sciences, especially from the disciplines of anthropology, art, geography,  history, political science, Romance languages and literature, sociology, and women's, gender, and sexuality studies. Works of literature in English translation are collected by the Cohen Enrichment endowment.

General Level of Collecting: The Latin American Studies collection budget supports colleting at a basic undergraduate level.  Because of support received from other disciplines the Latin American Studies collection itself supports graduate and faculty research.

Specific Aspects of the Collection

Call Numbers: The Latin American Studies collection is represented throughout the Library of Congress classification system. The bulk of the collection falls within the call numbers E, F, JL, PC4000-PC5498

Current and Retrospective Collecting: The Latin American Studies collection budget supports the acquisition of current materials, most of which are published or distributed within the United States.

Time Period Collected: Pre-Columbian to the present

Language: English, Spanish, and to a lesser extent Portuguese

Geographic Area: South America, Central America, United States

Types of Resources: The Latin American Studies collection budget purchases monographs and videos but has access to monographic series, journals, indexes, abstracts, bibliographies, handbooks, encyclopedias, dictionaries and other materials relating to Latin America and Latin American topics purchased by related disciplines.

Resource Formats: Print, microform, video, and digital

ACQUISITION PROCESS

Approval process : The Latin American studies collection participates in the slip notification plan supplied by Yankee Book Peddler.

Firm orders : Firm orders for Latin  American studies materials are selected from a variety of sources including vendor notification slips, direct mail brochures, publisher catalogs, book reviewing publications, and faculty requests.

Standing orders : Latin American studies maintains no standing orders

Document suppliers : The Latin American Studies Program's collection relies on direct patron access through OhioLINK, as well as the Interlibrary Loan Department, for access to items that are not in the University of Cincinnati collections, are in circulation, or are missing from the collection.

Special vendors : The Latin American Studies Program's collection relies on the Acquisitions Department 
to determine if a special vendor is needed to acquire requested materials.

Sally Moffitt 
 
July 2014