The African-American Collection at the University of Tennessee:
Title:
The African-American Collection at the University of Tennessee:
Author:
Felder-Hoehne, Felicia Ashkar, Carolyn Sellers
Appeared in:
Behavioral & social sciences librarian
Paging:
Volume 12 (1993) nr. 2 pages 37-61
Year:
1993-10-13
Contents:
The African-American Collection at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville research library began with the gath3ering together of appropriate materials already held by the library. Gaps became increasingly noticeable as demands grew from African-American Studies courses, but no formal study was undertaken until the current one. Both the need for more monographs and budget constraints made more pressing the importance of a survey. Collection assessment methods such as Core Lists and Bibliography Check Lists. though commonly used, have not proved to be very satisfactory, so the authors chose a relatively new tool, the overlap study. It has shown itself to be good at demonstrating strengths and weaknesses in a collection. This report therefore is both a survey of the African-American Collection and a test of the efficacy of the overlap method. Same-size but random samples were taken from four recognized African-American collections, in each of three subject areas: Religion, History, and Literature. The samples were then matched against the holdings of the UTK collection. Results showed that the strengths were in such areas as general history and literature, and weaknesses scattered over areas such as philosophy, race relations, and African-American accomplishments. Overall the study revealed a highly conservative collection stance with the near total absence of writings by controversial authors, and a sparseness of works by major African-American scholars.
Journal description