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Mathematics

Collection Development Policy Guidelines

  1. General Scope
    1. Audience
      The history of mathematics at Dartmouth College dates back to 1782 when Bezaleel Woodward was promoted from tutor to become Dartmouth's first professor of mathematics. The mathematics collection has been developed over the years to support research and graduate studies in the Department of Mathematics with an emphasis on pure mathematics. Works in applied mathematics are increasingly acquired. The collection primarily supports faculty, graduate students, undergraduate students, and visiting scholars in mathematics at Dartmouth. It also supports the needs of other disciplines, both for teaching and research, such as engineering, physics, astronomy, medicine, computer science, chemistry, economics, and psychology. The collection has grown to reflect new areas of research in dynamical and complex systems, ergodic theory, number theory, nonlinear systems, finance, mathematical biology, and wavelets.
    2. Boundaries
      The collection includes the QA section of the Library of Congress classification schedules with the exception of the QA801-QA939 sections (analytic mechanics) and the QA75-QA76.9 sections (computer science). The mathematics collection is located in the Cook Mathematics and Computer Science Collection, located on Berry level 3. Older material classed in either the NM section of the old Dartmouth classification system or the Dewey Classification System are housed in the Dartmouth Library Depository. Materials related to statistics are found in Baker and Cook. Statistics under this policy is mathematical statistics (QA276-QA281) and not special applications to statistics which can be found in disciplines like Psychology or Education (H's and L's of the LC classification system). The collection overlaps strongly with collections in physics and computer science. The Rauner Special Collections Library has a collection of mathematical theses prepared by German university students, 1869-1890, donated by Professor Charles N. Haskins. Copies of undergraduate and graduate theses prepared by Dartmouth students are collected in both the Cook Mathematics and Computer Science Collection and Special Collections. In addition monographs authored or edited by John Wesley Young, John G. Kemeny, and other mathematics faculty of Dartmouth College are collected by Special Collections. A few important rare books reside in Special Collections: Euclides' Elementa geometriae (1482), Stifelio's Arithmetica integra (1544), and Galileo's Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche, intorno a due nuoue scienze, attenenti alla mecanica & i movimenti locali...Con una appendice del centro di grauita d'alcuni solidi (1638).
    3. Partnerships
      The Library seeks opportunities to develop partnerships in building the mathematics collection through strategies such as shared print retention projects.
  2. Specific Delimitations to collecting in this subject area
    1. Languages
      English is the main language collected. Materials in foreign languages are well represented with a predominance of German, French, and Russian language. No language is excluded.
    2. Geographical Areas
      No geographical areas are excluded. 
    3. Types of Materials Collected
      Both the serials and the monographic collections are at an advanced research level. Society publications are well represented. Seminars in mathematics and lecture notes from many institutions and societies are actively collected. Periodicals represent a large part of the collection. Proceedings of conferences and symposia are acquired regularly. Indexes and abstracts are not collected locally, but access is provided electronically.
    4. Format of Materials Collected
      The collection contains print and electronic materials. Microforms are present in the collection because of the publication format of some societies and also to complete some journal collections. Publishers release supplementary materials to many monographs and journals in electronic form; this electronic material has been a mixture of CD-Rom, diskette, and online. All these formats are now represented in the mathematics collection. Many journals are available electronically via the web.
    5. Collective Collections
      The BorrowDirect partnership allows Dartmouth College faculty, students, and staff to borrow books and other circulating items from the libraries of Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, MIT, University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, Yale and the Center for Research Libraries. Interlibrary Loan offers interlibrary loan and is Dartmouth College Library's system for requesting materials (books, articles, video recordings, etc.) that are not available on campus.
  3. Revision History
    • August 2016, updated by Katie Harding
    • May 2010, updated by Ann Perbohner
    • March 1997, updated by Mark Mounts
    • August 1991, updated by Sheila Gorman
    • September 1982, created by Susan George
    • Current selector: Lilly Linden