1. Purpose of the collection

The library collects in the field of Criminology primarily to support the teaching research and community needs of the Criminology section of the School of Social Science.

Resources in this area have cross disciplinary relevance across other schools (Psychology, Law) and Faculties.

2. Primary user groups served

At the Undergraduate level Criminology can be studied as a single plan/plans in the Bachelor of Arts; as elective courses in the Bachelor of Social Science or as part of other degrees offered by UQ. At the Postgraduate level a Criminology plan is part of the Masters of Social Science.

The Criminology Plan reflects the comprehensive exploration of the area from the sociological perspective. This means that crime and responses to crime, such as policing and the law are understood to be shaped by social values, institutions and processes.

Teaching areas include:

Crime and justice; The Criminal Justice system; Youth crime and justice; Crime prevention; Crime, race and gender; Crime, drugs and justice.

Research interests of Academic, Research and Postgraduate level covers this same wide spectrum of important contemporary issues with the addition of advanced level theoretical and methodological subjects.

Some current research projects are:

Comparing western nations in the extent of punitive crime control developments 1970-2000

Sibling Study (Young people and the Criminal Justice system)

3. Description of existing collection

The Library has responded well to this new and emerging UQ program area with print resources consisting of books, reference material and journals being significantly enhanced by access to many electronic bibliographic databases and e-resources.

The library subscribes to the major Australian criminology indexing service CINCH (Informit Online) and for international content, databases such as Sociological Abstracts, Infotrac, Sage Fulltext collections including Criminology, ISI Web of Knowledge, and National Criminal Justice Reference service provide some good examples of extensive journal indexing coverage. Also, the Australian Bureau of Statistics database AusStats provides significant access to criminology data.

Increasingly Web sources such as Web sites eg. Australian Institute of Criminology, Crime and Misconduct Commission, Criminology Research Council, WebLaw and SOSIG: Criminology are listed and linked from the Library catalogue. Resource guides are also produced to link users to relevant information.

4. Interdisciplinary relationships

All teaching and research areas with some social orientation are likely to draw on the general social science titles classified at H, for theory, methodology and empirical data and its subdivisions – HM, HQ, HS, HT, HV and also the Law area KU, KTA.

5. Scope of current collecting

1. Languages collected

The bulk of the collection is in English, though no languages are excluded.

2. Geographical areas collected

No Geographical areas excluded, however there is a strong emphasis on maintaining depth in Australian material.

3. Chronological periods collected

No chronological periods are specifically excluded.

4. Types (formats) of material collected

No types of material are excluded. However at present the emphasis is on journal and monograph literature.

5. Publication dates

The emphasis is on collecting recent publications, however older materials will be purchased to support teaching and research.

6. Conspectus

Conspectus(1993-94) predates this emerging discipline area for UQ.