1. Purpose of the collection

The Library collects in this field primarily to support the teaching and research needs of the School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies. Resources in this area are also utilised to a varying extent by other schools in the University. The Library collects works in language, linguistics and literary criticism and literary history, as well as works of creative literature.

2. Primary user group served

The School offers an undergraduate degree, as well as a degree of Master of Arts and a degree of Doctor of Philosophy. It has many courses on language skills. Special undergraduate teaching strengths are in the areas of business French and Spanish, contrastive linguistics, translation studies and language teaching methodology.

Its French literature courses, at an advanced level, and most research, concentrates on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but there is also a stream of Old French studies. Other courses include study of the French media and cinema.

The teaching of Spanish within the school began in 1992. Courses so far are mostly directed to Spanish language skills. Research interests of teaching staff include the Spanish language, its teaching and translation, modern Spanish fiction, and modern Spanish American literature and cinema.

Postgraduate work up to and including doctoral level and academic research is done in most fields. Research interests include:

  • Gay and lesbian studies
  • Erotic 18th century literature
  • Cinema
  • Second language acquisition
  • Theory and practice of translation

3. Description of the collection

The collecting of modern Romance languages and literature covers little more than French and Spanish, There are a few works on Italian language, reference aids such as dictionaries, and some of the most famous works of literature in the original and/or translation, with critical commentaries. The authors best covered are those who have been influential on English literature, e.g. Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch.

French has been taught at the University of Queensland since the earliest days of the University. Over the years, the library built up a good collection in French linguistics and literature of all periods. However in the last twenty years, the teaching and research interests have become more narrowly focussed, and large parts of the collection (e.g. sixteenth and seventeenth century literature) have hardly been added to at all. Current collecting activity is restricted to the above mentioned research interests.

The French language is covered to postgraduate course level for both historical and contemporary language studies.

Proportionate to student numbers and publications, the collection of French medieval literature has been most fully maintained in recent years.

The French literature collection overall holds the scholarly editions of the standard authors to the 1970s, with a growing collection of critical writing in the 1960s and 70s. There has been a marked decline in collecting for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The eighteenth century collection holds many reprints, microfilms and scholarly editions of primary sources for Voltaire, the Encyclopedists, and literary controversy. The richest source of critical material has been Studies on Voltaire and the eighteenth century.

The French collections for the nineteenth century onwards have often been at postgraduate standard, but the consistency of collecting has steadily diminished during the 1980s. Recent collecting concentrates on major authors. The twentieth century collection is strongest for fiction and for contemporary literary theory. There is now some interest in contemporary poetry, and donations from the French Embassy in Canberra have brought some contemporary literature into the collection.

The Spanish collection was set up to serve undergraduate teaching, which began in 1992. The strongest area at present is bio-bibliographies in English. Many of the editions of literary works so far are in the Letras Hispanicas series [akin to the Penguin Classics series], published by Catedra. Priorities for collection building are titles on the Spanish language, twentieth century Spanish fiction, and twentieth century Latin American fiction.

Standard linguistic works and a selection of major literary works (especially from the twentieth century) are held. Current collecting is limited to the research interests of staff. These are mainly concerned with various aspects of twentieth century Spanish and Latin American literature, especially works by and about women authors and homosexual authors.

The Library subscribes to the major electronic indexing services, such as Philosopher's Index, Arts & Humanities Citation Index, MLA, Art Index, LLBA, International Medieval Bibliography and Humanities Index in support of art, literature and linguistics in the School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies.

The collection is primarily housed in the Social Sciences and Humanities Library.

4. Interdisciplinary relationships

Most schools in the Humanities have some need of the aids to language study and translation that have been mentioned. Literary works, film classics and analyses of literary taste are used in relationship to more general historical studies. Discussions of literary and more general aesthetic theory also cross academic oundaries.

Several schools in the social sciences call on aspects of the collection such as language learning, sociolinguistics and anthropological linguistics.

5. Scope of current collecting

1. Languages collected

The School teaches both French and Spanish language courses as well as courses for English speakers only, hence French, Spanish and English language publications are collected.

2. Geographical areas collected

No geographical area is specifically excluded.

3. Chronological periods collected

No chronological period is specifically excluded

4. Types (forms) collected

  • First or early editions are seldom collected. No other types of material are specifically excluded. The collection includes books, periodicals, manuscripts, videos, tapes and electronic resources.
  • Language teaching schools prefer that literary texts be read in the original language and translations are often not collected.
  • The library's audio-visual services collect off-air art house feature films in French and Spanish in support of film and television studies subjects, as well as audio tapes in support of language teaching.

5. Publication dates

The emphasis is on collecting recent publications. Older publications may be purchased to support teaching and research.

6. Special considerations

None.

7. Conspectus

Substantial parts of the collection were assessed as being of intermediate: augmented level in the library's assessment of its collections by the Conspectus method in 1993-94. The greatest strength is in French language and nineteenth century French literature. Areas such as theory of literary criticism and modern fiction are relatively strong. The Spanish collection only dates back to 1992 and is strongest in the area of Spanish literature in the period to 1700. In recent years the collection has expanded in the area of twentieth century fiction and cinema and relevant critical works. The monograph collection is adequate to support all undergraduate and most postgraduate coursework.