COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT POLICY
ART HISTORY
Last revision date: March 23, 2009
PRINCIPAL SELECTOR:
Henry Pisciotta, Arts and Architecture Librarian
W320 Pattee Library
865-6778
henryp@psu.edu
PROGRAMS SUPPORTED:
Selection of materials is based primarily upon the needs of the following departments and programs:
Department of Art History
Palmer Museum of Art
The Department of Art History awards degrees at the bachelors, masters and doctoral level. The graduate program is modest (with approximately 10 M.A. candidates and 30 Ph.D. candidates) but graduate students in Art History are among the most intense users of the library collections in the arts. Faculty are also frequent users. In general, heavy dependency on library and archival research are typical of the study of art history and, in recent years, is arguably more widespread than research based primarily on artifacts. The Department of Art History currently has 11 full-time faculty appointments and 7affiliate faculty members. The Palmer Museum of Art has 15 staff (5 of whom are curators) and employs several graduate assistants. The Libraries collection also supports the Art History Department Visual Resources Centre in that many of their images are reproduced from books and periodicals. Related courses taught in other departments (such as English, Women’s Studies, Art, etc.) as well as courses in art history and related disciplines offered at other Penn State campuses are also served by the collections of the Libraries at University Park.
DISTANCE LEARNING
At present one general education course is offered with the E-Learning Institute of the College of Arts and Architecture. The Department of Art History is a co-sponsor of Penn State's education abroad program conducted every summer in Todi, Italy.
SUBJECTS COVERED IN THE COLLECTION:
the visual arts (including painting, sculpture, architecture, design, the graphic arts, photography, and visual culture) from prehistoric to contemporary
research methods and historiography of art history
critical theory, aesthetics, philosophy, visual perception, and similar fields as appropriate to the study of art history
other cultural history as appropriate to the study of art history
museum and conservation studies as related to art history
FUNDS USED:
Funds with ARTS or ARTBZ prefixes are the primary sources for purchases and journal subscriptions. Sometimes these funds are also used to support more general visual arts needs (ARTGL or ARCHT). Among the ARTS funds are two specialized endowments: ARTS-BKLEIN is dedicated to materials in support of Asian art history and ARTS-BOVARD is dedicated to art of the Early Modern (Renaissance) era.
RELATED FUNDS:
Sometimes related funds are used to obtain materials in support of art history. This is especially true of these three sources
ARTGL funds
- contemporary art
- art theory & criticism
- techniques and professional practice of art
- art education
- history of art education
- museum studies
ARCHT funds
- contemporary environmental design (architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, interior design, and furniture design)
- theory and criticism of the above
- techniques and professional practice of the above
- the recent history of the above (usually from 1850 to the present)
- building science and technologies as related to design
- land use, ecology, and related fields as appropriate to landscape architecture
Arts and Humanities Library group funds (with prefixes ARTHUGRP and HUMREF)
Additionally, these funds sometimes support aspects of the study of art history:
Classics funds
History funds
Rare Books funds
Religious studies funds
Sometimes various area studies funds
Centralized E-Resources funds
LOCATIONS OF MATERIALS:
Primary location for housing materials related to the ARTS & ARTBZ funds is the Arts and Humanities Library. Materials with high replacement costs, loose plates, or fragile design may be shelved in closed stack areas with limited circulation. Special Collections also collects many materials of importance to the Art History program and houses them within their facilities. Due to space constraints some materials are stored in remote annexes. Items with low use and extra copies of items with average use may be selected for remote storage. Special considerations of heavily illustrated publications (browsing as a means of selection, the relation of printed illustrations to digital copies, etc.) sometimes limit selections for remote storage. Some large sets cannot be stored in annexes because most uses require access to index volumes, complex tables of contents, spine markings, etc.
LANGUAGES:
Primarily English language, but with a strong representation of major Western European languages and, more selectively, ancient Greek or Latin. Other languages are collected only in special circumstances – for example, when important pictorial content overrides language considerations.
FORMATS AND TYPES:
Most formats and types are collected. Books, periodicals, exhibition catalogs, electronic journals, e-books, and databases are important formats. Video recordings and microforms are collected more selectively.
Generally not collected: 35 mm slides, audio books, teaching kits, juvenile literature, price guides, and amateur collecting manuals. Art auction records and other price information are only collected for their historical information. (That is to say, information for current prices and values is not collected.)
EDUCATIONAL LEVEL:
The collection is intended to support teaching and research in higher education. Academic publications are the focus. Popular level publications are acquired selectively, when they provide good introductory information, treat subjects of peripheral interest, or provide exceptional visual content.
COLLECTING LEVELS FOR SUB-TOPICS
This portion estimates the
current goals for collecting intensity for appropriate sub-topics (and should not be misconstrued as estimates of the strength of the existing collection.) The collecting levels estimate what types of activities (teaching, research, etc.) are supported and range of languages required for that support. The codes for levels are defined in Appendix 2.
Generalities
Aesthetics, Philosophy, & Theory of Art - - 3F
Historiography & Methods - - 3F
Collectors and Collecting - - 1E
Museum Studies - - 1E
Preservation Technology - - 1E
Iconoclasm (all eras) - - 3E
Western Art
Prehistoric - - 1E
Ancient Near Eastern* - - 1E
Ancient Egyptian* - - 3E
Aegean (Cycladic, Minoan, Mycenean)* - - 1E
Ancient Greek* - - 3F
Etruscan* - - 2F
Ancient Roman* - - 3F
Early Christian - - 4F
Byzantine - - 4W
Jewish** - - 3F
Early Medieval - - 3F
Migration Period - - 1E
Carolingian - - 3F
Ottonian - - 3F
Romanesque
France, Italy, & Spain
Architecture & Manuscript illumination - - 3F
Sculpture & Decorative arts - - 4F
Other Countries - - 2F
Gothic - - 3F
Early Modern
Early Modern interest in Ancient Egypt - - 4F
15th Century - - 3F
Italy - - 3F
Northern Europe - - 3F
Other Countries - - 2E
Decorative arts (all countries) - - 2E
16th Century
Italy - - 3F
Patronage - - 4F
Low Countries - - 3F
Antwerp - - 4F
Other Countries - - 2E
Decorative arts (all countries) - - 2E
17th & 18th Centuries
Italy
Fine and Decorative arts - - 2E
Architecture & Urbanism - - 3F
Architecture of Naples - - 4F
Italian architects throughout Europe - - 3F
Late 18th-c. French Painting - - 3F Other Countries
Fine and Decorative arts - - 2E
Architecture - - 3E
19th Century
Photography - - 3E
Western Europe - - 3F
French Painting - - 4F
Eastern Europe - - 2E
United States - - 3E
Late 19th-c. Architecture*** - - 4E
Other Areas - - 2E
20th Century ****
Abstract Painting of the U.S. and France - - 3F
Western Europe - - 3F
French Early 20th-c. Painting - - 4F
French Mid-Century Modernism - - 4F
Eastern Europe - - 2E
Russia - - 3F
North America - - 3E
Architecture*** - - 4E
Mid-Century Modernism - - 4F
Other Areas - - 1E
Non-Western
African [status uncertain]
South Asian - - 2E
Architecture & Urbanism - - 3F
Chinese, Japanese, and Korean 2Y
Note: Materials on Chinese and Japanese arts in those languages are purchased with funds for Asian Studies.
Islamic - - 2F
Other Areas - - 1E
* These levels are maintained largely by other funds for classics and ancient Mediterranean studies.
** This level is maintained primarily by non-arts funds dedicated to Jewish studies.
*** Levels for the last half of the 19th c. are maintained partly by other funds dedicated to architecture and landscape architecture (ARCHT)
**** These levels are maintained partly by other funds dedicated to the visual arts (ARTGL, etc.)
DEACCESSIONS
Items may be removed from the collections when they are deemed to be irrelevant to the current collection priorities. Since the Penn State University Libraries has cooperative arrangements with other research libraries and other libraries within Pennsylvania, deaccession of rare or unique items is handled cautiously, even if they are outside the scope of current collecting.
APPENDIX 1
Collection Development Statement is designed and implemented in keeping with the statement of values recorded in the Penn State University Libraries Strategic Plan 05/06–07/08:
VALUES
The Libraries are committed to:
- excellence in professional practice
- intellectual freedom
- equitable access to resources
- service
- leadership
- collaboration
- diversity
- stewardship of collections and resources
- protection of patron's confidentiality/privacy
APPENDIX 2
TERMS AND SYMBOLS USED TO DESCRIBE COLLECTION LEVELS:
Throughout the policies, librarians have expressed evaluations based on a standard set of numbers and letters. Collection levels as defined by a committee of the American Library Association are:
5 = Comprehensive level. A collection in which a library endeavors, so far as is reasonably possible, to include all significant works of recorded knowledge for a necessarily defined field.
4 = Research level. A collection which includes the major published source materials required for dissertations and independent research, including materials containing research reporting, new findings, scientific experimental results, and other information useful to researchers.
3 = Study level. A collection which supports undergraduate or graduate course work, or sustained independent study; that is, which is adequate to maintain knowledge of a subject required for limited or generalized purposes, of less than research intensity.
2 = Basic level. A highly selective collection which serves to introduce and define the subject and to indicate the varieties of information available elsewhere.
1 = Minimal level. A subject area in which few selections are made beyond very basic works.
Language codes
E = English language materials predominate; little or no foreign language material is in the collection.
F = Selected foreign language material included, primarily Western European in addition to English language material.
W = Wide variety of foreign language material in addition to English language material. No programmatic decision is made to restrict materials according to language.
Y = Material is primarily in one non-English language. The overall focus is on collecting material in the vernacular of the area.
