The Germanic humanities and social sciences collection at the University of Florida is located primarily in Library West along with the rest of the Humanities and Social Sciences collection. The collection supports the academic program of the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies as well as the Department of History at the University of Florida.
The library's collection of German literature and criticism is generally quite strong, reflecting at least fifteen years of good budgetary support and the careful attention of two consecutive collection managers. At this point, the holdings fully support the Ph.D. program in German language and literature at this University. In most cases the collection includes the major German published source materials required for dissertations and independent research. It includes all important reference works and a wide selection of the work of more important writers, representative works by secondary authors, all the major scholarly journals, and several indexing and abstracting tools.
Because of the availability of special funds, the library was able to purchase a major microfiche collection of roughly 600 eighteenth- and nineteenth-century periodicals, Deutsche Zeitschriften des 18. Und 19. Jahrhunderts.
A second major microtext purchase brought us Die Bibliothek der Deutschen Literatur. This collection, based on the most recent edition of the Taschengoedeke, provides access to original editions from the entire range of German literature, amounting to works by some 3,300 authors on ca. 25,000 fiches.
The Library owns a large number of German historical materials, especially documents related to the period of the First and Second World War. Dr. Geoffrey Giles, professor of European history at UF, compiled his Library Tour of German History Treasures.
Among the special strengths of the library's collections, one should mention the bequest of Professor Oscar Jones, who left his large personal library to the University. This collection emphasizes German linguistics from the past 100 years, as well as sets of major literary authors.
The library also acquired professor Wadepuhl's Collection of materials by and about Heinrich Heine. Unfortunately this collection has not yet received the extensive description it deserves but it is available in Special Collections for scholarly use.
A few years ago the library bought the personal collection of Dr. Wilhelm Hausenstein, a publisher, writer and art critic. This collection contains over 5,000 volumes of twentieth- century prose, poetry, and art, many of which were presentation volumes by the authors and artists. These titles add a new dimension to the picture of German culture available at UF.
The Humanities and Social Sciences Reference Department holds an extensive collection of reference and consultative tools. It offers patrons various encyclopedias, dictionaries, bibliographies, and concordances to the principal writers, as well as general language and bilingual dictionaries and indexes. It includes bibliographies such as Germanistik, Bibliographie der deutschen Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft, Kottelwelsch: Bibliographisches Handbuch der deutschen Literaturgeschichte, and the CD-ROM Deutsche Bibliographie-actuell. We also have of course numerous indexes to scholarly articles in printed form as well as electronically via WebLUIS and CD-ROMs like the Modern Language Association Bibliography. By means of the Internet, any library patron can access the holdings of research libraries with outstanding collections in the field, such as Yale or Berkeley. Like these schools, we contribute our bibliographic records to a number of library consortia in order to maintain our access to certain very specialized or expensive collections.
University of Florida Libraries subscribe to over 100 Periodicals in German Studies. Except for a few cases, we own these titles in complete runs, whether the title goes back to the last century or is a relatively recent one.
Every year the library starts new subscriptions to reflect the departmental needs. In 1995, when German film-studies classes were established, the library supported the program by these principal new subscriptions: Film und Kritik, FilmDienst, Filmexil, Frauen und Film, and Film und Fernsehen. Additional support is given by approximately 25 German history periodicals in German language and various historical periodicals about Germany in English. These are paid for not out of the Germanic budget but rather that of the History Department. Many other relevant subscriptions are paid for on funds such as English, Philosophy, and Judaica. Through its systematic collection management program the Library monitors new serials as they appear and assesses them vis-a-vis the programs.
The library subscribes to only one German newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine. Some German Newspapers are now available on the Web, much faster than by mail. Sometimes the Library has a paper as well as a CD-ROM subscription such as Der Spiegel.
Alena Aissing, Associate University Librarian for collection development oversees policies, procedures, and budgets in collection development for Germanic and Slavic Studies. She works closely with the faculty members and develops selection guidelines to support the Department's academic program. She also collaborates with colleagues in other disciplines, provides specialized consultations, and teaches bibliographic seminars on various subjects.
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