Medieval Studies
Clientele:
At Cornell, Medieval Studies is an interdisciplinary program that draws faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students from many departments: Classics, Comparative Literature, English, History, History of Art, Modern Languages, German Literature, Romance Studies, Music, Asian Studies, and Near Eastern Studies. Existing collection strength: 4 (research level) Languages: W (Wide variety of foreign language material in addition to English language material.)
For collection development purposes, the term "medieval studies" refers to the languages, literatures, history, culture, commerce, social life and customs of Europe and the Byzantine Empire from the period of the Great Migrations (ca. A. D. 300) to the Renaissance (beginning in Italy 1350, England, France, Germany and Austria ca. 1485, the Low Countries and Scandinavia 1500-1550). Within this scope, materials that are interdisciplinary or intra-national are purchased by the medieval studies selector while materials specific to a particular nation are generally purchased by the appropriate subject selector (http://www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/cdselectors1.html).Call number ranges covered by the medieval studies selector: D 100-203 (general history), DF 500-649 (Byzantium), GT (manners and customs), CR (heraldry), Z 105-115 (paleography), BL 830-980 (history of European religion), CC (medieval archaeology) and multinational European literature & history as appropriate, H (social sciences) as appropriate.
Olin Library's special strength is in the area of Old English literature (the purview of the English literature selector), complementing the Icelandic Collection's level 5 holdings (the purview of the Icelandic selector). The special collections of Dante and Petrarch materials are nationally known; materials for the history of Italy in the Middle Ages are also strong (the purview of the Italian literature selector). During the 1960's the Library purchased extensive retrospective sets of serials, and standing orders were placed for nearly all scholarly European monographic series and serials in the field of Medieval Studies.
Current collecting intensity: 4 (research level) Languages: W (Wide variety of foreign language material in addition to English language material.)
Literature: 4
History: Britain 4; France 4, Germany 4-Editions of British, French and German original texts receive major attention, and an effort is made to acquire all new serials of a scholarly nature.
Geographic information: Western Europe and Byzantium; 35% of imprints Anglo-American, 65% European
Exclusions: Textbooks, dissertations (unless editions of original texts). Works in the following subjects are the responsibility of selectors shown in the Cornell Library Selectors list: textiles, art, and architecture, music, religion, philosophy, history of science, Slavic topics not connected with Western Europe or the Byzantine Empire. Most facsimiles of medieval manuscripts are purchased by the Department of Rare Books.
Virginia Cole 1/04
