UNM University Libraries is a member of the Association of Research Libraries. In 2005/2006 UNM UL ranked 79th out of 113 member libraries. The UL is composed of four separate branch facilities: Zimmerman Library, the Education, Social Sciences and Humanities Library which was renovated after a fire in 2006; Centennial Science and Engineering Library; Parish Business and Economics Memorial Library; and the Fine Arts and Design Library, which opened in a new building in 2008. In addition to the University Libraries, students and faculty also have access on north campus to the Health Sciences Library & Informatics Center and the Law Library. The UL has over 2 million volumes, 200 online databases and 35,000 current journals.
Borrowing of materials not held at UNM is done through the Inter-library Loan system. UNM belongs to a consortium of libraries which delivers most journal articles to user’s computer accounts within 24 hours and books within 4 days. This is a free service to students, faculty and staff. This service is especially effective in providing articles and chapters of materials; the electronic files are often delivered to the users within hours of the request.
Philosophy Resources
JOURNALS: The UL has approximately 250 journals directly related to
philosophy. Of these, approximately 100 journals have full-text content available. In addition to the major journals in the field, articles about philosophy are found in many other subject areas.
BOOKS: The major classification numbers for philosophy are B through BD and
BH through BJ. The UL has approximately 600 shelves of books in those areas, with the majority of the shelves holding 30 books, for an approximate count of 18,000 print books. Additional materials in these areas are located in other libraries and collections including reference collections. Many materials related to philosophy are found in other
areas; for example, much political philosophy is found in the H and J classification numbers.
ELECTRONIC RESOURCES: The growth of electronic resources over the past
decade has transformed research and libraries. Many works of major philosophers are freely available on the Internet, ranging from classical Greek and Roman texts to the works of modern philosophers. In addition to such developments indexes have become available as online databases and journals and reference tools are online with full-text articles. The UL purchases extensive electronic resources relating to philosophy,
including: The Philosopher's Index, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Academic
Search Complete, Humanities International Complete, JSTOR, Project Muse, American Periodicals, Early English Books Online, etc.
Philosophy Acquisitions
Acquisitions by UL in the various subject areas has been curtailed in recent years due to cutbacks in the overall Library budget; currently, the overall UL annual acquisition budget is several million dollars less than its peer institutions.40 In philosophy, the
“discretionary budget” for purchasing philosophy books, i.e., the amount available to faculty for special orders and targeted purchasing by Library staff (the Philosophy Department is assigned a “selector” who works closely with the faculty), was $5,900 (down from $6,500 in FY 2007). Another $14,008 was spent on philosophy books through the U.S. automatic purchase fund, which automatically selects for U.S. libraries the most prominent books published in most subject areas.41 Thus, a total of $19,908 was
spent on philosophy books in FY 08 from these two sources, which purchased a total of 572 works in call numbers B through BD and BH through BJ. Meanwhile, approx. $22,000 was spent on journals. This means that the Library is able to purchase the most prominent books that appear in the various sub-disciplines of philosophy in a given year (of which there are some thirty: history of philosophy, which itself includes many periods, ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, logic, philosophy of science, cognitive science, feminist philosophy, etc., etc.). More specialized monographs, Festschrifts, books in series, and works in foreign languages, including translations, however, tend to be a lower priority, though the Library is very responsive in special ordering materials to be used in scheduled courses.
In general, the Library is adequate for undergraduate teaching. Some Philosophy faculty find it less than ideal for their own research. Not only more recent scholarly monographs but important editions and periodicals are lacking (even given all the online resources) in certain areas. Although the Interlibrary Loan department of Zimmerman Library is courteous and efficient in delivering needed materials – certainly, the research
can be carried out – the disadvantages of being heavily dependent on interlibrary loan are
well known to scholars. (One can only order specific items through ILL, yet even
40 Source: personal communication with library staff.
41 Some philosophy materials are purchased with other funds, including general
experienced researchers do not always know exactly what they need, and so on.)
Moreover, students, especially graduate students, do not have the opportunity to explore and learn about the literature of their discipline by browsing stacks and reference works. In 1997 University Library was fortunate to receive a gift (thanks to the efforts of Prof. Burgess) that allowed it to purchase the private collection of books in classical Indian religion and philosophy of the retired Sanskrit scholar Steven Goodwin. This collection contained over 700 titles, approximately a third of which were in Sanskrit language, including standard editions of Indian religious and philosophical classics. These now form the background of a respectable collection of texts in Indian philosophy available to Philosophy Ph.D. students specializing in Indian philosophy.
4. Extramural Support