Curricular Support
The Libraries of The Claremont Colleges
The Libraries are partners with The Claremont Colleges in learning, teaching and research. Library resources are available to all members of The Claremont Colleges’ academic community. Librarians and staff provide assistance with locating and using both traditional and electronic information sources. The libraries also offer research assistance via email and instant messaging. One of the major activities of the libraries is teaching students how to find, evaluate and effectively use information. Research instruction for classes and other groups, as well as individual appointments for instruction and research assistance, may be scheduled with any of the librarians. Classes in Honnold/Mudd Library are held in the Keck Learning Room or Keck 2, the libraries’ hands-on classrooms.
The joint library resources of The Claremont Colleges include nearly 2 million volumes. The Libraries also have extensive holdings of journals, magazines and newspapers: they provide online electronic access to more than 50,000 titles and receive many current magazines and newspapers. The libraries’ large collection of electronic resources provides ready access to a wide variety of bibliographic, full-text and multimedia information. Through the Web, it is possible to search Blais, the online catalog, or any of hundreds of databases including services such as Lexis-Nexis Academic and ISI Web of Knowledge. Full-text resources include electronic books and journals, as well as specialized resources such as the ACM Digital Library, Congressional Quarterly Library and Grove’s Dictionary of Art Online. The Claremont Colleges Digital Library (CCDL) provides access to a growing number of digital collections from The Claremont Colleges, as well as from the libraries’ Special Collections. Digital collections such as Early English Books Online and North American Women’s Letters & Diaries make available thousands of additional primary source materials. Most of these resources are accessible via the Internet to students, faculty and staff of The Claremont Colleges in their dorms, labs, offices and homes, as well as in the libraries.
Honnold/Mudd Library is a depository for United States government publications, with a collection of historic documents dating back to the late 1700s and many recent publications in electronic formats. The government publications collection also has extensive holdings issued by the State of California, the United Nations, other international agencies and Great Britain. The Asian Studies Collection in Honnold/Mudd has a collection of materials in Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages. The libraries have a large collection of microforms, including long runs of newspapers, early printed books from England and the United States and anthropological source materials in the Human Relations Area Files.
There are many special collections in the libraries. Among the holdings in Special Collections at Honnold/Mudd are the Oxford Collection (books about the university and the city of Oxford) and the Renaissance Collection (volumes about the Italian Renaissance focusing on the life and work of Angelo Poliziano). The Westergaard and Bjork collections complement one another in providing important materials on Northern Europe, primarily Scandinavia and the Baltic area. Western Americana and Californiana are represented in several collections: the William Smith Mason Collection, the Wagner Collection of History and Cartography of the North Pacific, the William F. McPherson Collection of Western Americana, The Claremont Colleges Archives, a Claremont collection focusing on the city of Claremont, and a collection of materials on the water resources of Southern California. The Norman D. ‘35 and Geraldine Womack ‘36 Philbrick Library of Dramatic Arts and Theatre History is one of the world’s largest private collections chronicling the history of theatre from the 17th century to modern times. The Robert Burton Collection includes various editions of his Anatomy of Melancholy and most of the sources cited by Burton in his work. The John Dryden Collection features early editions of the author’s plays, poetry, criticism and works that he translated or to which he contributed a preface or commentary. The McCutchan Collection contains many rare books on American hymnology. The Irving Wallace Collection includes extensive materials used by the late author for his writings. Pomona collections in Special Collections include the Mason, Wagner, McPherson, Westergaard and Philbrick collections.
The Ida Rust Macpherson Collection at Denison Library features books on the history and achievements of women. Collections in Denison’s Rare Book Room focus on the history of the book, book arts, printing and literary presses. Contemporary fine printing collections include the archives of the Scripps College Press.
Services, including LINK+ and InterLibrary Loan, provide access to books, articles and other materials not held in the collections. The Libraries have membership in the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) in Chicago. All the collections at CRL are available for extended periods of time through InterLibrary Loan.
Close working relationships are maintained with the George C. Stone Center for Children’s Books, a division of Claremont Graduate University’s Center for Developmental Studies in Education, and with the libraries of affiliated institutions in Claremont. The Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden maintains a large botanical and horticultural library, as well as two large herbaria. The library of the Claremont School of Theology has strong collections in such subjects as Biblical studies, theology and church history.
Oldenborg Center for Modern Languages and International Relations
Oldenborg Center is a residential hall with an academic program that provides each student with formal and informal opportunities to improve or maintain foreign-language skills and to become acquainted with other cultures. It is staffed by a director, an assistant director, a language instructional technologist, administrative assistant and seven Language Residents who are native speakers of French, German, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Russian and Spanish. The Language Residents, who live in apartments in the residence hall, coordinate student activities in the individual language living areas and teach intermediate and advanced conversation classes for academic credit.
Each year, the center sponsors a wide variety of international and intercultural activities, most of which are open to the entire campus community. The Oldenborg Luncheon Colloquium (OLC) features speakers on topics of current international interest, and the Oldenborg Language Lunch Program provides students, faculty and staff members the opportunity to converse in more than 20 different languages each week. Tables for the six languages mentioned above meet daily, and other languages, such as Hebrew, Portuguese, Italian, Hindi-Urdu, Arabic, Swedish, Korean, Vietnamese, Swahili, Armenian, Farsi and Cantonese are scheduled once or twice a week depending on interest.
Special facilities available to residents of the center are the language lounges with foreign-language reading materials. Language lounges are the site of the conversation classes and various student-centered activities, such as study breaks and cultural events. The Center also features the Glass Memorial Conference Room and the International Theatre.
Foreign language tutoring and other resources are available in the state-of-the art Foreign Language Resource Center (FLRC), which is located in Mason Hall. Oldenborg offers the International Research and Travel Grant to Pomona students seeking to travel abroad in order to complete research necessary for their senior projects and it also coordinates the Model Arab League (MAL) and Model United Nations (MUN). Both programs give students the opportunity to engage in research, public speaking and debate in diplomatic simulations. Via SILP (self-instructional language program), Oldenborg offers language instruction in Swahili and Farsi.
Although the use of foreign languages is strongly encouraged in the living quarters and required at lunch tables, the common language of the center is English since the program is designed to enrich the residential life of the entire Pomona College student community. More than half of all Pomona students and faculty, as well as significant numbers of students and faculty from the other Claremont Colleges, participate in one or more aspects of the Oldenborg program, which is unique in the nation for its distinctive living/learning environment.
Pacific Basin Institute
A nonprofit, public foundation established in 1979, the Pacific Basin Institute (PBI) is dedicated to improving communication among the peoples of the Pacific Basin and to increasing knowledge of the cultures, as well as the politics and economics, of the Asia/Pacific nations. PBI moved to Pomona College in 1997. The Pacific Basin Archive of film and documentary video, greatly expanded from the footage used for PBI’s television series, “The Pacific Century,” puts at the disposal of Pomona students and faculty, as well as community members, a wealth of documentary and archival film and video material. These materials are also used by students and faculty from the other Claremont Colleges as well from institutions beyond Claremont. In cooperation with the Media Studies Department, the archive affords interested students opportunities to assist its work in film-editing, cataloguing and documentary film production. Notably, PBI sponsors a Student Summer Research Video Project which sends students abroad to film their video documentaries (available for viewing on our Website at www.pomona.edu/pbi). In addition to its film production activities, PBI sponsors a continuing series of conferences, workshops and lectures, featuring scholars, authors and public figures from the Asia Pacific region.
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