SPEC Kit 324: Collecting Global Resources · 81
With over five million items held, the Michigan State University Libraries are able to provide substantial materials for the
study of virtually all parts of the globe. At the same time, “significant research collections” able to support graduate-
level work are exemplified by our holdings in Africana and in materials from Western Europe. In these areas, our local
collections are sufficient to allow in-depth study, and to attract visiting scholars to campus. The contrasting nature of
these two collections illustrates trends in collection development. Africana holdings are rich in rare hard-copy materials
collected through buying trips, gifts-in-kind, extended title-by-title selection, and use of approval plans that tap sources
in Africa. Our Western European holdings—especially for the humanities including history—include substantial
traditional print collections of monographs, series, and journals (many of them now available in online format), but have
been profoundly enriched by the availability of digitized archives of rare publications that in the past would not have
been available locally: Early English Books Online, for example.
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