Library Holdings
Romance Languages and Literatures Collections at the University of Chicago
The University of Chicago Library supports research and teaching at the University by collecting and creating information resources and providing services that enhance their usefulness, accessibility, and availability over time. The Library's resources total more than seven million printed works, increasing at the rate of 150,000 volumes per year; and major electronic collections that include 40,000 full-text journal titles, 170,000 electronic books, and 500 reference databases. Over thirty million manuscripts and archival pieces, 420,000 maps and aerial photographs, and large sets of microform materials complement the print and electronic collections. The distinctive rare book, manuscript and archival holdings of the Special Collections Research Center are available to a broad research constituency.
Romance languages and literatures collections are located at Regenstein Library in its bookstacks, the third floor reference collection, the Special Collections Research Center, and online. These collections are strong, rich, and extensive with a focus on French, Italian, and Spanish philology, linguistics, and literatures. The French collections primarily emphasize European material with less extensive representation of other Francophone literatures. The Library collects Spanish and Portuguese materials both from the Iberian Peninsula and from the Americas, with particular emphasis on Argentina and Mexico, and is deepening its Catalan collection.
The Library's Romance collections on paper include primary and secondary literature and extensive journal holdings. Major bibliographic and journal databases and vast electronic corpora of primary texts complement these print collections. Several of the latter are produced in toto or in part at the University of Chicago: ARTFL (American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language), Italian Women Writers, and Opera del Vocabolario Italiano. Large microfilm sets focusing on specific subjects, periods, or genres further supplement the print collections.
While the Library supports research and teaching in all Romance literatures, periods, and genres, particular emphases have developed over the years. These match areas of historic strength at the University and include extensive and rare resources in the Special Collections Research Center. There is deep coverage of the Renaissance period across all languages, from Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch to Rabelais and Montaigne to Cervantes and the Literature of the Golden Age. Later areas of strength stand out as well: early modern Italian drama; the French Enlightenment; the 19th Century in all literatures, with a focus on the rise of the novel and its development across the 20th Century; the works of Italian women writers; the sociology of literature, rhetoric, and literary theory; and contemporary belles-lettres, with a notable collection of authors of lesbian, gay, and bisexual interest. The collections are too vast to list individual authors: there is expansive coverage of every major writer and literary critic in all literatures, periods, and genres. An extensive corpus of electronic and print reference titles that includes all major bibliographic tools and biographical resources undergirds the Romance literatures collection. The Library also subscribes to thousands of journals whose back-files as well as current issues are increasingly becoming available online.
The Library's bibliographers (subject specialists) are available to assist readers in using the Library's collections effectively, in finding specific titles or information, in formulating research strategies, and in direct support of classroom instruction. Informative online subject pages for each of the Romance literatures resources provide a context for study and research, including links to the most relevant online sources and contact information for the subject bibliographers.
Other libraries in Chicago complement the University of Chicago's collections in Romance languages and literatures and are readily available to University faculty and students. These include the Center for Research Libraries (foreign dissertations, foreign newspapers, major microfilm sets), the Newberry Library (especially Renaissance studies and the Americas), and Northwestern University (especially Africana and twentieth-century artistic/literary movements).