THE JOHN MILLER BURNAM CLASSICAL LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI
COLLECTION SIZE: 259,500 books, periodicals, microforms and other materials
ANNUAL GROWTH: up to 5,000 volumes
SUBSCRIPTIONS: approximately 2,000 periodical, serial and monographic set subscriptions
BOOK APPROVAL PLANS: Harrassowitz, Casalini, and Puvill
BOOK NOTIFICATION SLIP PLANS: Yankee Book Peddler, Blackwell, Oionos, Aux Amateurs, Harrassowitz, Casalini, and Puvill
The John Miller Burnam Classical Library is named after a former faculty member of the Classics Department, whose excellent private library was willed to the University and became the nucleus of the present library in 1921. The collection was greatly expanded through the personal efforts and generosity of a former chairman of the Department and his wife, William T. and Louise Taft Semple. Mrs. Semple later established a trust fund in honor of her father, Charles Phelps Taft, that continues to be the primary support for the acquisition of library materials, thus making the library a major international resource for research in the area of Classical Studies.
Today, collection efforts focus comprehensively on all aspects of the ancient Greek and Roman world. Research materials, whether print, electronic or other formats, cover history, archaeology, language and literature, art, numismatics, science and technology, papyrology, epigraphy and patristics. Furthermore, the Classics Library provides extensive coverage in materials on Byzantine and Modern Greece and strong coverage on ancient Egypt, the Ancient Near East, and paleography. Additionally, the library has a significant collection of 19th century German dissertations and Programmschriften.
As of December 2012, library holdings total over 252,000 items in the library facility. An additional 7,500 volumes of Modern Greek literature materials, which have been stored in the Southwest Ohio Regional Depository (SWORD) for several years, are currently being reintegrated into the library stacks as SWORD staffing permits. The Classics Library currently subscribes to approximately 2,000 serials and monographic series or sets. The library’s growth rate for print materials is approximately 5000 volumes per year.
In addition to the extensive print collection, the library provides access to many electronic databases specific to the field of classics, including the major bibliographic indexes (L’Annee Philologique and Dyabola), subject specific databases, important image databases, and many e-journals and e-books.
Classics researchers have also benefited from electronic resources supplied by OhioLINK and the University of Cincinnati Libraries, including e-journals on the Electronic Journal Center at OhioLINK and the locally supported JSTOR journal packages. E-books are also made available through OhioLINK and the University of Cincinnati Libraries. Finally, the collection of Hebrew Union College is useful for the provision of supplemental material, especially in the areas of Near Eastern archaeology and Judaic studies.
Selection of current materials, at an upper-division and graduate/research level in all European languages, is as exhaustive as possible; likewise, retrospective purchasing is actively pursued. When new serial subscriptions are established, available back volumes or access to online archives are purchased. Although a majority of materials are purchased through individual titles, we have three foreign language approval plans: Harrassowitz (begun in the 1960's); Casalini (1986); and, Puvill (mid 1980’s). English language titles are provided by Yankee Book Peddler and supplemented by slips from B.H. Blackwell. Finally, exchange programs are handled directly by the Classics Library.
Graduate students, faculty, and visiting scholars, including the numerous Tytus Scholars, regard the Burnam Classical Library as an excellent research facility both because of the collection’s breadth, including many titles that are not widely found in other U.S. library collections, and the fact that materials on all subjects pertinent to Classics are available within this one library, making research as convenient as possible for scholars.
Classics Library web site http://www.libraries.uc.edu/libraries/classics/index.html
December 2012 JWR