Collecting Patterns of Women's Studies Monographs in Religious and Non-Religious University Libraries

This study examines the print library collections of ten private, Christian universities and ten public, secular universities for holdings of women's studies and feminist monographs. Using a comprehensive bibliography of recommended women's studies and feminist works (Women's Studies: A Recommended Bibliography), a list of 301 titles were compiled by random selection. The author used WorldCat to search for each title and record which of the selected libraries owned each title. The findings indicate that the public, secular universities owned an average of 32% of the titles while the private, Christian universities owned an average of 13% of the titles. This paper discusses these results and the possible factors that contribute to the selection patterns of the two groups of university libraries examined