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Collection Policies: Overview

The collections of the Aubrey R. Watzek Library support the curriculum of the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) and the Graduate School of Education and Counseling at Lewis & Clark College.  Materials in various formats and languages are housed in the Watzek Library and access to an increasing number of electronic resources is available from on and off-campus. The collection includes over 300,000 book and periodical volumes and over 400,000 microform items. There are also over 15,000 audiovisual items in various formats.

The Library provides access to over 24,000 periodical titles, most of them in electronic format and linked from the 150 electronic databases available through the Library’s Web site. In addition to periodical literature available through these databases, a wide range of reference and specialized databases are also available to Lewis & Clark students, faculty, and staff.

Watzek Library is a selective depository for United States government documents. Approximately 12% of publications made available by the Government Printing Office are added to our collection to support the curriculum. Most of these titles are integrated into the regular collections, but there is also a separate government documents section in the stacks.

Special Collections houses a premier collection on the Lewis & Clark Expedition, which offers one of the most complete resources known to exist on the Corps of Discovery. Other significant holdings include a collection on William Stafford, the Poetry Broadside Collection, the Dr. James Kidd Collection of North American Exploration, the Hugh Deane Collection on East Asia, the Jean Ward Collection on Gender Studies, and a collection on World War II Pacifism.  Many items from these and other collection are available online through the Watzek Library Digital Collections.