Library Support – Department of Linguistics
Summary
The Linguistics collection at the University of Calgary Library supports the teaching and
research needs of the B.A., M.A., and PhD programs at the University of Calgary. It also
supports research requirements from many related disciplines. The Linguistics collection
has made significant gains in the last 5 years, however, the base number of monographs
purchased is still low and there are gaps for material published in the 1980’s and the
1990’s. Nevertheless, recent purchases of electronic packages have enhanced the
journal collection and the collection of digital primary texts.
The print monographs collection requires significant upgrading to attain levels sufficient
for research support, a $ 40,000 per annum increase, particularly in areas highlighted
by the Academic Plan. Phonology and phonetics and the psycholinguistic evaluation of
second-language competence are listed as particular areas of strength and the role of
the language learning and literacy was identified as one of the ‘pillars’ of prominence
and promise in the Academic Plan.
The joint initiative among the Faculties of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education
resulted in founding the Language Research Centre, a unique venture in Canada,
supported with grants from both the federal and provincial governments.
Current Strategic Plan of the Linguistics Department
The departmental program structure identifies both core and secondary focal
areas in the discipline. The field of Linguistics has a very well-defined theoretical core
consisting of phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. Any adequate Linguistics
program must cover the core in order to achieve excellence in teaching and research. In
addition, a set of focal areas which presupposes a theoretical foundation in the core
areas were identified. The two focal areas identified in the University of Calgary
Linguistics 1977 planning document remain central to the department’s interests today:
second language acquisition and Aboriginal Languages of Canada. Both of these were
originally proposed as focus areas in response to an obvious societal need, a need which
has only increased over the years. An active research and teaching profile in these areas
is maintained. As a result of following previous Strategic Plans, the department has been
able to recruit new faculty members, thus being able to broaden the research focus from
second language acquisition to include first (or child) language acquisition. Now the
designated focal area is Language Acquisition. Courses in the area are important to the
majors but they also provide a service to students interested in the field of
Speech/Language Pathology.
Although the goal of the 1990 departmental plan was to expand both of these
focal areas, it is evident that the department has been more successful in expanding the
Language Acquisition area than the Aboriginal Languages area. In 2005, following the
relocation of Psycholinguist, a specialist in infant speech perception who conducts
research in both first and second language acquisition was hired. This is a joint
appointment with the department of Psychology. Also in 2005, another specialist in
second language acquisition was hired as a joint appointment held with the Language
Research Centre.
In 1999, a specialist in Athapaskan linguistics retired and two years later a new faculty
member conducting research on a range of aboriginal language families, including the
local language Blackfoot, an Algonquian language spoken in Alberta, was hired. For the
past few years, the hiring of a Chair in Aboriginal Languages has been a priority for the
Faculty of Social Sciences but unfortunately funds have been available for this initiative.
Although sociolinguistics and discourse analysis were formerly focal areas, they
(in addition to neurolinguistics) have been lost with the departure of several faculty
members. An undergraduate course in sociolinguistics is offered but due to the
secondment of the faculty member who teaches this course to the VP(R), the course may
not be taught in the near future.
The focal areas of Language Change and Phonetics remain healthy. The area of language
change is a natural complement to research in language acquisition due to the common
concern with how languages and grammars change over time both in an individual and
in a society. The focal area in Phonetics has been the primary responsibility of one
faculty member but the secondment of this member removes him from teaching duty. A
recent hire will be able to teach phonetics. Her joint-appointment status means that
she will teach only two courses per year in Linguistics and phonetics will not be her
highest priority.
The priority is to maintain the excellence and integrity of the core components which
are central to the discipline and provide the essential foundation for all focal areas, and
to sustain the excellent level of high-quality teaching and research productivity in both
core and focal areas that has been attained in recent years.
A PhD program was launched in 1999.
COLLECTION ASSESMENT
Funding
The Linguistics collection supports research needs across many disciplines and as such
collection development is funded not only through the designated Linguistics fund but
also through a number of library funds. However, the Linguistics fund is still
responsible for the majority of purchases in the core areas of Linguistics.
Table 1 Titles and Expenditures by Fund Category
Number titles purchased by Fund Category
FUND CATEGORY
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
Avg./Yr.
126
42
148
114
144
70
141
75
194
63
129
79
147
74
Arts and Humanities
Student Union
30
52
28
58
23
52
30
37
38
34
30
67
30
50
Library
Science
18
2
32
2
15
14
35
86
1
33
2
Special Funding
Pillar
Grand Total
32
8
11
10
17
3
76
1
3
11
32
302
390
315
324
443
396
362
Linguistics
Social Science
Expenditures by Fund Category
FUND CATEGORY
Linguistics
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
Avg./Yr.
$10,735
$10,695
$11,721
$13,708
$20,113
$14,946
$13,653
Social Science
Arts and Humanities
$3,178
$1,401
$5,646
$1,528
$4,636
$917
$5,540
$1,682
$4,687
$2,293
$5,754
$1,896
$4,907
$1,620
Student Union
Library
$3,254
$1,586
$5,209
$3,261
$3,270
$1,797
$2,657
$2,594
$2,643
$7,247
$6,242
$8,528
$3,879
$4,169
Science
Special Funding
$104
$2,495
$219
$598
$1,127
$695
$119
$47
$27
$124
$843
$22,753
$27,156
$23,467
$1,404
$28,279
$7,967
$45,069
$290
$37,730
$3,220
$30,742
Pillar
Grand Total
As Table 1 highlights, the average number of titles purchased within the Linguistics
fund per year is 147 which represents 63 % of the average total number of titles
purchased. 74 titles are purchased with the Social Sciences fund, 50 titles are bought
through the Student Union funding on average per year. Expenditures by Fund Category
show a study increase, the highest ($20,113) encountered by the Linguistics fund was in
2003.
In addition to the base budget allocation, special one-time funds such as the Student
Union funding of $6,242 for 2004/2005 and funding directed to the areas of research
strength have been utilized to support the collection. The initiation of approval plans
and the extension to 23 other publishers in 2005 have helped provide needed support
to linguistics. However, to maintain steady growth an increase in the base budget is
required.
Table 2 (provides a breakdown of the broad subject areas for titles purchased through
the Linguistics fund. There is a steady increase but still slow.
Table 2
Subject Area
General linguistics
Lang. Acquisition &
Minority langs.
Linguistics. Comm. Mass
media
Linguistics. History
Linguistics. Study &
teaching
Origins of language
Psycho-Socio Linguistics
Semiotics
Computational Linguistics
Languages & Literature
Religion & Philosophy
Psychology
Social Sciences
Education
Math & Sciences
Grand Total
Linguistics: Expenditures by Subject Area
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
Avg./Yr
$10,823
$13,272
$10,200
$11,261
$25,349
$18,184
$14,848
$1,310
$1,670
$1,523
$1,032
$2,985
$2,479
$1,833
$3,555
$664
$6,196
$577
$5,912
$298
$6,412
$469
$4,465
$886
$6,876
$647
$5,569
$590
$236
$441
$2,097
$248
$551
$2,039
$654
$689
$1,587
$322
$926
$1,273
$1,152
$579
$78
$991
$70
$1,910
$2,489
$3,248
$1,019
$1,002
$1,307
$209
$58
$1,283
$2,100
$2,151
$687
$603
$1,125
$200
$691
$47
$76
$1,000
$1,427
$2,011
$545
$511
$1,682
$128
$322
$200
$159
$201
$123
$43
$109
$988
$1,573
$1,833
$416
$322
$2,754
$117
$73
$156
$509
$423
$78
$363
$143
$582
$317
$22,753
$27,156
$28,279
$45,069
$37,730
$30,742
$1,876
$127
$466
$23,467
Despite this increase, when comparing our acquisition rates for linguistics materials to
the number of linguistics books published utilizing data from (Yankee Book Peddlers), a
major vendor of academic books, we only purchase an average of 40% of books
published (Table 3). We need double the amount in order to reach the desired 80%. As
evident from Table 3, with increased funding more expensive and research category
titles could be purchased. This would mean an increase of $40,000 annually to the base
budget for monographs
Table 3: Comparison of Titles Purchased vs Books Published 1999-2004
Subject Area
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
Avg./Yr
Titles Published
Titles Purchased
% Titles Purchased
General linguistics
General linguistics
General linguistics
209
134
64%
260
143
55%
249
126
51%
278
122
44%
279
204
73%
310
164
53%
264
149
56%
Titles Published
Titles Purchased
% Titles Purchased
Lang. Acquisition & Minority langs.
Lang. Acquisition & Minority langs.
Lang. Acquisition & Minority langs.
45
18
40%
52
20
38%
38
21
55%
50
14
28%
70
30
43%
44
24
55%
50
21
42%
Titles Published
Titles Purchased
% Titles Purchased
Linguistics. Comm. Mass media
Linguistics. Comm. Mass media
Linguistics. Comm. Mass media
126
57
45%
168
119
71%
154
81
53%
163
77
47%
187
66
35%
161
96
60%
160
83
52%
Titles Published
Titles Purchased
% Titles Purchased
Linguistics. History
Linguistics. History
Linguistics. History
14
8
57%
18
7
39%
10
6
60%
20
7
35%
12
10
83%
20
7
35%
16
8
48%
Titles Published
Titles Purchased
% Titles Purchased
Linguistics. Study & teaching
Linguistics. Study & teaching
Linguistics. Study & teaching
24
4
17%
39
11
28%
46
16
35%
40
12
30%
41
24
59%
45
17
38%
39
14
36%
Titles Published
Titles Purchased
% Titles Purchased
Origins of language
Origins of language
Origins of language
23
11
48%
41
13
32%
36
17
47%
34
18
53%
40
29
73%
46
21
46%
37
18
50%
Titles Published
Titles Purchased
% Titles Purchased
Psycho-Socio Linguistics
Psycho-Socio Linguistics
Psycho-Socio Linguistics
39
24
62%
46
27
59%
42
16
38%
54
19
35%
61
34
56%
49
19
39%
49
23
48%
Titles Published
Titles Purchased
% Titles Purchased
Semiotics
Semiotics
Semiotics
18
4
22%
20
7
35%
21
10
48%
20
8
40%
8
14
175%
16
6
38%
17
8
48%
Titles Published
Titles Purchased
Computational Linguistics
Computational Linguistics
11
6
2
18
1
13
3
14
9
14
5
12
5
% Titles Purchased
Computational Linguistics
55%
0%
6%
23%
64%
36%
40%
509
266
52%
646
347
54%
614
294
48%
672
280
42%
712
420
59%
705
359
51%
Titles Published
Titles Purchased
% Titles Purchased
Totals of all P call numbers
Circulation data
A recent study of the circulation of monographs purchased in the last six years
demonstrates significant use of the book collection and the importance of continuing to
build in this area. On average 77% of the titles purchased by the Linguistics fund have
circulated and the overall circulation per book within the Linguistics fund was 9 check
outs.
Table 4. Circulation of books purchased by the Linguistics Fund 1998 to 2003
Subject w/ > 4 titles
Philology, Linguistics
American Indian Languages & Literature
English Philology & Language
French Languages
Individual Psychology
Romanic Philology & Languages
Special Aspects of Education
No. Titles
475
37
31
5
5
5
5
Average Circ
9
6
8
3
12
2
5
% no Circ
19%
38%
55%
60%
0%
60%
20%
Journals
In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s budgetary freezes and serials inflation resulted in a
number of journals cancellations. Recent purchases of journal aggregator packages
such as JSTOR, Science Direct, Project Muse, Oxford University Press Journals, Electronic
Collections Online (OCLC), Blackwell Synergy and Cambridge Journals Online have
significantly enhanced the University of Calgary’s holdings of journals relevant to the
study of linguistics.
Between 2000 - 2005 special funding was utilized to enhance our print journal
collection and a number of key linguistics journals were ordered. The print journal
collection is primarily funded through the Linguistics fund.
To compare the University of Calgary holdings with other institutions, a search was
performed in Ulrichsweb.com, the largest union list of periodicals available. The search
yielded 191 scholarly linguistics journals linguistics,( English language, scholarly,
refereed), of which the University of Calgary holds 138 titles (72%). The University of
Calgary holdings of these titles was compared against 9 peer institutions with an FTE
over 20,000. The comparison indicates a strong collection, suitable for advanced study
and research. (Table 5)
Table 5. Peer Comparison
SPECIALIZED
Number
Number of Titles
of Peer
owned by UofC
Libraries
Number
of
Journals
owned
by Peers
CORE
1
20
41%
49
2
18
31%
31
3
22
81%
27
4
18
90%
20
5
13
81%
16
6
10
100%
10
7
7
100%
7
8
12
100%
12
9
18
95%
19
138
72%
Total
191
After examining the list of available titles pertaining to Linguistics the following titles
should be purchased:
Title:
Cost
Linguistics: an interdisciplinary journal of the language sciences
Rhetorica: a journal of the history of rhetoric
EUR 414
USD 150
Total Cost
CAD 564.00
Table 6 shows that journal allocation for linguistics has increased steadily and the dollar
amount being spent between1999 – 2005 has more than doubled.
Table 6. Linguistics Journals Allocations
Fund 2523 Allocation
Number
of
Titles
10
8
Sage
9
7
2
14
1
40
16
2
16
2
7
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005*
$24,667.00
$27,672.00
$32,149.00
$28,867.00
$34,423.00
$31,223.00
$29.00
$29.00
$29.00
$29.00
$29.00
$278.10
$278.10
$999.39
$999.39
$999.39
$11.60
$11.60
$11.60
$3,570.00
$3,570.00
$56.43
$56.43
Package
Academic
Search Premier
ALPSP
Learned
Journals
Collection
Blackwell
Synergy
Business
Source Premier
Cambridge
Journals Online
Columbia
International
Affairs Online
Communication
and Mass
Media
Complete
Directory of
Open Access
Journals
Education Full
Text
Expanded
Academic
LION
Oxford
Journals Online
Project Muse
5
1999
$23,953.00
Science Direct
Sociological
2
Collection
8
Springer LINK
Taylor &
11
Francis
Total Allocation
$11.60
$56.43
$56.43
$1,396.40
$0.00
$92.80
$342.50
$342.50
$92.80
$342.50
$92.80
$342.50
$0.00
$0.00
$0.00
$46.48
$46.48
$46.48
$92.80
$92.80
$92.80
$424.54
$424.54
$1,645.21
$1,645.21
$1,645.21
$342.50
$342.50
$342.50
$2,281.23
$2,281.23
$2,281.23
$28.54
$28.54
$28.54
$7,010.24
$7,010.24
$7,010.24
$5,885.68
9
$7,010.24
$7,010.24
$36.08
$24,295.50
$25,102.30
$35,146.54
$39,691.57
$41,410.42
$51,239.06
*An additional $26,595 worth of titles were available in 2005 which were not part of
packages.
$55,357.22
Electronic Databases
Of the numerous linguistics-related databases the Library has access to, the most
significant are:
Linguistics Abstracts Online (Designed to revolutionize research and teaching by giving
immediate access via the World Wide Web to more than 30,000 abstracts from nearly
400 linguistics journals published since 1985).
Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (Covers all aspects of the study of language
including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics, as well as various
fields of linguistics including descriptive, historical, comparative, theoretical and
geographical linguistics).
MLA Bibliograph (Literature, languages, linguistics, and folklore from over 4,000
journals and series published worldwide).
JSTOR (Full-text of core journals including 64 in the field of language and literature).
Francis: Humanities and Social Sciences (covers a wide range of multilingual,
multidisciplinary information in the humanities and social sciences, representing a
wide range of materials, including serials, journal articles, books, book chapters,
conference papers, French dissertations, exhibition catalogs, legislation, teaching
materials, and reports).
International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (includes nearly two million
bibliographic references to journal articles and to books, reviews and selected chapters
dating back to 1951. It is unique in its broad coverage of international material and
incorporates over 100 languages and countries)
Reference Tools
International Encyclopedia of the behavioral and Social Sciences
Linguistic Variations Yearbook
Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics
Information Literacy Instruction
Information Literacy is the ability to recognize a need for information and to be able to
access, locate, evaluate and appropriately use information. The Linguistics Subject
specialist offers course-based instruction on research techniques, information resources
and the organization of linguistics literature to undergraduate and graduate-level
students. During the last four academic years, the following courses have received
information literacy instruction:
Table 7. Information Literacy Sessions
Year
2002
2003
2004
2004
2004
2005
2005
2005
Mo
9
2
1
2
3
1
1
2
Staff
RV
RV
RV
RV
RV
RV
RV
RV
Course
LINGGRAD
LING437
LING437
LING403
LING401
LING401
LING437
LING403
Participants
3
33
32
34
34
49
56
36
# of
Sessions
1
2
2
1
1
1
2
1
# of
Hours
1.25
3
3
1.5
1
1.5
3
1
FUTURE CONCERNS AND ISSUES
Budget
The Linguistics collection serves a broad base of the University community and beyond.
Without a real and sustained increase in purchasing power it will be difficult to maintain
the improvements that have been made within the Linguistics collection.
Digitization of Athapaskan linguistics material would significantly improve access to this
valuable collection.
The purchase of corpora {The Brown corpus, LOB corpus (British English), etc.} would be
valuable resources for researchers interested in comparing different language varieties.
Table 7 Holdings statistics for selected subject areas
Subjects
University of
University of
Calgary
Toronto
UBC
McGill
Semantics
1795
5059
2721
2464
Language
974
2230
9981
1324
1771
4660
2620
2410
acquisition
Syntax
Comparing our library holdings with the University of Toronto, UBC and McGill in the
three subjects (semantics, language acquisition and syntax) proves that an increase in
funding is required to develop our collection to equal the collection level of the
compared universities.
Technology
Faculty and students must keep current with the technology to fully take advantage of
the products and services available to them. With the significant increase in the variety
of electronic resources both bibliographic and full-text available to researchers it is
every more critical that students and researchers receive knowledge of and training in
the effective use of these resources.
Conclusion
The review of library support for linguistics demonstrates a strong research collection
focused on acquiring material to enhance the teaching and research needs of the
program and the faculty. Research strength is demonstrated in the strong journal
collection. In addition to collections, the Library provides expert liaison support for
research information and information literacy needs.
Language learning and literacy are identified as one pf the ‘pillars’ of prominence and
promise in the University of Calgary’s Academic Plan and the library has allocated
special one-time funding to built collection in these areas, but establishing regular
budget money would ensure long term strength and growth.