Reference works include materials that are:
Designed by their arrangement and treatment to be consulted for specific items of information, e.g. almanacs; atlases; biographical, geographical, language, and subject dictionaries; directories; encyclopedias; and statistical compilations.
Keys to larger bodies of material or records; catalogs of major library collections; bibliographic guides and handbooks.
The collection in print includes all subjects with a strong emphasis on the humanities and social sciences. More robust print reference collections for science, engineering, art, music, architecture, and special collections are within the domain of branches specializing in those disciplines. The electronic reference collection includes all subjects.
Excludes juvenile reference, and reference works for general interest that might be held by a public library.
No limits though Asian and Near Eastern countries are not as fully represented as others because they are covered by the East Asian Library. Other area studies such as Near East and South Asian, will be re-examined with the arrival of new selectors/program liaisons.
No limits.
The predominant language of the collection is English with some works in other major western languages. There are no language limits on monolingual, bilingual, and polyglot language dictionaries.
The general reference collection aims to be a research-level collection for the humanities and social sciences and a basic and instructional level collection for subjects that are covered by branch libraries.
