Collection Guidelines: French & Italian Studies: Related Local & Regional Collections

The Seattle Public Library and the King County Library System have small collections of French and Italian contemporary popular literature and children's literature.

The Alliance Française de Seattle has a médiathèque wth popular literature and films open to all. Members may borrow materials.

The Biblioteca Italiana Seattle (BIS) has a collection of classic and modern Italian authors, contemporary international novels translated into Italian, and a section dedicated to kids and teens. Membership for BIS is free and users can borrow books at no charge. A complete list of BIS books is available on Goodreads.

The UW Rome Center has its own library collection and library catalog of books in English and Italian to support students abroad.

The Libraries actively participates in regional and national cooperative collection development efforts which enhance the range of resources available to UW students, faculty, and staff while conserving precious funds for local acquisitions.   These include:

Orbis Cascade Alliance. Collaboration among members of this regional consortium expands the print resources available to UW scholars through Summit, the Alliance joint catalog. The Orbis Cascade e-book program allows UW patrons to view electronic books that are accessible to and jointly owned by all member libraries.

Outside UW Libraries, the strongest collections are at The University of Oregon.

Center for Research Libraries (CRL).  This organization acquires research material in print, microform, and electronic formats on behalf of its members, including foreign dissertations, newspaper archives, and other important but infrequently used resources.  In addition, the UW Libraries participates in several initiatives of CRL's Global Resources Program  that focus on international scholarly resources, such as news, government publications, and  technical reports.  Two other CRL programs offer UW scholars access to resources that are not owned by the UW Libraries or by CRL.  Requests should meet a specific research or teaching need and total no more than $2,000 annually.

• Demand Purchase Program.  For purchase of foreign dissertations, newspaper issues, and published archives.  Requests are forwarded from the Libraries' Interlibrary Loan office.

• Scholar's Access Program.  For limited-term access to a database, newspaper, or other electronic resource.  Requests should be made through your subject librarian. 

As members of the Western Regional Storage Trust (WEST) and the Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA), the UW Libraries collaborates with other research libraries to ensure long-term access to microform and print serials whether or not a digital surrogate exists.  Shared responsibility for maintaining retrospective print holdings enables the Libraries to better manage its own collections space.

CIFNAL, the Collaborative Initiative for French Language Collections (a CRL group), was founded in 2006 to promote and facilitate the cooperative exchange of ideas and resources between Francophone and North American research libraries.

CIFNAL has entered consortial agreements for electronic products critical to the study of the French language and to conduct research on French scholarship.  These include Le Grand Robert, CAIRN, and the Electronic Enlightenment.    (Of these, UW Libraries subscribes to Electronic Enlightenment.)